Use of PC in high-end audio?

[lobo]

Hi all. I plan to use PC to play audio-cd without harddisk and DAC. I have some questions :

1. which one do you thing is the best for minimizing jitter, playing audio cd using winamp or win media player (digitally via ide cable) or ripping the audio-cd first to HD as .wav files and then copy the files to cd as data-cd, using winamp to play the .wav files directly from the cd ?

2. If I record audio from vinnyl tape to 24/192 .wav files, can I burn it as audio-cd, and then play it using winamp through Audigy's analog output, with the 24/192 still preserved ? Would the quality be better than conventional 16/44 audio-cd ?

Thanks for the advice.

 

[MWP]

Hi all. I plan to use PC to play audio-cd without harddisk and DAC. I have some questions :

1. which one do you thing is the best for minimizing jitter, playing audio cd using winamp or win media player (digitally via ide cable) or ripping the audio-cd first to HD as .wav files and then copy the files to cd as data-cd, using winamp to play the .wav files directly from the cd ?

2. If I record audio from vinnyl tape to 24/192 .wav files, can I burn it as audio-cd, and then play it using winamp through Audigy's analog output, with the 24/192 still preserved ? Would the quality be better than conventional 16/44 audio-cd ?

Both of these topics have been covered many times before in these forums, use the search.

But as a quick answer, how can you be concerned with jitter when you want to play back the audio with the very average performance of a Audigy?

 

[lobo]

But as a quick answer, how can you be concerned with jitter when you want to play back the audio with the very average performance of a Audigy?

Because I'm not able to build a DAC, and only depends on the analog output from a soundcard. I know it's not as good as connecting a DAC to the soundcard's SPDIF, and I can't afford the high end soundcard like M-audio, so I think at the moment what I can do to get the optimal audio results with all these limitations, is minimizing the audio jitter.

 

[Rookie]

Re: PC as transport review

Tonight, tried the same thing as above & still same result. Then, as a last ditch effort, I decided to try the ASIO out by installing the asio plugin for Foobar.

Hi!

Were did you find the the ASIO plugin for Foobar? I recently built a PCM2702 USB DAC. Does it work with ASIO?

 

[MWP]

Re: Re: PC as transport review

Were did you find the the ASIO plugin for Foobar? I recently built a PCM2702 USB DAC. Does it work with ASIO?

From memory it does work....

Do a search in the forums here to find it:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/show.php/showforum/33

 

[critofur]

Also soundcards have a somewhat limitted frequency response.

Hmm ~ mine's 108db SNR, 24 bit... So while ALL audio devices are "somewhat limited" I would guess that relatively speaking, recent good soundcards are not?

And, if I added an external "audiophile quality" DAC it could be better than ANY CD player that's available (say, playing back DVD-Audio discs...)

 

[Dandruff]

Hello,

For those of you who have hooked up a Soundblaster Live! or Audigy to your system via an analogue connection, the black connector, located farthest to the left on the cards and designated "rear output" provides the best sound quality compared to the other connectors on the card. This output is less noisy, because it uses a different codec (I2S) than the other outputs (AC97).

 

[sam9]

If you are interested in using a PC for high end, apart from questions of soundcards, check out internet radio. There is a lot of crap, but there are also some gems such as www.kcea.org a local (to me) high school station that specializes in Big Band and Swing Jazz (Paul Whitment, Ellington, rtc, etc). They play a log of things you can't hear anywhere else - no CDs and the vinyl is hard to find. Thats only one example.

Sometimes one has the PC in one room and the main audio system elsewhere. If you are using a home wireless LAN, D-Link has a device that can take streaming media from the web and feed it to your reciever/preamp even if your PC is not on. It does otherthings too, but the point is that there are an increasing number of possabilities for audio/net interconnectivity.

 

[1/137]

audiotron

I've been using a turtle beach audiotron for streaming audio. Connect it to the LAN and it is an "internet tuner." WMA, Shoutcast and a few more formats. It has a digital and analog output. I am sure it can be improved but as it is it works and provides access to internet radio without having to turn on a pc.

rt

 

[Lars Clausen]

1/137: i think the next wave in PC's are the ones you never have to turn off. I have been using one of those for a while for mail + web + casual music etc. (low cost + low power based on VIA Eden processor) and i must admit it's now very seldom i turn on the 'real' PC anymore. These baby's run at about 20 Watts, and have speed enough for all daily uses. And btw. they also don't need a fan, so there is no noise except from the HD (not too bad these days). I paid about 350$ for mine all included, but you can probably get it cheaper in the US.

lobo: i think these are very good questions, and this will probably be the subject of many discussions in the near future.

All the best

 

[1/137]

Lars,
Sounds great to me. I've been trying to minimize my power consumption...and it would be nice to be able to receive my mail with a 20 watt device. However I like the security of having my mail file on a mirored RAID set. I am looking for an inexpensive low power NAS device to store mail + all other data files so I can reach them from any PC on the LAN (or over the VPN) without keeping a PC running 24x7...

I am impressed by how good music over Internet/Ethernet sounds...I expected a lot worse...the question is...how can it be improved?

rt

 

[Lars Clausen]

Hi rt

I had surprisingly good results just from replacing the DC blocking caps on the motherboard, (they were 100uF standard electrolytic caps) and simply reclocking the AC97 sound chip. Turned out to be fairly straightforward. There is a slight noise (-100dB or so) when moving the mouse, but it is not a bother.

About your data access needs, it seems you should get a simple network server, like a Linux/Apache server for easy access to
your sound files, and mail server. I think the same type of low cost / low power hardware like the VIA ITX 1 GHz can do the task easily.
But then if you ae not so focused on power consumption, you could even use your old outdated PC for that task

 

[1/137]

Lars,
Again I agree....I think a small linux server would be great...especially something small as all it would have to do is keep my mail & music...on a raid set...

Any ideas on a Linux that would run on an older PC...command line only...no Xwindows...something small & fast...

I've been struggling with Mandrake 10 & SuSE 9.0...using XWindows they are both painfully slow (500 MHz Celeron + 1 gig of RAM)....and things don't always seem to work as I would like them to...

I'll have to open my audiotron and take a look at it...better caps ought to be pretty easy....

rt

 

[MWP]

Again I agree....I think a small linux server would be great...especially something small as all it would have to do is keep my mail & music...on a raid set...

Why RAID?

Any ideas on a Linux that would run on an older PC...command line only...no Xwindows...something small & fast...

Any really.
If your picky with the install process about what packages are installed, all distros will be around the same speed.
Gentoo and other source compiled distros would be on top of my list though.

If your a nutter, you could try LFS... youll soon see what i mean by "nutter" if you try and get it going

 

[1/137]

why raid?

'cause I want a painless realtime backup copy of stuff I don't want to lose....and I want it to be zero effort...and constantly up to date...do you know another way?
rt