Hi there.
I thought perhaps somebody would be interested to discuss this subject "PC-The Perfect Source?" here at DIY-Audio. (There can a lot DIY be involved.)
More and more audio-people are using the PC as high-end audio source.
Especially the ones building DIY DACs with either USB or SPDIF
interfaces.
What I learned in the last couple of months: It's not only about "bit perfection", or "a PC is a PC - it's all digital", there is more behind it.
I don't want to discuss here things like what's better upsampling, resampling etc. or if MP3 sounds as good as .wav.
I don't want to discuss the 100.000 features every software player supplies either.
It is just a pure perfect audio stream I am interested in and I'd like to discuss. Everything else would need a seperate thread.
To give some kind of backround:
I figured that there is not very much on the net about let's call it high end audio setups via PC.
On the other hand - If you have a look at the professional scene - if it is recording, producing, mastering - it is mainly all PC based. ( A lot of good hints I found in the professional area.)
I guess the majority of the home high-end-audio world missed that for quite some time. PC audio is today mainly connected to mp3. I hope that will change soon.
Some words on my system as a result of my last summer research:
I am running a Lenovo T60P Notebook with 2*160GB HD and 2GB RAM and Windows XP.
Further I am running a DDDAC1543 over USB.
All at 44,1khz 16bit. No re- or upsampling in between.
After months of listening and searching I selected J.River Media Center due to its superior audio engine and not because of its features as a player. (I was running foobar in all kind of setups before!)
After long time searching I felt over the USB-Audio.de ASIO driver, which replaces the poor usb-audio.sys driver of Microsoft and supplies ASIO at the same time.
Further I play all tracks from RAM having a RAMdisc installed.
.wav is the only format acceptable to me for the time being.
I think that is the best setup I could find for XP, considering the other parts of my audio chain.
Not to forget: Ripping is done with J.R Media Center ( I used EAC before)
Since MS puts a lot of attention to Audio on the upcoming Vista I'd
expect more improvements in that area soon.
I also believe in a Linux setup, since Linux is the only OS
supporting real realtime applications. And its more or less DIY and FOC!
Though it can be very time consuming to get into it. I'd very much appreciate some comments in this area. I know there are some guys at DIY-Audio running Linux setups.
Bottom line - My highly tweaked high-end CD Player is for sale!
To me the PC is the perfect source. It delivers great quality sound and it is extremly flexible and convienent once you got all your CDs ripped onto hardisk.
Looking forward to share and discuss other findings or setups.
Klaus
I thought perhaps somebody would be interested to discuss this subject "PC-The Perfect Source?" here at DIY-Audio. (There can a lot DIY be involved.)
More and more audio-people are using the PC as high-end audio source.
Especially the ones building DIY DACs with either USB or SPDIF
interfaces.
What I learned in the last couple of months: It's not only about "bit perfection", or "a PC is a PC - it's all digital", there is more behind it.
I don't want to discuss here things like what's better upsampling, resampling etc. or if MP3 sounds as good as .wav.
I don't want to discuss the 100.000 features every software player supplies either.
It is just a pure perfect audio stream I am interested in and I'd like to discuss. Everything else would need a seperate thread.
To give some kind of backround:
I figured that there is not very much on the net about let's call it high end audio setups via PC.
On the other hand - If you have a look at the professional scene - if it is recording, producing, mastering - it is mainly all PC based. ( A lot of good hints I found in the professional area.)
I guess the majority of the home high-end-audio world missed that for quite some time. PC audio is today mainly connected to mp3. I hope that will change soon.
Some words on my system as a result of my last summer research:
I am running a Lenovo T60P Notebook with 2*160GB HD and 2GB RAM and Windows XP.
Further I am running a DDDAC1543 over USB.
All at 44,1khz 16bit. No re- or upsampling in between.
After months of listening and searching I selected J.River Media Center due to its superior audio engine and not because of its features as a player. (I was running foobar in all kind of setups before!)
After long time searching I felt over the USB-Audio.de ASIO driver, which replaces the poor usb-audio.sys driver of Microsoft and supplies ASIO at the same time.
Further I play all tracks from RAM having a RAMdisc installed.
.wav is the only format acceptable to me for the time being.
I think that is the best setup I could find for XP, considering the other parts of my audio chain.
Not to forget: Ripping is done with J.R Media Center ( I used EAC before)
Since MS puts a lot of attention to Audio on the upcoming Vista I'd
expect more improvements in that area soon.
I also believe in a Linux setup, since Linux is the only OS
supporting real realtime applications. And its more or less DIY and FOC!
Though it can be very time consuming to get into it. I'd very much appreciate some comments in this area. I know there are some guys at DIY-Audio running Linux setups.
Bottom line - My highly tweaked high-end CD Player is for sale!
To me the PC is the perfect source. It delivers great quality sound and it is extremly flexible and convienent once you got all your CDs ripped onto hardisk.
Looking forward to share and discuss other findings or setups.
Klaus
The thing that annoys me about a PC as a source is the huge amount of noise they make without expensive cooling systems!
Another thing is that cheap PC sound cards sound absolutely TERRIBLE (not just audiophile pickyness, as in most people can easily tell the difference) and have a high noise floor
So you have to spend a lot on a source PC
Another thing is that cheap PC sound cards sound absolutely TERRIBLE (not just audiophile pickyness, as in most people can easily tell the difference) and have a high noise floor
So you have to spend a lot on a source PC
bigwill said:So you have to spend a lot on a source PC
Old Pentium III dismissed by somebody = Free
Passive cooling for CPU = 35€
Power supply with passive cooling = 110€
Hard disk 250Gb = 90€
Foobar 2000 = Free
EAC = Free
____________________________
TOTAL = 235€
Better components than those listed have very little effects on sound.
How much does it cost a decent transport with a decent small number of read errors? PC makes no read errors because has time to re-read.
P. S.
Of course there is no need of a sound card. A USB-DAC will do the job.
Audio engine
Hi soundcheck,
I was interested to read that you had chosen the jriver player over foobar for reasons other than features. Have you been able to do this through listening tests or do you have links to information which explicitly states reasons for why jriver is better?
I too have also been keen on a Linux system, but I cant afford an RME card and the best lower cost cards e.g. EMU 1212m seem have an agreement with microsoft and do not release the required information for the ALSA team to develop drivers. The linux player, aqualung, seems to have a similar feature set to foobar, but its difficult to get a level playing field between the two oses without more expensive equipment.
Id be interested in hearing about anyone using a diy usb DAC with linux and how the drivers compare with xp. There is a thread on diyhifi with a number of members measuring the performance of various usb interfaces, in terms of jitter, and concluded that where usb is currently worse than spdif, it may be xp (with asio) that causes the interference. You should maybe encourage some further measure using the drivers you use.
Cheers,
Ross
Hi soundcheck,
I was interested to read that you had chosen the jriver player over foobar for reasons other than features. Have you been able to do this through listening tests or do you have links to information which explicitly states reasons for why jriver is better?
I too have also been keen on a Linux system, but I cant afford an RME card and the best lower cost cards e.g. EMU 1212m seem have an agreement with microsoft and do not release the required information for the ALSA team to develop drivers. The linux player, aqualung, seems to have a similar feature set to foobar, but its difficult to get a level playing field between the two oses without more expensive equipment.
Id be interested in hearing about anyone using a diy usb DAC with linux and how the drivers compare with xp. There is a thread on diyhifi with a number of members measuring the performance of various usb interfaces, in terms of jitter, and concluded that where usb is currently worse than spdif, it may be xp (with asio) that causes the interference. You should maybe encourage some further measure using the drivers you use.
Cheers,
Ross
ALSA driver for 1212M
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-do...+1212m.&chip=CA0102,+FPGA&module=emu10k1-fpga
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-do...+1212m.&chip=CA0102,+FPGA&module=emu10k1-fpga
Re: Audio engine
Hi Ross.
Yes we did listening tests. Quite some people confirmed that JRMC sounds better.
Playing it from RamDisc improved the situation even further.
The good thing though - the 30day trial is free of charge. It is easy to verify. That's what I love about the PC as source.
As I mentioned for USB--Audio the special USB driver is a must.
Audible jitter drops heavily. As long as you have usb-audio.sys in the stream you'll never manage to get clean sound over USB.
Just download it and give it try!
rossco_50 said:
Hi Ross.
Yes we did listening tests. Quite some people confirmed that JRMC sounds better.
Playing it from RamDisc improved the situation even further.
The good thing though - the 30day trial is free of charge. It is easy to verify. That's what I love about the PC as source.
As I mentioned for USB--Audio the special USB driver is a must.
Audible jitter drops heavily. As long as you have usb-audio.sys in the stream you'll never manage to get clean sound over USB.
Just download it and give it try!
EMU 1212m
Apologies for the mis information - I was sure I had read that none of the EMU cards were supported - but maybe this was just the 0404. Thats great news for me, thanks for the info both of you.
Think I'll get this card. It will allow to experiment with both windows and linux, without compromise of my purchasing decision. will be interesting to see if the alsa drivers allow syncing to an external clock.
Kevinkr has moved to the j river media player for his htpc project, but this seemed to be more for its format support. although listening tests have also obviously been positive for him.
I was interested to try xmcd as it seems to be a cd player with real time multiple read and a jitter correction algorithm. Workload prevents at the moment, but might be interesting for others. lamip is a foobar clone for linux, but seemingly only in terms of interface.
I recently read on hydorgen audio that ubuntu now comes with the alsa drivers preconfigured to resample everything to 48khz. This can be turned off with varying degrees of difficulty, but might be worth checking when setting up your newly installed linux os.
Cheers,
Ross
Apologies for the mis information - I was sure I had read that none of the EMU cards were supported - but maybe this was just the 0404. Thats great news for me, thanks for the info both of you.
Think I'll get this card. It will allow to experiment with both windows and linux, without compromise of my purchasing decision. will be interesting to see if the alsa drivers allow syncing to an external clock.
Kevinkr has moved to the j river media player for his htpc project, but this seemed to be more for its format support. although listening tests have also obviously been positive for him.
I was interested to try xmcd as it seems to be a cd player with real time multiple read and a jitter correction algorithm. Workload prevents at the moment, but might be interesting for others. lamip is a foobar clone for linux, but seemingly only in terms of interface.
I recently read on hydorgen audio that ubuntu now comes with the alsa drivers preconfigured to resample everything to 48khz. This can be turned off with varying degrees of difficulty, but might be worth checking when setting up your newly installed linux os.
Cheers,
Ross
Have you looked at the Squueezebox or Transporter for playback? Both are quite good and eliminate the noise of the PC from the listening room. They also provide remote control for selection of music for playback.
You don't have to wait for Vista to have a 64 bit OS. I run the server (Slimserver) on a PC with 64 bit Linux (AMD64 ubuntu) and it works flawlessly. I rip/burn CDs using K3b, DVDs using K9copy. All Linux, all the time! And the best part is, it doesn't crash, ever! No more rebooting every 30 minutes, no more reinstalling the OS every 6 months, no more viruses/trojans. It just works!
I attempted to install and run linux a few years ago, and found it was too much trouble to get it working. Things have progressed since then. It is now faster to install linux than windoze, and the hardware issues have pretty much fixed themselves. Check it out- it's free- you have nothing to lose except Bill Gates...
I find it interesting that devices like the SB3 are almost ignored on these forums, but then again, there are a lot of folks still trying to get the best sound they can out of vinyl.
I_F
You don't have to wait for Vista to have a 64 bit OS. I run the server (Slimserver) on a PC with 64 bit Linux (AMD64 ubuntu) and it works flawlessly. I rip/burn CDs using K3b, DVDs using K9copy. All Linux, all the time! And the best part is, it doesn't crash, ever! No more rebooting every 30 minutes, no more reinstalling the OS every 6 months, no more viruses/trojans. It just works!
I attempted to install and run linux a few years ago, and found it was too much trouble to get it working. Things have progressed since then. It is now faster to install linux than windoze, and the hardware issues have pretty much fixed themselves. Check it out- it's free- you have nothing to lose except Bill Gates...
I find it interesting that devices like the SB3 are almost ignored on these forums, but then again, there are a lot of folks still trying to get the best sound they can out of vinyl.
I_F
I used a Linux computer with a RME soundcard connected to a homebrew DAC. Said DAC contains a master clock, sent to the CD player, which sends SPDIF to the soundcard, slaving it to the DAC clock.
I could have used a SPDIF encoder but I had a CD723 laying around, so I used this to generate a SPDIF signal for the PC. At first I wanted to use it to also play CDs but it sucks too much (the digital output is not bit-exact and sounds like sh*t) (and the mechanism died anyway).
Computer runs Linux (gentoo 64 bits) and has music stored on a Linux Software RAID.
So far I changed 3 siying harddrives and no data loss.
I'm trying to build something based on Ethernet now. It's quite difficult, but interesting.
http://audio.peufeu.com/node/46
I could have used a SPDIF encoder but I had a CD723 laying around, so I used this to generate a SPDIF signal for the PC. At first I wanted to use it to also play CDs but it sucks too much (the digital output is not bit-exact and sounds like sh*t) (and the mechanism died anyway).
Computer runs Linux (gentoo 64 bits) and has music stored on a Linux Software RAID.
So far I changed 3 siying harddrives and no data loss.
I'm trying to build something based on Ethernet now. It's quite difficult, but interesting.
http://audio.peufeu.com/node/46
Re: EMU 1212m
Another one. Good to see.
I talked to at least two guys telling me that JRMC over Ramdisc plays better than Wavelab.
Isn't there a new ubunto audio distribution coming out soon.
As far as i know peufeu mentioned amarok as linux player.
I think its based on XINE. That would be also an interesting try.
Are there drivers for pure USB-AUDIO at Linux. Just to support
e.g. my PCM2707?
xmcd doesn't support ASIO yet. Otherwise it looks promising.
Player without ASIO or complete rewritten USB drivers are not acceptable to me for my setup. I know what usb-audio.sys is doing to the stream.
rossco_50 said:
Another one. Good to see.
I talked to at least two guys telling me that JRMC over Ramdisc plays better than Wavelab.
rossco_50 said:
Isn't there a new ubunto audio distribution coming out soon.
As far as i know peufeu mentioned amarok as linux player.
I think its based on XINE. That would be also an interesting try.
Are there drivers for pure USB-AUDIO at Linux. Just to support
e.g. my PCM2707?
rossco_50 said:
xmcd doesn't support ASIO yet. Otherwise it looks promising.
Player without ASIO or complete rewritten USB drivers are not acceptable to me for my setup. I know what usb-audio.sys is doing to the stream.
I like the squeezebox, the DACs are now comparable with many high performance players and soundcards, and is affordable in the scheme of things. great solution.
I think that the pc can be quietened and not only allows storage and playback of audio, but can be used for all sorts of diy - measurement, crossovers, drc, even music production if thats of interest. All of these are for me, therefore I think a comparable sum of money on a souncard and some silencing measures are the better option, for me anyway. But perhaps the better psu of the squeezebox and its livingroom friendly aesthetic make it the audiophile choice.
Cheers,
Ross
I think that the pc can be quietened and not only allows storage and playback of audio, but can be used for all sorts of diy - measurement, crossovers, drc, even music production if thats of interest. All of these are for me, therefore I think a comparable sum of money on a souncard and some silencing measures are the better option, for me anyway. But perhaps the better psu of the squeezebox and its livingroom friendly aesthetic make it the audiophile choice.
Cheers,
Ross
xmcd would run on linux so asio support isnt an issue. Certainly JACK and alsa support are good to have on linux. xmcd is may be a bit out of date now, dont see any mention of JACK, not sure it is still an active project. Aqualung looks good. Amorak is very popular, and is actively developed.
There is apparently usb audio support under ALSA, but havnt got a usb device to check. Would be interesting if you tried your dddac with it.
There is apparently usb audio support under ALSA, but havnt got a usb device to check. Would be interesting if you tried your dddac with it.
Let's dream a bit:
A small high-end audio Linux distribution wouldn't be a bad idea, IMHO.
Just pure playback.
Booting from memorystick or CD. The tracks are loaded with a nice player from a mounted harddrive. The player does full file buffering for playback.
A nice realtime kernel and applications stripped down to the absolute minimum to get maximum performance.
This shouldn't be too difficult!?
Everybody could use something like that. You wouldn't even have to reconfigure your PC for it.
A small high-end audio Linux distribution wouldn't be a bad idea, IMHO.
Just pure playback.
Booting from memorystick or CD. The tracks are loaded with a nice player from a mounted harddrive. The player does full file buffering for playback.
A nice realtime kernel and applications stripped down to the absolute minimum to get maximum performance.
This shouldn't be too difficult!?
Everybody could use something like that. You wouldn't even have to reconfigure your PC for it.
Firstly, I don't believe many CD players can compete with a PC or Mac, given that more and more studio work is now done with ProTools and similar setups on PCs and Macs. w.r.t DDDAC1543, I think we are seeing another example of the (devastating) discrepancy between expensive average-sounding comercial products and non-expensive but great sounding home brews - a discrepancy which surely these DIY forums thrive on.
I have an EMU 1212m running through a phase-aligned 3 way crossover, and 6 Gainclones, powering p.audio drivers. I also visit the local 'audiophile' stores from time to time, to listen to their vinyl collection. This is not an ideal, scientific, blind listening test, I know, but they do compare; my system's stereo imaging certainly isn't as good. But. The 1212m card is so much closer to a 'studio' sound than the audiophole CD players I have listened to...in fact, I would never have believed CD audio could sound so good.
I had never heard of the DDDAC1543. I will have to consider this as a future project. Many thanks! It would be good to compare the DDDAC1543 with the 1212m, since they are of similar price (depending on the components used in the DDDAC1543).
I also make electronic music using the 1212m, which uses the same DAC as the aforementioned ProTools. Has anyone had any luck producing music with the DDDAC1543 (I mean in terms of latency)?
I have an EMU 1212m running through a phase-aligned 3 way crossover, and 6 Gainclones, powering p.audio drivers. I also visit the local 'audiophile' stores from time to time, to listen to their vinyl collection. This is not an ideal, scientific, blind listening test, I know, but they do compare; my system's stereo imaging certainly isn't as good. But. The 1212m card is so much closer to a 'studio' sound than the audiophole CD players I have listened to...in fact, I would never have believed CD audio could sound so good.
I had never heard of the DDDAC1543. I will have to consider this as a future project. Many thanks! It would be good to compare the DDDAC1543 with the 1212m, since they are of similar price (depending on the components used in the DDDAC1543).
I also make electronic music using the 1212m, which uses the same DAC as the aforementioned ProTools. Has anyone had any luck producing music with the DDDAC1543 (I mean in terms of latency)?
soundcheck said:
www.linuxdevices.com reports frequently such devices from various manufacturers. It is already a reality. I am very excited about this trend.
I think 'the dream' is very easily realised.
I posted a link to demudi before (in the open source audio thread, but the less said about that the better). It is a linux distribution optimised for pro audio work, low latency with most of the best and most stable linux audio applications. I have installed it before and used the live cd version, looks promising. I failed to get the live cd to boot off a usb pen, but I know its been done with other knoppix cds. I believe it is possible to strip out applications from live knoppix cd's as well, therefore reducing the amount of space taken up in RAM. SOny have used this in an experiemntal Hifi system. An embedded version for low spec machines is being developed at the moment. There is an Amorak live cd.
I spent a some time trying to find a way of getting all the applications I wanted to boot off a 1gb usb pen, but most live/mini distributions come with a limited repository of applications. Slax was the best I could find as anything in the slackware repository can be used, but this was still missing stuff like brutefir. Plenty of people have succeeded in making modules for slax. I believe this could be done but I lack the expertise at the moment. Slax can also be built from within windows and easily loaded onto a pen drive.
In the end I reached the conclusion that where I would be using a harddrive to store music, I might as well have the operating system on it as well, and save the effort of using the usb drive. might be slightly noisier with more hard drive activity, but there are plenty of cheap silencing external enclosures. Would still be nice to have a mini audio distro on a usb pen though.
Ubuntu is by far the easiest os to configure, you hardly even have to resort to the command line. ubuntu studio has lots of information about setting it up for improved audio performance. You simply remove programs to strip it down.
Good to hear some more positive reports about the emu 1212m. Is the crossover implemented on the cards dsp, or are you doing this in software? Im not sure how easy it would be to implement a crossover through a usb device. I havnt noticed any more than two channels being used in diy, but this may just be preference. more than one usb device would be difficult to sync.
Cheers,
Ross
I posted a link to demudi before (in the open source audio thread, but the less said about that the better). It is a linux distribution optimised for pro audio work, low latency with most of the best and most stable linux audio applications. I have installed it before and used the live cd version, looks promising. I failed to get the live cd to boot off a usb pen, but I know its been done with other knoppix cds. I believe it is possible to strip out applications from live knoppix cd's as well, therefore reducing the amount of space taken up in RAM. SOny have used this in an experiemntal Hifi system. An embedded version for low spec machines is being developed at the moment. There is an Amorak live cd.
I spent a some time trying to find a way of getting all the applications I wanted to boot off a 1gb usb pen, but most live/mini distributions come with a limited repository of applications. Slax was the best I could find as anything in the slackware repository can be used, but this was still missing stuff like brutefir. Plenty of people have succeeded in making modules for slax. I believe this could be done but I lack the expertise at the moment. Slax can also be built from within windows and easily loaded onto a pen drive.
In the end I reached the conclusion that where I would be using a harddrive to store music, I might as well have the operating system on it as well, and save the effort of using the usb drive. might be slightly noisier with more hard drive activity, but there are plenty of cheap silencing external enclosures. Would still be nice to have a mini audio distro on a usb pen though.
Ubuntu is by far the easiest os to configure, you hardly even have to resort to the command line. ubuntu studio has lots of information about setting it up for improved audio performance. You simply remove programs to strip it down.
Good to hear some more positive reports about the emu 1212m. Is the crossover implemented on the cards dsp, or are you doing this in software? Im not sure how easy it would be to implement a crossover through a usb device. I havnt noticed any more than two channels being used in diy, but this may just be preference. more than one usb device would be difficult to sync.
Cheers,
Ross
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