Wav jukebox

[dhaen]

Hi,

I'm looking for a forum / group, or information source on uncompressed audio HDD projects. I seem to remember there was a Yahoo group last year, but I can't find it now.
Any ideas?
TIA

Cheers,

[Netlist]

http://forums.syntrillium.com/ used to be a pretty good forum.
Don't know if it still is.
Looking for something specific?

/Hugo

[dhaen]

Hugo,

Just wanted to compare my thoughts with what others have done.
I saw a Yamaha CDR-HD1300 CD Recorder with built-in Hard Drive the other day, and it got me thinking again about making a wav file jukebox. Being of the firm opinion that MP3's are "the work of the devil", I couldn't possibly accept a lossy compression system, and as I don't know of a lossless audio compression system - wav it is!

There seem to me to be 2 paths possible:
1. A "quiet" PC motherboard running a cut-down operating system.
2. A small microcontroller board with a specialist routine.
Since both will require a human interface, the task becomes "non-trivial".
Now if I can find someone who has compiled a kernel, or written some PIC source code, and is willing to divulge all - either for helping another human, or for reasonable money, I'll go there.

Cheers,

[Netlist]

If you really want to go DIY you might end here:
http://home.swipnet.se/tr/silence.html

with a nice Linux script.

Here is also a good (?) link to HDD recording:
http://www.bownie.com/guide/computer/bdc-RG-hdd.shtml
Didn't browse the whole site but there seems to be quite a lot of info.
http://www.google.be/search?hl=nl&ie...ecording&meta= could maybe reveal more.

/Hugo

[Variac]

I just upgraded one of my computers with a 120 Gig hard drive in anticipation of using it as a jukebox for uncompressed and MP3 files. (some stuff I only have on MP3) Also DVD and multichannel sound for home theater. I really think that there would be a lot of interest in a straightforward discussion of ways to do these things that work now!

For example the current Audigy card claims to play DVD-Audio
Of course the disadvantages of the Soundblaster cards has been mentioned before- not true 24/96

M Audio has some multichannel 24/96 audio cards/boxes which look like they might be great for audio/ HT. If we get some good info posted, maybe we can get a forum topic right here.

[Variac]

These guys have a lot of relevent (I think) software

http://www.audiotoolsdirect.com/

This is a good ripper- does Wav

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

[faustian bargin]

Super Trivia Memory to the rescue:

on p. 64 of June 2003 Wired mag is a blurb about Tony Robinson who developed SHN, a lossless compression format.

try googling his name, SHN, and a lady named Diana Hamilton who maintains a SHN resource site. also, apparently there're a couple communities somewhere called 'SHNapster' and 'Further'.

thought that might be of interest...

/andrew

[stokessd]

Originally posted by dhaen
Being of the firm opinion that MP3's are "the work of the devil", I couldn't possibly accept a lossy compression system...

Amen brother. I've been saying that for a long time. But MP3's encoded with very light losses can sound pretty good, much like the very high quality compression setting on a JPEG. But like a JPEG at any setting there are losses.

I am down to two media, vinyl and CD's. As cool as the ipod is, I'm never going to MP3's. If it would play uncompressed formats, I'd download 30 CD's into it and be golden.

Sheldon

[Variac]

I got my 120 gig Western Digital drive for $90
I guess a standard CD is 650 Meg max, I'll bet a lot are a lot less!
Then figure a lossless compression scheme- say 400 megs a disk
120,000 megs / 400 = 300 albums
I'd say that's a pretty good start, and no lossy compression!


here's a lossless compression program:
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/

[PMiczek]

CDs, at 44.1K samples per second and 16-bits are not exactly lossless either.

MP3 may well be the work of the dev... err, digital engineers, but the promise of MP3 and similar formats which are not constrained by redbook and other standards, is that they will eventually sound better than CDs, if left to evolve. Some which are not in the consumer arena yet, already do, and only need to escape the tyranny of 44.1KHz.

If you read the fine print on Andre Wiethoff's page (link above by Variac), you will see that a CD rip made on a good CDR drive can actually be better than a CD played in the average CDP.

Some personal opinions:

Very high bit rate MP3s made using EAC and LAME (or other combinations of ripper and encoder you may prefer, e.g. OGG Vorbis), are indistinguishable from the originals, but they have to be played on high-end gear, not the average sound card, or the average MP3 player with earbuds.

"Lossy" is a misnomer. The advantage of so-called lossy recording is that it can devote higher bandwidth where the artist or engineer thinks it can do the most good. Variable rate joint stereo suffers mostly from the limitations of the lousy source material the software is often presented with. Applied directly to good studio master recordings, it would blow away HDCD, and perhaps even SACD.

MP3 format suffers mostly during the playback. Most MP3 players sooner or later pipe audio through a sound card with questionable performance, or a lousy headphone output, or a poor digital output.

If any of the tweaks routinely used by members of this forum to improve CDPs and DACs were used on MP3 players such as the networked Turtle Beach Audiotron or others, MP3 would not have nearly the poor reputation it now has in audiophile circles.

The Audiotron, which is a recent personal favorite, is basically a box with one pcb with ethernet connection and Cirrus Maverick/ARM processor running Windows CE and a web server from flash, a Crystal DAC (a CS43L43 unfortunately, but still pretty good), toslink out easily upgradable to true S/PDIF), and a remote.

A disc-based portable player (ipod, Archos) only needs a decent line out or S/PDIF output to sound good.

PM