How can I split a surround sound signal to output between two discrete sound cards?

Question

I'm currently using Windows 7 (home edition) and have two stereo sound cards, that can simultaneously play two different audio streams.

I want to use these two devices as a virtual 4/0 surround (quadraphonic) sound system. I assume I need a virtual audio device, which can receive the surround signals and split them to output to my two sound cards.

How can I go about accomplishing this?

Answer 1

Open multiple instances of your media player and select a different output device for each. Apply different DSP settings to each instance, playing the front- and rear-channel audio of the same track on 2 different devices (channel up-mixing). The same could be done with the bass and treble from the same track (equalizer).

This is certainly, but not exclusively, possible using a free, open-source media player called Foobar2000. The channel mixer and equalizer plugins would be required as well. In preferences -> output, you can change the output from "Primary output device" to a specific sound sound card/device, ignoring the windows default audio device setting.

One problem here: manually starting the track in each instance simultaneously may prove difficult. I'm sure there are several workarounds for this, but I can't think of any at the moment. I hope this helps.