Sorry for the late reply - got busy distracted with my ATT-Pure that I waited for 2 years for them to release
The card is the Auzentech Meridian 7.1 http://www.auzentech.com/site/products/x-meridian.php
It took me YEARS of screwing around with this card to make it all work the way I want and finally it does!
Here is my setup on the PC:
I use Foobar2k with the DTS decoder plug in. I tried the Andrews Lab ATSouround (I do use this in my car). However once I got the card figured out the NEO encoding on 2 channel works much better (WAY more kick on the bottom).
The key is the output setting - I use KS:Auzen X-Meridian 7.1 via the FB2k plugin for Kernal Streaming. ASIO also works ok on W7 - not so good on Vista.
My goal which is what took so long was to be able to simply intermix DTS and 2 ch content in a playlist and not have to change any settings between cuts - sounds simple - it was not!
I switched from Winamp for 2 reasons - the above goal and FB2k media DB is just the best I have found for LARGE collections - hands down! And I have tired a ton of them.
As for the skin - I modified a Columns UI. I can send you the file if you want.
One other plugin I use (FB2k can use most of the winamp plugins) is the IZotope Ozone - just the best - you can tweak and actually assign different settings to each cut you play. Only works on 2ch cuts.
The Car:
I use an ASUS N280 HA1000 Netbook that I put W7 on (I am a MS MSDN subscriber) right away. It plugs into a creative X-FI 5.1 USB unit that plugs via a set of rube-goldberg a-b switches (so i can go back to the CD/Radio) directly into the amps (almost) - This is a great story - this system I had put in my SL-500 cost around $10k and includes a custom tuned eq box that was setup by using a TASCAM equalizer playing a Barbara Streisand record that the person doing the setting up actually sat with Barbara in her car doing the tweaking under her guidance. So since he know exactly how its supposed to sound, he uses that experience as the baseline to eq my system. Then he takes the TASCAM into the lab and builds my eq out of discreet parts. So now with my netbook I can play all my DTS FLAC files anywhere.
As for ease of use - that was the big question - i tired a couple remote controls that required external USB dongles and they kind of worked, but then I found the Sony Playstation Bluetooth remote and a program called intellremote that works really good. And allows me decent control over main vol, player vol, play pause, skip, next, prev and even startup of FB2k. And yes I usually just run a single playlist per drive.
The X-FI has its own set of controls that you need to mess with to get the balance etc - I do not use its surround or Crystalizer - though on DTS it tends to sound better - but it is not as good as the Izotope. So there is the one area that needs improvement and I have contacted Creatives Developers to ask them to provide an API to their settings so I can remote control individual channel levels and switch the special features on and off. No luch so far -if you go with this setup, bug them as well.
My Collection:
I encode (really it just wraps and removes some space) all .dts or .wav files into .flac via Switch Sound File Converter and use tag & rename to fill in the tags and pick up folder art. Works great 99% of the time, but for some reason a small percentage of my tracks don't play (static) - so now I reverse the .flac back to .wav-then rename to .dts and use FB2k to encode to a real flac (which is always much bigger). If anyone know of another program to do the wrapping please let me know.
Let me know if you have any more questions.
Barry
Already the TV tuner has been surpassed by digital TV.