Hello all,
The wife is telling me to "clean out the basement of all those lightbulbs", so I started selling off some of my tubes on Ebay. (If your looking for some unusual tubes or specifics just email me and I'll see if I have it)
The common or "sought after stuff is either gone or I am keeping but I do have some weird stuff so it's worth a shot.
The real reason for the post is this.
I am a computer hobbyist and I am using the new found funds to build a new PC, (I am typing this on an old dual P3 server).
I am wondering who out there is using a PC as a common source for music. ie MP3's etc. on a regular basis and what type of sound cards are they using?
Any searchs I have done for "Audiophile Soundcard" (I almost think those two terms are mutually exclusive LOL) come up with an M-Audio 2496 or similar.
I am looking for ANY opinions on this and first hand experience etc.
So C'mon and post your .02 cents!!!
The wife is telling me to "clean out the basement of all those lightbulbs", so I started selling off some of my tubes on Ebay. (If your looking for some unusual tubes or specifics just email me and I'll see if I have it)
The common or "sought after stuff is either gone or I am keeping but I do have some weird stuff so it's worth a shot.
The real reason for the post is this.
I am a computer hobbyist and I am using the new found funds to build a new PC, (I am typing this on an old dual P3 server).
I am wondering who out there is using a PC as a common source for music. ie MP3's etc. on a regular basis and what type of sound cards are they using?
Any searchs I have done for "Audiophile Soundcard" (I almost think those two terms are mutually exclusive LOL) come up with an M-Audio 2496 or similar.
I am looking for ANY opinions on this and first hand experience etc.
So C'mon and post your .02 cents!!!
Check this thread out, among many others: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1923048#post1923048 
I wouldn't use MP3s, though, but that's just IMO. Use a good ripping program like Exact Audio Copy, and encode to a lossless format such as FLAC.
I wouldn't use MP3s, though, but that's just IMO. Use a good ripping program like Exact Audio Copy, and encode to a lossless format such as FLAC.
Geek,
The first set of auctions (some DHT's) all sold. I need to test, photograph etc the next set of stuff.
ebay seller id is mikethetubedude
Something your looking for?
Geek,
Since my brother in law is a "geetar" player I am saving the dozen or so "expendable" AX7's for a project we are going to work on together (a "clone" of a Marshall JCM800)
I have some expendable AT7's and maybe a couple AU7's I will look and see what's what tommorrow. I'll post up here what I find. I have been focusing on the old stuff. Sold a nice pair of 45's, an NOS 71A etc.
Since my brother in law is a "geetar" player I am saving the dozen or so "expendable" AX7's for a project we are going to work on together (a "clone" of a Marshall JCM800)
I have some expendable AT7's and maybe a couple AU7's I will look and see what's what tommorrow. I'll post up here what I find. I have been focusing on the old stuff. Sold a nice pair of 45's, an NOS 71A etc.
Glowbug - thanks for the link.
SY - I am leaning towards the 192
I have "googled" so much my head is spinning but I think I have come up with a "plan".
Sounds to me like the best route for me is something like this.
M-Audio (2496 or 192) or similar PCI interface
SDIF Digital to an "off board" DAC
then my 6SN7 preamp (in the works right now)
Then on to my amps.
Any suggestions as to BUDGET stand alone DAC's? or will the onboard DAC's of the M-Audio card suffice.
What I am getting at here is I need to keep the budget for this part of the system under $300. I can pick up a used card for under $100 or new for under $200. Leaving minimal funds for a DAC, my thoughts are that if I can't splurge on a high end DAC then maybe just save some $$ and stick with the onboard DAC of the card.
Glowbugs link lead me to see something I like to "digitize" my vinyl, there are USB phono preamps with RIAA Eq that would be nice.
SY - I am leaning towards the 192
I have "googled" so much my head is spinning but I think I have come up with a "plan".
Sounds to me like the best route for me is something like this.
M-Audio (2496 or 192) or similar PCI interface
SDIF Digital to an "off board" DAC
then my 6SN7 preamp (in the works right now)
Then on to my amps.
Any suggestions as to BUDGET stand alone DAC's? or will the onboard DAC's of the M-Audio card suffice.
What I am getting at here is I need to keep the budget for this part of the system under $300. I can pick up a used card for under $100 or new for under $200. Leaving minimal funds for a DAC, my thoughts are that if I can't splurge on a high end DAC then maybe just save some $$ and stick with the onboard DAC of the card.
Glowbugs link lead me to see something I like to "digitize" my vinyl, there are USB phono preamps with RIAA Eq that would be nice.
LOL,
Yeah, just sold an Arcturus Blue Globe 124. Got $12 for it. Only issue was it was one of a set of 4 (out of garage sale finds). My 5 year old daughter was picking them up and dropping them on the floor to "hear the pop daddy!"
So she had about $40 worth of "pops" all over my floor.
No worries then. Got more AT7's than I know what to do with and I rarely use AU7's
Cheers!
My first "audio PC" used an Audiophile 2496. It worked good. I used it for about 2 years in a Pentium 4 machine running XP. The sound quality is very good. I used it for all of the frequency response and FFT plots on my web site, and that PC is still used for that purpose. They can usually be found on Ebay for under $100.
I got a Delta 44 on Ebay for cheap (under $100) but I use it for the DAC/ADC in a ham radio SDR setup, so I have never ran music through it.
The next one was an EMU 1212. This one puts the converters on a seperate board runs at 24/192 but is 2 channels in and 2 out, and contains an onboard DSP for effects (reverb, EQ, etc). You must install their "patchmix DSP" software to use it. They are still being made and are now $149 list price. I put this one in the only complete PC that I have ever purchased. The decision to purchase a PC was a big mistake since it never worked right and the "lifetime warantee" was useless since their tech support rarely returned my calls.
I decided to build myself a new PC while the old one could still be started up by smacking it. I often do "home studio" type audio recording of my crummy guitar playing using Cakewalk Sonar which requires some computing power. My criteria was that all parts were going to be obtained as cheaply as possible (on sale, rebates, Ebay, etc). No hurry, in fact it took me about 3 months to collect all of the parts. I originally planned to reuse the EMU 1212. While collecting parts for the computer, I kept dropping low ball bids on high end sound cards on Ebay. I got real lucky and scored an EMU 1820M multichannel audio system for under $200. It went into the PC which turned into a mega quad core 64 bit Vista box with 8 gig of ram and 3 TB of HD space.
The 1820M has a card in the PC (same card as in the 1212) and an external box with all of the converters. The box is on the end of a 10 foot cable so there is no computer noise near it. There are 8 input channels and 8 output channels. The box has the phono stage built in so you just hook your turntable right up to it and didgtize your vinyl at 24/192. I have different inputs connected to different things, including the turntable, microphones (two mic inputs) and my guitar preamp. There are 8 line outputs. One stereo pair goes to a Simple SE, another pair goes to any amp that I want to test, another pair goes to the cheap amplified computer speakers (after all they are "600 watt speakers"), and one pair are summed to my subwoofer amp (a chip amp). I have several setups in patchmix DSP for playing music through various combinations of amps with or without the sub. The 1820M is no longer made but there is a similar product, the 1616 which has a list price of $349. The converters are in an external box, and the turntable inputs are still there.
Any of these are overkill if you intend to play MP3's since the MP3 format causes more sonic degradation than the AC97 codec built in to most motherboards! Some MP3's don't sound too bad, but some are just gross.
If you are serious about sound get Exact Audio Copy (a free download) and use it to rip CD's into a lossless audio compression format. Since hard drives have become cheap (1TB for $80), I don't even compress my music. I rip the CD's directly to .WAV files, so a CD will take 500 to 700 MB.
There have been dissertations on how to optimize a computer for audio playback. Windows or full Linux distributions have a lot of stuff going on in the background which can affect audio playback if there is any contention for computer resources. There are many theories on how to strip down tha operating system and even "underclock" the processor to reduce noise and allow for fanless operation. This may be fine for a dedicated audio playback system, but the computer then becomes pretty useless for anything else.
I have gone to the other extreme. I have far more processing power than needed (Vista needs a bunch) so that audio playback doesn't tax the system. It works great, and I can play back two channel music while recording HD TV to a different hard drive, and surfing the web. One trick that I discovered is to give the operating system its own hard drive, use a dedicated HD for your music, and another for TV, and yet another for your applications. This way you will not be thrashing any one drive. Keep them defragged, and use enough ram. I had 4 gigs, but Newegg had 4 gigs of ram for $50 with a $30 rebate, so I added 4 more. It didn't make much difference.
I am planning to make a dedicated AV computer with a tube amp to fill the space behind the new flat TV that used to be occupied by a 36 inch CRT. It will use the EMU1212, and as many components as I can salvage from the old PC that I bought. Parts collection is in progress.
If you already have an outboard DAC another option might one one of those new network audio appliances with an SPDIF out. The advantage is ability to keep noisy players and servers out of the sound room, and convenience features like a remote control.
My guess is that there is diminishing returns in increasing audio quality for more expensive PC hardware. Any decent sound card with an spid/f output and a NOS DAC should be superior than most absurdly expensive sound cards.
I do not like the sound quality of mp3s, but shn and flac are loss-less, and they do sound more than adequate - at least to me.
My main setup is:
mplayer --> USB sound device --> DAC --> Adcom preamp --> ST-70 --> Klipsch Heresy
I do not like the sound quality of mp3s, but shn and flac are loss-less, and they do sound more than adequate - at least to me.
My main setup is:
mplayer --> USB sound device --> DAC --> Adcom preamp --> ST-70 --> Klipsch Heresy
I only have PC-based sources.
My main listening rig has a 1212m running on WinXP with a highly stripped down installation, and a underclocked/undervolted AMD 4000+ CPU with a passive cooler in a quiet case. The 1212's analog card hes been outfitted with new opamps and Blackgates and is a sufficiently capable source, but I now connect a Buffalo DAC to the coaxial output of the 1212m. This gives me three or four analog outputs, while still having one optical output to play with, given my gradually expanding collection of speakers
All my CDs are ripped to wav - hard disk space is cheap nowadays.
I also have a monitoring setup for my music production experiments, that uses a modded Delta 66 and a paralleled LM3886 with Dynaudio BM6 passive monitors. Seems to work fine for that, though it does not have the resolution of the Buffalo or even the CS4398 in the 1212m.
I would think the way to go would be a card with a 'real' digital output like the Juli@ (the 1212m has some latency issues due to Patchmix) and an outboard DAC (hifi) or converter (studio).
My main listening rig has a 1212m running on WinXP with a highly stripped down installation, and a underclocked/undervolted AMD 4000+ CPU with a passive cooler in a quiet case. The 1212's analog card hes been outfitted with new opamps and Blackgates and is a sufficiently capable source, but I now connect a Buffalo DAC to the coaxial output of the 1212m. This gives me three or four analog outputs, while still having one optical output to play with, given my gradually expanding collection of speakers
All my CDs are ripped to wav - hard disk space is cheap nowadays.
I also have a monitoring setup for my music production experiments, that uses a modded Delta 66 and a paralleled LM3886 with Dynaudio BM6 passive monitors. Seems to work fine for that, though it does not have the resolution of the Buffalo or even the CS4398 in the 1212m.
I would think the way to go would be a card with a 'real' digital output like the Juli@ (the 1212m has some latency issues due to Patchmix) and an outboard DAC (hifi) or converter (studio).
I bought a cheap $15 soundcard that had an optical out...connected optical to my CS4398 based DAC and I am quite happy with the sound quality.
I try not to run too many things as it will cause the playback to "skip".
Rip everything to Apple itunes via loss-less.
I now have 450+ cds to rip....
I try not to run too many things as it will cause the playback to "skip".
Rip everything to Apple itunes via loss-less.
I now have 450+ cds to rip....
CC,
Would you have and 6T9, 6T10 or 1626 in your stock pile of Light Bulbs
Thanks Alan
You should look at audio interfaces that are marketed t musicians and recording engineers, not to the game and HT markets. Prices are still inside you budget. One that I like is the E-MU "0202". It does 192Ksps and 24 bits, has good D/A and A/D and has a good headphone amp. price is just under $150. Go to retailers like sweetwater.com or samash.com and look at brands like E-MU, PreSonus, Fousrite, Lexington. These are all good brands for studio electronics and they all make audio indetfaces in the sub $200 range.
I like this one:
http://www.emu.com/products/product.asp?category=610&subcategory=611&product=15186&nav=features
The 0202 has a good input section so you can use it to rip vinyl or make a high quality PC oscilloscope or frequency analyser or maybe do speaker measurements.
BTW: I'd by happy to take a dozen or two non-audiophile grade tubes off your hands, don't bother with eBay. Lots of people here can use them
I like this one:
http://www.emu.com/products/product.asp?category=610&subcategory=611&product=15186&nav=features
The 0202 has a good input section so you can use it to rip vinyl or make a high quality PC oscilloscope or frequency analyser or maybe do speaker measurements.
BTW: I'd by happy to take a dozen or two non-audiophile grade tubes off your hands, don't bother with eBay. Lots of people here can use them
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