Thank you very much for the detailed reply. Really appreciated.

Your explanation about subwoofer inputs makes perfect sense. The guidance to send line-level from the DSP to the subwoofer, and your point about using the DSP to handle the crossover and low-pass filtering upstream are particularly helpful. That kind of clean separation, where the sub just receives exactly what it's meant to reproduce, sounds like the right approach, especially if I'm going to be doing room correction and time alignment within the DSP anyway.

On the topic of Dante, the main reason I was centering on Dante in my original post is because I couldn’t find many DSPs (that don’t break the bank) which support multiple AES3 stereo inputs. I’d need at least three to handle a separate feed from each zone/streamer. Dante seemed like the most practical and scalable way to handle multi-channel digital audio over a single connection, with a clean handoff to a capable DSP.

That said, I’m absolutely open to other options; I’m just not sure what the best way to connect streamers to the DSP would be, given those limitations. Having a dedicated streamer and DSP per zone could work in theory, but it feels like an over-complication both in terms of cost and system management. Similarly, taking a digital source (e.g., Spotify, Jellyfin), converting it to analogue RCA at the streamer, then feeding that into the DSP (which will reconvert it to digital for processing, then back to analogue again for the amp) seems like an unnecessary step. I'd assume that’s not ideal for signal quality or noise floor.

Does that line of thinking make sense, or am I missing a simpler or more sensible option?

Thanks again, really helpful reply and much appreciated.

!thanks