Adding Melda Effects to Windows Surround Output - Solution

[vectorwarrior]

Hi all,

This probably isn't helpful to anyone... but a while back I posted some questions related to this, and after a LOT of testing I've finally found a solution that allows you to add Melda effects to the main windows output (e.g. WASAPI), including surround output (which was the pain point for me as someone that works in game audio).

Use cases:
- build a bass management system in MXXX, that redirects the low frequencies from the main channels to the subwoofer output
- Build your own speaker correction software; if you have a measurement mic you can use MFreeformEQ to callibrate the mic, then either use pink noise to detect your room/speaker response in MFreeformEQ or even use REW measurements and convert the data into MFreeformEQ curves, again all the way up to surround (which is currently not supported in things like Sonarworks)
- build a channel solo/mute so you can listen to individual channels easily, this is handy for listening to specific channels in surround (e.g. solo the center channel of a movie to listen to the dialog)
- have a loudness meter or frequency analyser on your main windows output
etc, etc, etc

What I found worked:
You're going to send the audio to a new virtual audio interface, then process it with the effects and then send to your hardware output
- install VB Audio Cable's VoiceMeeter: https://vb-audio.com/Voicemeeter/
Unfortunately the smaller 'VBCable' doesn't work as the input only supports 2 channel.
- set the windows output to use VB-Audio Voicemeeter input
- open the windows Sound control panel, configure to use 5.1 or 7.1 (or whatever) and your desired samplerate/bitdepth
- open the Virtual IO control panel that came with Voicemeeter and check that it's seeing the right number of channels (e.g. 6 for 5.1). Lower the latency as low as possible (you'll need to increase it if you hear clicking, but sync will start to be a problem if latency is long)
- Download and install DS WASAPI ASIO Router Mixer: https://www.3delite.hu/Object%20Pascal% ... Mixer.html
This isn't a well known app but it's the one that worked best for my purposes (I tried Cantible, LiveProfessor, VSTHost, etc and they all had issues with surround or other problems), it's also nice and cheap
- Open the app and route the wasapi input from VoiceMeeter Input (the loopback one, not the VM Output) to your soundcard's main output. Specify the number of channels and samplerate on both, ensure you hit the 'enable' button on both input and output
- add your vst folder (no VST3 unfortunately) and add whatever effect you want
- save profile to save time later, you can also get it to run when windows starts

You may be able to use the Router Mixer app to use ASIO instead for lower latency, but then it may tie up ASIO if you're using a DAW, so I like to keep things separate.

The reason I wanted to do this was because I have a 7.1 speaker system but my hardware bass-management controller only supports 5.1, and buying a new bass management system was going to cost a lot of money, so I wanted to see if I could do it in software. Then I got to thinking about speaker correction. My long term plan is to build a unified system containing a bunch of the above solutions.

Hopefully this is helpful to someone.

Thanks!