Computer based Hifi

[Key]

Whats the budget? What exactly do you want to do with it? Stereo only? Surround? Are you going to want to use a mic?

[justblair]

I am a huge fan of PC based Audio. However I would rather not use a PC Based sound card.

Currently I am using Windows 7 RTM for my media server. I have been using Media center since shortly after it was born. I noticed a big improvement from XP to Vista sound quality wise. But a bigger improvement was moving my sound output from an internal card (soundblaster extreme I think it was called) to a USB DAC.

The USB Dac I use is the DDDAC1543 MKII. Its a Non Oversampling design with expandable conversion modules. I am currently using 2 DAC modules which gives 24 DAC chips in parrallel. I am aiming to upgrade this soon once I have had a case made large enough to accomodate more modules.

In terms of media, I stick to WMA lossless for my files. Flac is well reckoned, but WMA lossless is easy to use with Media Center software. Its the living room machine, so ease of use (especially for the fiance) is important. I experimented with other codecs and indeed other players such as foobar, but I could not hear much if any difference. The other benefit is that TV and movies sound really good through the DDDAC.

Unfortunately I have some hardware issues at the moment, but this is just a good excuse for a hardware upgrade. Moving up to raid enabled setup with 6gb of Ram, 64bit dual core processor. Not required for Audio, but I was getting the odd bit of choppiness when recording TV and playing back TV at the same time.

[Tomcat14]

Originally Posted by Key

Whats the budget? What exactly do you want to do with it? Stereo only? Surround? Are you going to want to use a mic?

Budget on the sound card, for a good quality card, I'm will willing to spend up to $200.

The prospects, from what I've seen, are mostly dedicated to multi channel applications. Nice to have, but not a necessity for me.

The card I have is the SB0200 version of the WDM SB live card....of course it's the "value" version of the standard SB Live card. However, it is 24bit and is multi channel 5.1 I believe.

Currently the set up is;

Sony N110 two channel amp @ 85watts/each

ADC Sound Shaper Analyzer SS-315

B&W 602 S3 speakers.

It sounds surprisingly good for what it is. I'm looking into tube amplifiers to replace the N110 soon also.

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by Tomcat14

I have a question. Not sure if anyone is or was using a X-Fi Extreme Music card, but I wanted to upgrade to this card or something that will give me better sound quality than the Sound Blaster Live card....I know its a dinosaur but it has produced sufficient audio quality for standard PC audio. Now I'm creating a PC based audio system and would like another card which will give me detailed harmonic and precise recreation.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Look for an audio interface that is marketed to recording studios not PC gammers or home theater. Most of the interfaces sold to musicians and recording engineers sound good, they have to because these buyers have well educated ears. You will find features like balanced outputs and SPDIF but most importently _analog_ volume controls. SPDIF offers another option because then you can send the optical signal to an outbound D/A converter.

They make both USB and firewire. For such a simple task as outputing two channel audio USB is "good enough" Firewire works better for 8, 16 or 24 channel work.

These brands are worth looking at, all price about about $100
E-MU, Lexicon, PreSonus, Focusrite. With these prices there is no real reason to stay with the consumer/entertainment grade stuff.
Some resellers to look at: www.sweetwater.com, samash.com

You pay a bit extra because these all have good inputs, decent preamps ad so on. But maybe some day you will want to record something or if not measure a speaker with a measurement mic. Or maybe you want to rip from vinyl? Then you will need TWO input channels for stereo. The E-MU "0202" looks to be pretty good. http://www.emu.com/products/product....&product=15186

I have an Apple "Airport Express". It is a small little 3" box that will receive digital audio over wifi and send those signals out it built-in optical S/PDIF jack. Cost about $80. I put this into a conventional 74 WPC stereo amp and then to some vintage 1970's Infinity speakers.

[billyk]

Would you consider and external solution?
SPDIF or USB DACs are excellent and can be had for as little as $40.00 for the Bantam USB, AMB's excellent Gamma-1 with the soon to be released Gamma 2 for just shy of $175.00 and I am sure there are many others. I can personally vouch for the Bantam and Gamma 1. I built and use both, the bantam in my portable rig and the Gamma 1 in my desktop.

[SY]

OK, I'm puzzled. Assuming you're using a decent player program (I use Media Monkey) flat out, why would the OS have any effect on sound?

[justblair]

Originally Posted by SY

OK, I'm puzzled. Assuming you're using a decent player program (I use Media Monkey) flat out, why would the OS have any effect on sound?

There are a number of factors that come into play.

The most famous one is the software volume control Kmixer that older windows systems are infamous for. This has been mentioned already in this thread. To get round it a set of drivers named Asio (Asio4all) were developed, particulalry for musicians where the latency caused issues. Latency manifests itself as a delay between the music player and the end output. This was a bigger issue for musicians who were both playing back and recording at the same time. But the processing of the sound via kmixer had an undesirable effect on playback to those who's equipment was more than the usual tiny desktop speakers.

Another issue is that some of the drivers resample the music before outputing to the soundcard. The Live cards from Creative I seem to remember upsampled everything to 192khz regardless of the origional sample rate. Whereever sample rates are played with their is the posibility of degradation of the quality.

However more up to date MS OS's are not blighted by the Kmixer software and provided you keep DSP effects switched to off in the software things should not be too bad. I have played with so called audiophile software players, all I can say for sure is that I was not able to hear the difference on my setup.

[Tomcat14]

Originally Posted by billyk

Would you consider and external solution?
SPDIF or USB DACs are excellent and can be had for as little as $40.00 for the Bantam USB, AMB's excellent Gamma-1 with the soon to be released Gamma 2 for just shy of $175.00 and I am sure there are many others. I can personally vouch for the Bantam and Gamma 1. I built and use both, the bantam in my portable rig and the Gamma 1 in my desktop.

Thanks ChrisA, I will consider your set up.

billyk. Absolutely I would consider external solutions....frankly I haven't followed new audio applications in recent years. I slip away for sometime and now want to get back in the game and up to speed on all the new equipment.

Assembling my own setup, like you have, is something I would really enjoy doing.

[SY]

Blair, thanks; my computer is running Vista (which I don't like) and I have the mixer control always set full bore. The resulting player (using a PCI 24/192 sound card) has great measurements and sounds at least as good (if not better) than the modified HK CD player I was previously using.

I love the convenience, I must admit...

[billyk]

Tomcat14, check out AMB Labs Gamma1 I built the ++ version and am waiting patiently for the Gamma 2 upgrade board. Those that have prototypesd it really rave about it. I know I really like the sound of mine as it is and I really had a blast building it.

SY, I use Vista on both the machines I use for audio. I found that using ASIO4all and foobar resulted in the best sound for me. Purely subjective, but I did try several players and sound cards before settling on this combo. Best part is you can try it free, they are both available for download.
Some folks don't like the foobar interface, I like it because I just drag what I want to listen to from my music directory...