Active crossovers, speaker management systems, plugins or hardware.

[PaulH6]

Not sure which was the best section to post this question in. Basically I'm wondering if I can get any or all of the active crossover and amplifier control done in the computer getting rid of hardware and a lot of wiring.

I'm having a rethink of how I get the sound from my computer to my homemade speaker system which is a modular system allowing me to quickly stack individual drivers (in their own cabinets) up to 2 x 4-way (tweeter, mid, bass, woofer) for gigs and rehearsals as a keyboardist so latency is important.

I want to retain my current strategy of active crossover and individual lightweight (e.g. class D) amps for each speaker drive unit (i.e. two 4-way amps or a single 8-way), ideally this fits into a mini homemade rack unit doubling as piano stool. Ideally I want to keep this rack below 20kg - currently it's around 15kg with a 4 x 50W class D amp, a 2 x 250W class D bridged (both amps 5kg 19" rack) dbx234 active crossover and speaker leads. i.e. currently 2-way stereo plus woofer, but planning to expand this.

I was thinking of using a digital speaker management system like the Nova DC8000 (19" rack including active crossover, 4ins, 8 outs). Ideally I want two 4- way amps around 5kg with differing power on each channel (e.g. 50W ch1 increasing to 500W ch4) or a single 8-way (10kg), but not finding what I need.

My QUESTION: The main reason for asking your advice is it occurred to me maybe there's other ways of achieving this; e.g. is it possible to get a plugin that does the same as the speaker management system (last time I looked the only one I could find - allocator - had far too much latency for live playing), although presumably then I'd need an audio interface with 8 outputs so no significant weight/space/wiring saving and might as well save computer load by having the hardware speaker management. Then I wondered if I could get a suitable amp or amps (4 or 8 way, lightweight 50 to 500W) that instead of audio input take a digital (preferably USB) input from either the computer or audio interface? If such a system is possible, the ideal would be active crossover etc in computer, no separate audio interface, just a digital (e.g. USB) connection from computer to one 8-way or two 4-way amps, all settings controlled from the computer.