CPLAY and CMP
If you have not tried CPLAY, you must check it out.
http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/pcaudio/messages/3/31286.html
You are in for a great surprise. A very generous fellow named CICS has developed not only a great player, but has experimented with PC hardware and software. Effectively, you dedicate a PC to become a music server. All extraneous bits of Windows are stripped away until only a few threads remain. Every step yields improvement. A dramatic improvement over Foobar and the like. Every release of CPLAY is a treat because its like you just traded in your $2k transport for a $5k model.
CICS is running some pretty serious gear.. mostly Mark Levison. In his system he believes his PC transport competes with his ML390S directly into ML33H's. Others on the site run similar stuff and rave about the CPLAY front end.
Personally I use a Toshiba laptop running his stripped down winxp setup. No oversampling into a tda1543 NOS dac, all wave files no FLAC to cut down on CPU. Its sublime. Also short hi quality usb cable.
check it out! you will not be disappointed
If you have not tried CPLAY, you must check it out.
http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/pcaudio/messages/3/31286.html
You are in for a great surprise. A very generous fellow named CICS has developed not only a great player, but has experimented with PC hardware and software. Effectively, you dedicate a PC to become a music server. All extraneous bits of Windows are stripped away until only a few threads remain. Every step yields improvement. A dramatic improvement over Foobar and the like. Every release of CPLAY is a treat because its like you just traded in your $2k transport for a $5k model.
CICS is running some pretty serious gear.. mostly Mark Levison. In his system he believes his PC transport competes with his ML390S directly into ML33H's. Others on the site run similar stuff and rave about the CPLAY front end.
Personally I use a Toshiba laptop running his stripped down winxp setup. No oversampling into a tda1543 NOS dac, all wave files no FLAC to cut down on CPU. Its sublime. Also short hi quality usb cable.
check it out! you will not be disappointed
Yeah the XP I run has been stripped down to the bones with nlite. I took out the everything I could including networking and security. Of course I am running a multitrack with tons of FX and tracks. I might get into Linux later but right now I really don't need the headache of learning other OSes and support for production has never been that great. Maybe in the future though.
My usual setup is a Sound Blaster 24-bit with digital output to an old Philips digital amplifier.
Currently, I'm using the Intel HD output from my Dell 1700 laptop to a TPA3122D2 hybrid digital amplifier since I'm reworking the desktop. I'm actually surprised how good the sound quality is, but hybrid digital "smug" (just like the hybrid car "smug" rumor, except it actually seems to be true) might have something to do with it.
As for source material, I prefer FLAC, followed by OGG, then MP3. Most of my collection is in OGG since that's what Jamendo has available. I play them back using Amarok and I disable the "dmix" (not sure why it's there - it degrades quality and uses up CPU) in ALSA for the best quality.
Currently, I'm using the Intel HD output from my Dell 1700 laptop to a TPA3122D2 hybrid digital amplifier since I'm reworking the desktop. I'm actually surprised how good the sound quality is, but hybrid digital "smug" (just like the hybrid car "smug" rumor, except it actually seems to be true) might have something to do with it.
As for source material, I prefer FLAC, followed by OGG, then MP3. Most of my collection is in OGG since that's what Jamendo has available. I play them back using Amarok and I disable the "dmix" (not sure why it's there - it degrades quality and uses up CPU) in ALSA for the best quality.
The 1820M has a RIAA preamp built in with dedicated turntable inputs. It is designed to be the engine for a multitrack home studio. I run Cakewalk Sonar 7 software and the Emu1820M box to make a "Digital Audio Workstation". This requires the use of Windows, and 64 bit XP works best with Sonar, but won't do much else. The best compromize for a computer that leads a double life as a DAW and a general purpose computer is 64 bit Vista.
I am slowly collecting the parts to build a dedicated music and tv player machine. As with the big machine I am only buying items that are significantly marked down in price. OS is not chosen yet, but I will likely go with an Intel based system.
Mayby not the OS's , but the poorly written software (creative). My old audigy has more hardware control than most X-fi's .. thanks to these drivers - http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/faq.php .
Check the routing of an old audigy (EMU10k2)..
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Same goes for my C-media 8768 , the drivers suck! .. at least for SPDIF out to my DACS +amps... so I found these .. http://code.google.com/p/cmediadrivers/ tried them on both the turtle beach and auzentech (both 8768's) .. MUCH better sound , no bloat , SPDIF issues gone. It seems the "smart people" (open source DIY'ers) can code better drivers than the hardware manufacturers themselves.
Linux is nice (everything works and most audio drivers are open source anyway -made by enthusiasts) XP sucks "out of the box" , but with its guts ripped out - http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html , it can be more reliable and has a 100 times more software written for it.
OS
Seems a lot of people around here use foobar. On another forum I frequent, people didn't really like the foobar front end and didn't know how to customise it. So, I spent some time doing a little tweaking. See this thread for pictures/commentary. If you aren't familiar with tweaking the foobar frontend, take a look at this thread for a simple primer.
My PC (unless I'm really listening) is my primary source of music, but I am stuck with Windows Media Player, which is Ok for my current set up, and I have tried iTunes, and hated every moment. First, it asks if it can go around my PC and find some music. I say no, but it does it any way, then it attempts to organise the (few) tracks on my PC HD, as I have 36 --GIGA-- bytes of tracks and an 80Gb HD, so it's unfeasable to store them all on here, so I use the 500Gb network attached storage and play from there. When I'm going some serious listening, I use CDs in the all-in-one which is also connected to the PC. In all, CDs still sound a mile ahead of my PC, so I'm open to any ideas. I tried getting a soundcard, (prosound 5.1 thing, was going cheap), but the driver on there was really ugly to try and use, so I went back to soundMAX, which looks a lot more elegant, has more features I can actually use, and takes relatively little processing to start up. Even CDs in my PC don't sound as good as in the stereo, which means a lot of things could be wrong, cables for example (using gold-plated 3.5mm stereo leads atm).
Chris
PS - PC is around 4 years old, with a new graphics card, worth 1/4 of the computer's original cost.
Chris
PS - PC is around 4 years old, with a new graphics card, worth 1/4 of the computer's original cost.
95% of the time I will be listening through my MacBook straight into my amp, using the 3.5mm TRS output. Incidentally, my MacBook is on 95% of the time.
I now rip music using Max, to the highest quality VBR MP3 possible. Yes, MP3 is not perfect, but I find ripping it to the highest VBR setting does very very well.
Back in the PC days, I used Easy CDDA Extractor, to the same settings.
I tried ripping with iTunes once, never again! Even on 320kbps, the distortion in the upper ranges was unbearable.
This all runs into the RCA input on my Rotel RA-930BX and DIY Speakers, and sounds fantastic to me.
I now rip music using Max, to the highest quality VBR MP3 possible. Yes, MP3 is not perfect, but I find ripping it to the highest VBR setting does very very well.
Back in the PC days, I used Easy CDDA Extractor, to the same settings.
I tried ripping with iTunes once, never again! Even on 320kbps, the distortion in the upper ranges was unbearable.
This all runs into the RCA input on my Rotel RA-930BX and DIY Speakers, and sounds fantastic to me.
I use my computer not for main listening, but as my reference - I know what it sounds like and what music is supposed to sound like through it.
Drivers and sound card are everything. Once I heard this soundcard through the Linux ALSA system, the factory driver disk became a coffee coaster
My Classical collection is lossless, everything else in a V0 or 320CBR .mp3, or q9 .ogg.
Cheers!
Drivers and sound card are everything. Once I heard this soundcard through the Linux ALSA system, the factory driver disk became a coffee coaster
My Classical collection is lossless, everything else in a V0 or 320CBR .mp3, or q9 .ogg.
Cheers!
Theo404 said:
The first thing you have to do is locate where the clocks are on the sound card. The M Audio makes this easy as the board isnt heavily populated. The DAC that handles the main left and right channel is also on it's own in one corner.
I then found the datasheet for the DAC and looked at which pins the clocks were sent to. After that I soldered some wires to carry the clocks off the sound card.
The DAC I built myself. TI provides lots of info in their datasheets that makes this a breeze.
Re: CPLAY and CMP
I've tried this and to be honest found it disappointing. cPlay is a nice player but is very annoying in that it can only open cue and wave files. This wouldn't be a problem for me, but the fact you cannot queue up several wave files at once just makes it a pain to use.
I tried CICS too and didn't find it to be any different from using windows as standard. This isn't surprising as you can get bit perfect play back when in windows anyway, the only other part is jitter, which I've measured as really low in windows as it is.
Maybe the benefit of CICS is different depending on what hardware you're using?
wlowes said:
I've tried this and to be honest found it disappointing. cPlay is a nice player but is very annoying in that it can only open cue and wave files. This wouldn't be a problem for me, but the fact you cannot queue up several wave files at once just makes it a pain to use.
I tried CICS too and didn't find it to be any different from using windows as standard. This isn't surprising as you can get bit perfect play back when in windows anyway, the only other part is jitter, which I've measured as really low in windows as it is.
Maybe the benefit of CICS is different depending on what hardware you're using?
I'm in the lucky position that there are excellent drivers for my Marian Marc88 semipro soundcards -- absolutely no issues with these, both under W2K and XP.
I like foobar pretty much just because of its no-frills but still sufficently functional frontend and its excellent capabilties. Alas under XP it seems to have problems when there is much traffic on the bus (from/to HDD), then I get crackling noises. Media Player Classic (not to be confused with the MS software) solved this problem, and it allows me to use DX/AX plugins, that is for cross-convolution in my case (the foobar convolver can do only simple convolution). Since this is a thing that I need, I can live with the drawbacks (especially lack of buffered read-ahead across track boundaries, which causes short drops/pauses in between tracks -- be it WAV's etc or direct CD reads). Not big an issue mostly as I have most CD's ripped into one single file -- and listen to them in one piece as well).
- Klaus
I like foobar pretty much just because of its no-frills but still sufficently functional frontend and its excellent capabilties. Alas under XP it seems to have problems when there is much traffic on the bus (from/to HDD), then I get crackling noises. Media Player Classic (not to be confused with the MS software) solved this problem, and it allows me to use DX/AX plugins, that is for cross-convolution in my case (the foobar convolver can do only simple convolution). Since this is a thing that I need, I can live with the drawbacks (especially lack of buffered read-ahead across track boundaries, which causes short drops/pauses in between tracks -- be it WAV's etc or direct CD reads). Not big an issue mostly as I have most CD's ripped into one single file -- and listen to them in one piece as well).
- Klaus
Thanks,
I'v already tried that, it's not related to foobar itself (wrt preloading the files) it's a general problem whenever massive HDD access occurs for whatever reason. With any other software (including my DAW software, various editors etc) this problem doesn't seem to exist, it's only with foobar under XP (no prob under W2000).
I'm trying out cPlay atm as it gets rave reviews, but it won't play for reasons I haven't figure out yet (no error messages in the diag screen)... and unless I can use convolvers with it, it won't be ideal for me anway.
- Klaus
I'v already tried that, it's not related to foobar itself (wrt preloading the files) it's a general problem whenever massive HDD access occurs for whatever reason. With any other software (including my DAW software, various editors etc) this problem doesn't seem to exist, it's only with foobar under XP (no prob under W2000).
I'm trying out cPlay atm as it gets rave reviews, but it won't play for reasons I haven't figure out yet (no error messages in the diag screen)... and unless I can use convolvers with it, it won't be ideal for me anway.
- Klaus
Try changing PCI slots for your soundcard. Look in device manager and make sure SC has it's own IRQ. (see below)
I can get get any of my sound cards to crackle if they share with the IDE/SATA busses.
I say this with confidence as I have 2 NICS reading and writing to 6 hardrives 24/7 (torrents and kids on network) while using the server as a HTPC/main listening machine (16 avi's simultaniously ) .. never a crackle.
USB controllers can share with sound cards on most newer MB's because they make use of the faster bus.
A sound card/videocard share is deadly in windows (BSOD) , that is why PCI-E sound cards suck. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010290057%201102631935&name=PCI%20Express
If you read the "bad reviews" , it is all from gamers (3D graphics)
overloading the same bus that their fancy new sound card shares.
(crackle - pop)
OS
Attachments
The IRQ thing is great advice. Make sure you are not sharing IRQs with another device - sometimes this might require you to disable a usb port in the Device Manager.
But also sometimes it can be hardware driver related - a Network Interface Card can commonly hog a computers resources and cause DPC Latency to spike upr making your computer lose sync with the card. This seems to be a lot more common on Vista than XP.
But also sometimes it can be hardware driver related - a Network Interface Card can commonly hog a computers resources and cause DPC Latency to spike upr making your computer lose sync with the card. This seems to be a lot more common on Vista than XP.
Thanks again, guys.
Soundcard has its own exclusive IRQ. The board is rather old, an ASUS P4G8X, known to have issues under high PCI bus traffic.
As I said, the problem is only with foobar+XP, also it does not depend on which driver type I select (MME/DS/ASIO). Anyways it is all interim, as a dedicated audio PC (bare-bone linux) is planned, for just the same things that Theo404 does (active XO etc). For the moment I can live perfectly with MediaPlayer Classic for the reasons mentioned that won't allow use of foobar.
- Klaus
Soundcard has its own exclusive IRQ. The board is rather old, an ASUS P4G8X, known to have issues under high PCI bus traffic.
As I said, the problem is only with foobar+XP, also it does not depend on which driver type I select (MME/DS/ASIO). Anyways it is all interim, as a dedicated audio PC (bare-bone linux) is planned, for just the same things that Theo404 does (active XO etc). For the moment I can live perfectly with MediaPlayer Classic for the reasons mentioned that won't allow use of foobar.
- Klaus
I have used several diffrent soundcards incl. most of the sb series and also Asus Xonar cards and so on.
My software player is Foobar together with KernelStreaming plugin which makes the sound go direct to the hardware instead of thru windows 48kbit upsampling.
Kernelstreaming is great!
Now i use onboard sound which everybody seem to hate but i think that the ALC889 onboard is a great chip.
For amplifier i use an old Denon PMa-980r that has optical bias ,another great thing that i like.
Partymusic player is Spotify a great player but with bad quality.
Use Gigabyte mainboards with alc889 if you want a proper onboard audio chip.
Pelle
My software player is Foobar together with KernelStreaming plugin which makes the sound go direct to the hardware instead of thru windows 48kbit upsampling.
Kernelstreaming is great!
Now i use onboard sound which everybody seem to hate but i think that the ALC889 onboard is a great chip.
For amplifier i use an old Denon PMa-980r that has optical bias ,another great thing that i like.
Partymusic player is Spotify a great player but with bad quality.
Use Gigabyte mainboards with alc889 if you want a proper onboard audio chip.
Pelle
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