Hello from italy!
I'm thinking to a good audiophile source for my hifi car system. I'm planning to buy a mini-itx computer, put there a good soundcard with optical out and let the digital sound to be converted to analog by my alpine pxa h900 dac / signal processor.
The wav files i have are good enough i guess, created by plextor premium U usb burner and 12volts Pb battery power supply.
Considering that in car i use burned cds (original at home!!) with state-of-the-art alpine cd player (f1 status 7990) , do you think i will lose quality listening by computer way instead cds classical way? Do you know software/pc audio card to get the best results possible without wasting money for multi-effect cards or sophisticated software?
That means: i need to know if does exist a RAW quality player and a RAW quality sound card. Just take the wav and throw it out directly as it is in sp/dif optical output doing anything more. The digital processor will think to all the equalisation etc.
What do you think???
I'm thinking to a good audiophile source for my hifi car system. I'm planning to buy a mini-itx computer, put there a good soundcard with optical out and let the digital sound to be converted to analog by my alpine pxa h900 dac / signal processor.
The wav files i have are good enough i guess, created by plextor premium U usb burner and 12volts Pb battery power supply.
Considering that in car i use burned cds (original at home!!) with state-of-the-art alpine cd player (f1 status 7990) , do you think i will lose quality listening by computer way instead cds classical way? Do you know software/pc audio card to get the best results possible without wasting money for multi-effect cards or sophisticated software?
That means: i need to know if does exist a RAW quality player and a RAW quality sound card. Just take the wav and throw it out directly as it is in sp/dif optical output doing anything more. The digital processor will think to all the equalisation etc.
What do you think???
Hi,
take a look at my digital music server thread, no reason why it can't work with nano/mini itx mobo particularly since you aren't also using it as a pvr as I am.
Incidentally this server replaced my old PS Audio Lambda Drive and I think it probably outperforms it in some ways and is a lot more convenient.
The sound quality is every bit as good as the Lambda was to the best of my recollection and just blows the sony sacd player I sometimes use as a cd transport out of the water.
Kevin
take a look at my digital music server thread, no reason why it can't work with nano/mini itx mobo particularly since you aren't also using it as a pvr as I am.
Incidentally this server replaced my old PS Audio Lambda Drive and I think it probably outperforms it in some ways and is a lot more convenient.
The sound quality is every bit as good as the Lambda was to the best of my recollection and just blows the sony sacd player I sometimes use as a cd transport out of the water.
Kevin
thank you!
I read the long thread, but i only understood some parts. My issue is the following:
i have a car with hi-end oriented audio system. Actually the audio chain is the following:
alpine f1 status 7900 cd player ->optical output->pxa700 digital processor equalizer/ dac, brax x2400 amplifier, scan speak revelator 2 way speakers.
The digital processor has 3 optical SP/DIF inputs so i want to try audio computer source:
mini ITX computer ->USB output ->something in behind ->optical output ->digital processor etc...
alpine F1 status 7990 is probably the best sounding car source outthere. I want reach the same digital quality. Actually i have a cheap terratec aureon 5.1 with SP(DIF optical output but maybe the digital signal is not good enough, becouse i hear difference in bass (less bass in audio pc than in cd player!!)
Sorry but i don't know what EMU 404 , ASIO, etc are..
Bye
Paolo
I read the long thread, but i only understood some parts. My issue is the following:
i have a car with hi-end oriented audio system. Actually the audio chain is the following:
alpine f1 status 7900 cd player ->optical output->pxa700 digital processor equalizer/ dac, brax x2400 amplifier, scan speak revelator 2 way speakers.
The digital processor has 3 optical SP/DIF inputs so i want to try audio computer source:
mini ITX computer ->USB output ->something in behind ->optical output ->digital processor etc...
alpine F1 status 7990 is probably the best sounding car source outthere. I want reach the same digital quality. Actually i have a cheap terratec aureon 5.1 with SP(DIF optical output but maybe the digital signal is not good enough, becouse i hear difference in bass (less bass in audio pc than in cd player!!)
Sorry but i don't know what EMU 404 , ASIO, etc are..
Bye
Paolo
Why not just get a mini-ITX with digital audio out, that way you can skip the USB portion? I believe at least one of the models offers digital output. You can look on www.mini-itx.com and see what your options are and purchase one if you want. That'll simplify at least one portion of your project.
As to the differences, I'm one of those "uneducated" people that doesn't believe in the whole crap of CD-Rs sounding different from originals and things like that (and digital audio cables sounding different as well) so I can't really help on that front.
As to the differences, I'm one of those "uneducated" people that doesn't believe in the whole crap of CD-Rs sounding different from originals and things like that (and digital audio cables sounding different as well) so I can't really help on that front.
Unfortunately I can't educate you on all of the technical details in building a music server, however there is a lot of information on the web for this. I had to learn it the hard way and I am still learning even now - I am by no means an expert in any sense.
I suggest googling the following items:
ASIO which provides a way to avoid using most of the windows audio drivers and dll's - reduces latency which is not important here, but also avoids the resampling issues with the windows mixer and volume controls which unfortunately degrade the quality of the pcm stream.
FLAC which is free lossless audio compression - an algorithm which saves about 25 - 40 % of the space required for an uncompressed wave file.
EAC exact audio copy which makes bit perfect copies of cds if configured properly and used with a good drive.
WinAmp/Foo2000/QCD which are media players which all support both ASIO and FLAC. QCD is perhaps the easiest to set up for this. Foo is promising.. I prefer QCD to the others.
AC-97 chipsets will usually resample to 48kHz in hardware and if you are using spdif output you want to avoid this as it degrades the quality of streams sampled at 44.1kHz. I had a lot of problems with this particular issue as the resampling prevented me from playing back properly HDCD encoded material. HDCD is now my litmus test for how much tinkering occurs to the pcm stream during playback - if the HDCD subcode is intact (i.e HDCD is recognized by the external decoder) then it is pretty likely that the stream is unmodified.
I don't recommend USB due to latency issues - I had a number of problems with poor playback via a USB stereo codec in winXP.
Via Envy24 codecs are known to support asio and not to resample when it is not desired. I am using the M-Audio 2496 with excellent results - I am also told that the Chaintek AV-710 (right model #??) is good for spdif output.
Check this out for a good car PC possibility:
http://www.mini-box.com/site/index.html
Hope this is helpful - do the research and don't accept anything at face value without checking it out!
Kevin
I suggest googling the following items:
ASIO which provides a way to avoid using most of the windows audio drivers and dll's - reduces latency which is not important here, but also avoids the resampling issues with the windows mixer and volume controls which unfortunately degrade the quality of the pcm stream.
FLAC which is free lossless audio compression - an algorithm which saves about 25 - 40 % of the space required for an uncompressed wave file.
EAC exact audio copy which makes bit perfect copies of cds if configured properly and used with a good drive.
WinAmp/Foo2000/QCD which are media players which all support both ASIO and FLAC. QCD is perhaps the easiest to set up for this. Foo is promising.. I prefer QCD to the others.
AC-97 chipsets will usually resample to 48kHz in hardware and if you are using spdif output you want to avoid this as it degrades the quality of streams sampled at 44.1kHz. I had a lot of problems with this particular issue as the resampling prevented me from playing back properly HDCD encoded material. HDCD is now my litmus test for how much tinkering occurs to the pcm stream during playback - if the HDCD subcode is intact (i.e HDCD is recognized by the external decoder) then it is pretty likely that the stream is unmodified.
I don't recommend USB due to latency issues - I had a number of problems with poor playback via a USB stereo codec in winXP.
Via Envy24 codecs are known to support asio and not to resample when it is not desired. I am using the M-Audio 2496 with excellent results - I am also told that the Chaintek AV-710 (right model #??) is good for spdif output.
Check this out for a good car PC possibility:
http://www.mini-box.com/site/index.html
Hope this is helpful - do the research and don't accept anything at face value without checking it out!
Kevin
cougarz said:
Here http://www.epanorama.net/documents/audio/spdif.html you find any kind of conversion schematics
In Italy you find the TORX173 from Distrelec online store.
Also ready-made commercial converters exist..
ciao
kevinkr said:
I can vouch for EAC. I just made a copy of an HDCD, placed this copy into my Rotel RCD-02 and guess what? -The copy was detected by the Rotel as also being HDCD. I'm using a TDK 880N DVD 8X burner.
Forgive me if this is 'nothing special'. -I just didn't expect it to work.
Cheers.
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