Here is the information on the spdif filter. The common mode filter to the best of my recollection is a Coilcraft DLF2000L and the transformer I used is a Newava S22160 which is also equivalent to the Schott 22160.
The transformer is available from Digikey.
The common mode choke is available directly from Coilcraft. They do direct sales only.
Wire the choke in series with the spdif output from the server, the transformer then connects to that. The input and output grounds should remain totally separate. I used bnc connectors on mine. Metal box should be connected to ground of dac side of network if used.
Provides about 30dB of common mode attenuation, and breaks potential ground loops between the server and hifi system.
Kevin
The transformer is available from Digikey.
The common mode choke is available directly from Coilcraft. They do direct sales only.
Wire the choke in series with the spdif output from the server, the transformer then connects to that. The input and output grounds should remain totally separate. I used bnc connectors on mine. Metal box should be connected to ground of dac side of network if used.
Provides about 30dB of common mode attenuation, and breaks potential ground loops between the server and hifi system.
Kevin
Here is the latest update..
I finally started working on the PVR end of things. I purchased and downloaded the latest version of SageTV and installed it. Wired up a splitter to get signal from my cable connection to both the TV and the Hauppage 250 tuner card in my server.
This version of SageTV supports mpeg2, 4 and DIVX. It also has a good program guide built in as well. It's fairly easy to use, but sometimes navigating the menus can be a little confusing.
The results are very good - I was able to record tv programs immediately upon installing the software and connecting the cable.
The picture quality is far better than the cheap VCR it is replacing.
The video is output via s-video from the onboard GForce 2 video codec, and I am using the analog audio output from the 2496 to drive the HTS inputs.
I have configured the 2496 to output all audio from SageTV as analog audio and everything else as spdif to the hifi. I can actually run the two independently if I want to without any cross-talk between the various sets of outputs.
The server will play music and record or deliver video to the TV simultaneously.
The picture quality of recorded tv programs or live tv via the hauppage card & SageTV is excellent, basically indistinguishable from the internal tuners in my older Sony V series set. (Very late 1990's)
Learning to deal with two monitors and the plethora of configuration options (issues LOL) with Nvidia Nview is daunting.
It seems that it can almost do what I want it too, but am not quite there yet, particularly in regards to what happens to the secondary monitor when in full screen mode for video. There are a number of options for cloning the desktop between two monitors, none of which seems ideal. I am going to hack around with this for a while longer and see what happens, otherwise it may be that video card may be called for.
One thing I can say is SDTV (NTSC) is no match at all for my cheap Dell LCD monitor when it comes to resolution. It looks really coarse by comparison and for anything other than video it is really hard to deal with. I am starting to get a hankering for HDTV..
It's all working, and basically noting the minor issues above I couldn't be happier with my "risky solution" Spent more than originally planned, but still cheaper overall than even a decent current entry level cd transport and it does a great deal more.
Kevin
I finally started working on the PVR end of things. I purchased and downloaded the latest version of SageTV and installed it. Wired up a splitter to get signal from my cable connection to both the TV and the Hauppage 250 tuner card in my server.
This version of SageTV supports mpeg2, 4 and DIVX. It also has a good program guide built in as well. It's fairly easy to use, but sometimes navigating the menus can be a little confusing.
The results are very good - I was able to record tv programs immediately upon installing the software and connecting the cable.
The picture quality is far better than the cheap VCR it is replacing.
The video is output via s-video from the onboard GForce 2 video codec, and I am using the analog audio output from the 2496 to drive the HTS inputs.
I have configured the 2496 to output all audio from SageTV as analog audio and everything else as spdif to the hifi. I can actually run the two independently if I want to without any cross-talk between the various sets of outputs.
The server will play music and record or deliver video to the TV simultaneously.
The picture quality of recorded tv programs or live tv via the hauppage card & SageTV is excellent, basically indistinguishable from the internal tuners in my older Sony V series set. (Very late 1990's)
Learning to deal with two monitors and the plethora of configuration options (issues LOL) with Nvidia Nview is daunting.
It seems that it can almost do what I want it too, but am not quite there yet, particularly in regards to what happens to the secondary monitor when in full screen mode for video. There are a number of options for cloning the desktop between two monitors, none of which seems ideal. I am going to hack around with this for a while longer and see what happens, otherwise it may be that video card may be called for.
One thing I can say is SDTV (NTSC) is no match at all for my cheap Dell LCD monitor when it comes to resolution. It looks really coarse by comparison and for anything other than video it is really hard to deal with. I am starting to get a hankering for HDTV..
It's all working, and basically noting the minor issues above I couldn't be happier with my "risky solution"
Spent more than originally planned, but still cheaper overall than even a decent current entry level cd transport and it does a great deal more.Kevin
Here's another update for those of you still reading this thread.
I have acquired a DVi interface for the onboard video so that when I eventually want to upgrade to some form of HDTV I have the means to do so.
I totally filled up the hard drive the other day! Oops, hence the need for the larger drive. I had space for about 25 hours of programming and I sometimes go several weeks without watching much if any TV so I decided to add more space.
I am going to add a 250GB drive to the server shortly as I have discovered that the 80GB drive is really too small. I recommend to anyone building one of these that they start with the largest QUIET hard drive they can afford. The difference in cost between the 80GB and the 250GB I am now forced to add is about $50.00!
I use SageTV's "Great" quality settings which result in about 2GB of space used per hour of recording. The "Best" is about 3.3GB/HR and frankly with the quality of signal I get over cable there is not much reason to use the higher conversion rate.
I will ask my fiancee for the hauppauge remote control kit for Christmas as navigating through SageTV without it is sometimes frustrating. I also believe that without reconfiguring SageTV there are some features that are not accessible.
Incidentally when playing back recorded video using SageTV there are some obvious features missing relative to the typical VCR. For example you cannot fast forward or reverse, the control keys allow you to skip ahead or back by a defined amount of time which you can modify in configuration. I find the default settings quite useful for getting through commercials quickly, but if you want to watch a movie or show from say halfway it can take a long time to get there.
Some recommend using another mpeg viewer to get this sort of functionality.
Video quality is quite good and I am rarely aware of the fact that I am watching canned tv, which is a tribute to the good performance of the tuner card and the relatively high stream rate I use. Note that there are visible artifacts from time to time and extremely complex scenes can result in a loss of smoothness of motion if lower rates are used, and they are occasionally visible at 2GB/HR.
On the audio side of things I have not made any progress to resolving the problem I have with abrupt transitions between one song and the next when I rip a cd and convert it. I have now noticed this when listening to songs I have ripped to my iPod, so it seems that most ripping programs don't handle the fade properly between tracks - this may just be a matter of configuration.
I figure it is probably time to check for software upgrades to many of the programs I currently use.
On another topic, when the server is running it has full access to the internet over my wireless network which means that the server receives periodic updates from Microsoft, Grisoft, and Macromedia (sodding DRM software for SageTV). The server sometimes will reboot after certain updates are received which means that SageTV needs to run as a service to assure it restarts if the machine reboots for some reason.
I currently don't allow the server to restart after power failures, but
this is supported in the mobo bios and I will probably enable it in the future - the reason I haven't so far is that I don't want it to start up if it wasn't running in the first place. Power failures in my town are pretty rare actually.
The server is stable and has not required any software maintenance, trouble shooting or otherwise, it just works with pretty minimal fuss.
Areas I need to focus on are the audio ripping issue, and better user interfaces for some of the media functionality. Perhaps XP ME would have been a slightly better choice as an OS..
For those of you into linux mythtv and mythknoppix may be of interest.
More later..
I have acquired a DVi interface for the onboard video so that when I eventually want to upgrade to some form of HDTV I have the means to do so.
I totally filled up the hard drive the other day! Oops, hence the need for the larger drive. I had space for about 25 hours of programming and I sometimes go several weeks without watching much if any TV so I decided to add more space.
I am going to add a 250GB drive to the server shortly as I have discovered that the 80GB drive is really too small. I recommend to anyone building one of these that they start with the largest QUIET hard drive they can afford. The difference in cost between the 80GB and the 250GB I am now forced to add is about $50.00!
I use SageTV's "Great" quality settings which result in about 2GB of space used per hour of recording. The "Best" is about 3.3GB/HR and frankly with the quality of signal I get over cable there is not much reason to use the higher conversion rate.
I will ask my fiancee for the hauppauge remote control kit for Christmas as navigating through SageTV without it is sometimes frustrating. I also believe that without reconfiguring SageTV there are some features that are not accessible.
Incidentally when playing back recorded video using SageTV there are some obvious features missing relative to the typical VCR. For example you cannot fast forward or reverse, the control keys allow you to skip ahead or back by a defined amount of time which you can modify in configuration. I find the default settings quite useful for getting through commercials quickly, but if you want to watch a movie or show from say halfway it can take a long time to get there.
Some recommend using another mpeg viewer to get this sort of functionality.
Video quality is quite good and I am rarely aware of the fact that I am watching canned tv, which is a tribute to the good performance of the tuner card and the relatively high stream rate I use. Note that there are visible artifacts from time to time and extremely complex scenes can result in a loss of smoothness of motion if lower rates are used, and they are occasionally visible at 2GB/HR.
On the audio side of things I have not made any progress to resolving the problem I have with abrupt transitions between one song and the next when I rip a cd and convert it. I have now noticed this when listening to songs I have ripped to my iPod, so it seems that most ripping programs don't handle the fade properly between tracks - this may just be a matter of configuration.
I figure it is probably time to check for software upgrades to many of the programs I currently use.
On another topic, when the server is running it has full access to the internet over my wireless network which means that the server receives periodic updates from Microsoft, Grisoft, and Macromedia (sodding DRM software for SageTV). The server sometimes will reboot after certain updates are received which means that SageTV needs to run as a service to assure it restarts if the machine reboots for some reason.
I currently don't allow the server to restart after power failures, but
this is supported in the mobo bios and I will probably enable it in the future - the reason I haven't so far is that I don't want it to start up if it wasn't running in the first place. Power failures in my town are pretty rare actually.
The server is stable and has not required any software maintenance, trouble shooting or otherwise, it just works with pretty minimal fuss.
Areas I need to focus on are the audio ripping issue, and better user interfaces for some of the media functionality. Perhaps XP ME would have been a slightly better choice as an OS..
For those of you into linux mythtv and mythknoppix may be of interest.
More later..
Hi kevinkr, I am very interesting in your post here, look like it is the most current highend digital source frontend here. As you are using the m audio board 24/96, why not go for 24/192 as far as for audio, and to my understand this board already have DAC build in then why do you still used you external DAC? can I connected direct from audio board out to hi end preamp input for audio?. Thanks in advance for all the infor, iam going to build me one for sure, keep me update please.
Hi Caoauto,
Welcome to the land of the digital media server.
Here's a couple of quick answers to your questions.
The typical PC has very noisy power supplies and a lot of emi inside the case, it is very difficult to provide effective shielding for analog signal processing circuits in such an environment, although not impossible, it is very expensive.
The quality of the onboard components on the m-audio 2496 or even 24192 is not comparable to the quality of my outboard dac, there is about a 25 times difference in cost between it and the 2496. It blows the analog outputs of the 2496 out of the water on 16 bit and provides 20 bit HDCD playback independent of microsoft's flaky codecs, directx 9 and mediaplayer as well. (The only other way to play hdcds in native resolution on a pc other than the approach I have taken.)
In addition there are often issues with ground loops between various pieces of equipment and keeping stuff transformer isolated in the digital domain eliminates this as a concern.
Most pro/prosumer gear these days uses outboard dacs and adcs in order to have the quietest possible electrical environment in the presence of low level analog signals.
If you are using a high end pre-amplifier I would recommend using something like the benchmark dac between the digital out of your server and the input of the pre-amplifier - hopefully you will be a lot happier with the results.
Note that chaintec makes at least one card with the via envy chipset which supports direct digital out without resampling. I think it is the avs-710, see elsewhere in thread for references if this is wrong. Watch out for the many other AC-97 based cards, most if not all of them resample to 48kHz in hardware and this cannot be defeated - this is no good for high quality playback of 44.1kHz media like cds.
Good Luck!
Kevin
Welcome to the land of the digital media server.
Here's a couple of quick answers to your questions.
The typical PC has very noisy power supplies and a lot of emi inside the case, it is very difficult to provide effective shielding for analog signal processing circuits in such an environment, although not impossible, it is very expensive.
The quality of the onboard components on the m-audio 2496 or even 24192 is not comparable to the quality of my outboard dac, there is about a 25 times difference in cost between it and the 2496. It blows the analog outputs of the 2496 out of the water on 16 bit and provides 20 bit HDCD playback independent of microsoft's flaky codecs, directx 9 and mediaplayer as well. (The only other way to play hdcds in native resolution on a pc other than the approach I have taken.)
In addition there are often issues with ground loops between various pieces of equipment and keeping stuff transformer isolated in the digital domain eliminates this as a concern.
Most pro/prosumer gear these days uses outboard dacs and adcs in order to have the quietest possible electrical environment in the presence of low level analog signals.
If you are using a high end pre-amplifier I would recommend using something like the benchmark dac between the digital out of your server and the input of the pre-amplifier - hopefully you will be a lot happier with the results.
Note that chaintec makes at least one card with the via envy chipset which supports direct digital out without resampling. I think it is the avs-710, see elsewhere in thread for references if this is wrong. Watch out for the many other AC-97 based cards, most if not all of them resample to 48kHz in hardware and this cannot be defeated - this is no good for high quality playback of 44.1kHz media like cds.
Good Luck!
Kevin
Hi Kevinkr, Thanks for very fast response. The benchmark dac you are talking about is very nice unit it does have balanced output and it does 24/192khz too. I was thinking about the Bel canto which is local build where I live but it does not have balanced out and the price a bid higher too, now I find better dac that I want and better price too, but some time higher price doesn't mean better product, just wonder do you ever compare those dacs above?
Anyway, I read a few thread in here that alot people talking about alot companies out there try to do external dac and seperate transport just so they can make more money, which is now most audiophile go with one box cd player already build good dac inside instead, what would you think about that?, that is why I try to build this sever to stay away from update dac and transport more than the maket can up to date, like the red book cd player then hdcd 24/96 then sacd 24/192 then update faster clock on the transport and then transformer... you name it. With your ideal of this server that we can update the computer with software that make cheaper and easier hopfully down the road, because technology nerver stop growing I guess, and digital media server still the best ideal to do.
All I want now is try to get better audio sound, so I do need outboard dac. Again, thanks for your time.
Anyway, I read a few thread in here that alot people talking about alot companies out there try to do external dac and seperate transport just so they can make more money, which is now most audiophile go with one box cd player already build good dac inside instead, what would you think about that?, that is why I try to build this sever to stay away from update dac and transport more than the maket can up to date, like the red book cd player then hdcd 24/96 then sacd 24/192 then update faster clock on the transport and then transformer... you name it. With your ideal of this server that we can update the computer with software that make cheaper and easier hopfully down the road, because technology nerver stop growing I guess, and digital media server still the best ideal to do.
All I want now is try to get better audio sound, so I do need outboard dac. Again, thanks for your time.
I have made a number of upgrades and changes to the server and thought I would pass them along.
I added a second HD, this one much larger at 250GB. It's a Seagate with an 8mb cache, and like the other runs at 7200rpm. I put the swap file on this drive which runs on the second drive chain along with the dvd drive. I manually selected the position of each device on this chain being old fashioned.
This thing is getting too tight, I had a real problem fitting the second drive in despite provisions in the drive carrier. It barely clears the processor heatsink, and on the other side it physically hits the cards in the pci buss slots. I recommend notebook drives if you must add another drive.
On reflection I should have bought a much larger drive to start with, the second drive is not as well decoupled from the drive carrier, and the server is now at least 6dB noisier than before, although still perfectly acceptable at even very low listening levels.
I have updated EAC to 93b3 beta (the latest) and just added accurate rip (see their web site) this utility measures the drive read offsets and apparently corrects for it. It also has an online database that it uses to compare crc checksums after ripping and alerts you to whether or not the rip was accurate or not. It seems to work rather well. Gaps at the start/end of files are less noticeable and ripping speeds are now roughly 3 times higher than before at as high as 30X. I have not identified the exact reason for the huge improvement in performance, but I'll take it.. (It could even be due to the changes in swap file operation for example.)
I ripped and converted 6 cd's to flac tonight in the same length of time it previously took to do 2 or 3 disks.
Upgrade to SageTV 4 and have recorded several hundred hours of tv without problems.
Power consumption appears to be excessive, my better half noticed that the thing ate about 180kW/H over the last month. Electricity is pretty expensive here, so needless to say I have reconfigured the server so that it goes into standby after about 10 minutes of inactivity. The SageTV service is the only internal service configured to wake the server up and once it finishes recording a program the machine goes back to sleep. Power failures will not prevent it from recording providing the power comes back on in time.. Applications that use the hard drives continuously such as QCD will over ride the power saving mode so it doesn't go into standby while I am listening to music for example.
Also in 4 months of constant use there has not been a single crash due to WinXP. So it's reliable. It has been running continuously since the beginning of october. It hasn't even needed a reboot except when I had some problems with power management, gotta avoid suspend mode, it's the kiss of death.. SageTV is designed to work in suspend, but the server doesn't wake up for anything else, requiring a reboot, so I have no idea whether it actually works or not.
I added a second HD, this one much larger at 250GB. It's a Seagate with an 8mb cache, and like the other runs at 7200rpm. I put the swap file on this drive which runs on the second drive chain along with the dvd drive. I manually selected the position of each device on this chain being old fashioned.
This thing is getting too tight, I had a real problem fitting the second drive in despite provisions in the drive carrier. It barely clears the processor heatsink, and on the other side it physically hits the cards in the pci buss slots. I recommend notebook drives if you must add another drive.
On reflection I should have bought a much larger drive to start with, the second drive is not as well decoupled from the drive carrier, and the server is now at least 6dB noisier than before, although still perfectly acceptable at even very low listening levels.
I have updated EAC to 93b3 beta (the latest) and just added accurate rip (see their web site) this utility measures the drive read offsets and apparently corrects for it. It also has an online database that it uses to compare crc checksums after ripping and alerts you to whether or not the rip was accurate or not. It seems to work rather well. Gaps at the start/end of files are less noticeable and ripping speeds are now roughly 3 times higher than before at as high as 30X. I have not identified the exact reason for the huge improvement in performance, but I'll take it..
(It could even be due to the changes in swap file operation for example.)I ripped and converted 6 cd's to flac tonight in the same length of time it previously took to do 2 or 3 disks.
Upgrade to SageTV 4 and have recorded several hundred hours of tv without problems.
Power consumption appears to be excessive, my better half noticed that the thing ate about 180kW/H over the last month. Electricity is pretty expensive here, so needless to say I have reconfigured the server so that it goes into standby after about 10 minutes of inactivity. The SageTV service is the only internal service configured to wake the server up and once it finishes recording a program the machine goes back to sleep. Power failures will not prevent it from recording providing the power comes back on in time.. Applications that use the hard drives continuously such as QCD will over ride the power saving mode so it doesn't go into standby while I am listening to music for example.
Also in 4 months of constant use there has not been a single crash due to WinXP. So it's reliable. It has been running continuously since the beginning of october. It hasn't even needed a reboot except when I had some problems with power management, gotta avoid suspend mode, it's the kiss of death..
SageTV is designed to work in suspend, but the server doesn't wake up for anything else, requiring a reboot, so I have no idea whether it actually works or not.I'm running Foobar with kernel streaming to a USB/SPDIF convertor, feeding my DEQX digital crossover/preamp unit and haven't touched my CD player anymore for the last 1,5 years. Why ? because this setup simply sounds better, it's much more convenient, no more CD changing and no more terrible CD boxes to handle, very quick and easy searching through your music, and it can play for years without changing one disk. I haven't missed my CD's a single moment.
After trying about any audio player software out there I'm still sticking to Foobar for two reasons. One, it's simply the best sounding player (with the right settings and plugins) and two, it's about the most flexible player you could ever want. The basic install version is very very basic but with a little patience in discovering who it all works and with the right plug=ins you can turn it into the most powerfull, flexible, and easy to work with audio player out there that will play any audio format there is. Once you have experienced this you will forget about I-tunes, WMP etc, they sound very flat and dull in compare. And a bit of a sorry word for all the Mac owners out there (who always think that a MAC is performing better in everything) I have tried to get the same sound out of my mac (yes I have on too) but unfortunatly it didn't work out whatever I tried, the PC always sounded better. Problem with the mac is that the operating system doesn't let you fool around with how to playback audio, it can only be done in one way (at least not without adding expensive third party external hardware), the software writers way, and they didn't write it with high end audio playback as top priority, so I stuck to my PC.
At first I was also very concerned about all this power supply and rail noise inside the PC, tried several solutions like ERS still sheets (very expensive), mu-metal, star grounding, cable shielding etc to get rid of it but thusfar no audible difference so I stopped further experiments on that. Seems like it either isn't such a problem at all or it's much harder to get rid of then I think.
After trying about any audio player software out there I'm still sticking to Foobar for two reasons. One, it's simply the best sounding player (with the right settings and plugins) and two, it's about the most flexible player you could ever want. The basic install version is very very basic but with a little patience in discovering who it all works and with the right plug=ins you can turn it into the most powerfull, flexible, and easy to work with audio player out there that will play any audio format there is. Once you have experienced this you will forget about I-tunes, WMP etc, they sound very flat and dull in compare. And a bit of a sorry word for all the Mac owners out there (who always think that a MAC is performing better in everything) I have tried to get the same sound out of my mac (yes I have on too) but unfortunatly it didn't work out whatever I tried, the PC always sounded better. Problem with the mac is that the operating system doesn't let you fool around with how to playback audio, it can only be done in one way (at least not without adding expensive third party external hardware), the software writers way, and they didn't write it with high end audio playback as top priority, so I stuck to my PC.
At first I was also very concerned about all this power supply and rail noise inside the PC, tried several solutions like ERS still sheets (very expensive), mu-metal, star grounding, cable shielding etc to get rid of it but thusfar no audible difference so I stopped further experiments on that. Seems like it either isn't such a problem at all or it's much harder to get rid of then I think.
I'm quite familiar with Foobar2000 too, it was one of several media players I evaluated. I ended up going with QCD for several reasons, but the most important to me was because I was not able to get proper playback of 20 bit HDCD encoded material through my external dac with Foobar 2000. (I have a lot of 20 bit HDCD encoded disks and a PS Audio Ultralink II dac which supports 20 bit HDCD playback.) It seems like either the flac decoder or the version of asio compatible with foobar does not handle the bitstream correctly - and yes the dsp based volume control was disabled. I also tried direct kernal streaming and this also corrupted hdcd encoded material. Possibly there is some other aspect of the player configuration that accounts for this behavior, consequently it also undermined my confidence in the integrity of the bitstream being output.
Winamp with the proper plug ins (asio) also supports hdcd successfully for those who want to use that instead.
One of the things I do like about foobar is the fact that when you open a new playlist it gets its own tab which is convenient for changing from one playlist to another quickly. It also seems robust.
I use the coaxial spif output coupled through a high frequency common mode choke and a newava spdif transformer to eliminate possible ground loops between the hi-fi system and pc and to reduce noise as well. Works like a charm, and performs comparably or better in all respects to the lambda drive it was built to replace.
For HTS use I use the analog audio outputs on the 2496 card, and amazingly don't have any noise problems.
edit: fix typos
Winamp with the proper plug ins (asio) also supports hdcd successfully for those who want to use that instead.
One of the things I do like about foobar is the fact that when you open a new playlist it gets its own tab which is convenient for changing from one playlist to another quickly. It also seems robust.
I use the coaxial spif output coupled through a high frequency common mode choke and a newava spdif transformer to eliminate possible ground loops between the hi-fi system and pc and to reduce noise as well. Works like a charm, and performs comparably or better in all respects to the lambda drive it was built to replace.
For HTS use I use the analog audio outputs on the 2496 card, and amazingly don't have any noise problems.
edit: fix typos
While ripping some programs strip the 'silence' from the audio tracks which may cause abrupt transitions for a lot of players. Burning software usually compensates for this and adds the gaps again.
I would suggest you also try a separate video card. Integrated video puts a lot of stress on the memory and PCI busses, it's a big bandwidth hog. whereas you may not need the power, the card performance is definitely helped along by lower stress specially on the PCI bus. Please don't go for a top-end card, as this will aggravate the issue. Just a normal entry-level card with stable drivers, like an FX5200 or so. This will help the whole system speed as well and make a lot of things smoother.
I'm using a Delta 66 with balanced output and the analog section is quite good, better than my NAD CDP but by studio standards, it's an entry level card or at best one step up. It's not hard to imagine that a purpose-built DAC will outstrip it, the closest you get to really high quality D/A is the Lynx cards, which are supposed to be the best D/A in the business, and cost quite a bit of money.
I would suggest you also try a separate video card. Integrated video puts a lot of stress on the memory and PCI busses, it's a big bandwidth hog. whereas you may not need the power, the card performance is definitely helped along by lower stress specially on the PCI bus. Please don't go for a top-end card, as this will aggravate the issue. Just a normal entry-level card with stable drivers, like an FX5200 or so. This will help the whole system speed as well and make a lot of things smoother.
I'm using a Delta 66 with balanced output and the analog section is quite good, better than my NAD CDP but by studio standards, it's an entry level card or at best one step up. It's not hard to imagine that a purpose-built DAC will outstrip it, the closest you get to really high quality D/A is the Lynx cards, which are supposed to be the best D/A in the business, and cost quite a bit of money.
Hi,
I was having some problems with ripping and gaps between songs, but it proved to be a software configuration issue and is now solved. So no more unwanted gaps and songs dying into silence unexpectedly at the end of the track.
I actually thought about ditching the integrated video, but I haven't really got the space to add another card due to other stuff in the case, and I am at the thermal limit - and as I indicated overall performance is very good. Video performance is more than adequate (actually very good) for sdtv via s-video i/o and I also have dti outputs for HDTV when I am ready to make the switch.
I can rip, compress to flac and play audio simultaneously without any problems, compression is just a little slower... or listen to audio and record video simultaneously without issues.
I downloaded and installed iTunes 6 on the server because I discovered a few days ago that itunes now offers almost the entire 2 seasons of Battle Star Galactica as downloads at $1.99 an episode. I have downloaded 4 that I missed last season, and will download more. I thought the video quality would be lousy, but it is about as good as sdtv gets, no noise from analog broadcast technology, and no commercials - it is sobering to realize that each episode that runs an hour on tv is about 44 minutes on iTunes. Quite surprising, and with broadband (even dsl) you can download several episodes per hour. I expect Apple will introduce a larger screen video-centric iPod shortly, and I hope the service is a success.
I ran cat5 cable from the basement (where my lab and listening space are) up to the attic, and plan to run it down into the computer room to provide a more robust connection than the long span wireless I currently use. It will still be wireless, but only 15' away from the server at worst. Reliability will be much better.
edit: fix typo
I was having some problems with ripping and gaps between songs, but it proved to be a software configuration issue and is now solved. So no more unwanted gaps and songs dying into silence unexpectedly at the end of the track.
I actually thought about ditching the integrated video, but I haven't really got the space to add another card due to other stuff in the case, and I am at the thermal limit - and as I indicated overall performance is very good. Video performance is more than adequate (actually very good) for sdtv via s-video i/o and I also have dti outputs for HDTV when I am ready to make the switch.
I can rip, compress to flac and play audio simultaneously without any problems, compression is just a little slower... or listen to audio and record video simultaneously without issues.
I downloaded and installed iTunes 6 on the server because I discovered a few days ago that itunes now offers almost the entire 2 seasons of Battle Star Galactica as downloads at $1.99 an episode. I have downloaded 4 that I missed last season, and will download more. I thought the video quality would be lousy, but it is about as good as sdtv gets, no noise from analog broadcast technology, and no commercials - it is sobering to realize that each episode that runs an hour on tv is about 44 minutes on iTunes.
Quite surprising, and with broadband (even dsl) you can download several episodes per hour. I expect Apple will introduce a larger screen video-centric iPod shortly, and I hope the service is a success.I ran cat5 cable from the basement (where my lab and listening space are) up to the attic, and plan to run it down into the computer room to provide a more robust connection than the long span wireless I currently use. It will still be wireless, but only 15' away from the server at worst. Reliability will be much better.
edit: fix typo
If you got it working fine then that's great. Maybe something to remember as the first upgrade later.As I said it's not an immediate quality or performance issue that you're facing that I suggest it for, and the difference is truly realised once you put one in.
In any recording setup or studio (as an example of audio use in a PC beyond games and Windows warning tones) integrated video is truly the biggest single horror, and it's something the breed (including me) shun, almost like a phobia.
Unfortunately your SQ is not about to be improved by adding it. So in the light of your current system and needs, integrated video is a good compromise.
Please also remember that a chip with integrated video heats up much more than a northbridge only, so actually putting in a low-power graphic card can help rather than hurt the thermal profile of your PC, and at the very least spread it over a larger area than that teeny little spot where the CPU and northbridge chip are located.
I agree in terms of integrating functions on the mobo in general, I much prefer having separate cards for each function, however this machine is extremely compact, and I was forced to choose a mobo with a high degree of integration partly for this reason.
My desk top has lots of pci cards in it and the video is agp4, however despite this the mobo in the media server just runs circles around it, and the quality of the video on media playback is far better with this newer asus board. The older machine has an ATI Radeon 9000 in it with 64MB of ram onboard with dual monitor support. It was a very good performer at the time I bought it, and was not too expensive. Unlike the Nvidia chipset on the new mobo which has a hardware mpeg2 decoder built in, this one must do it all in software.
The chipset for this newer machine was designed for multimedia applications and works well, what I really hate is the integrated audio which is based on the realtec 650 chip, which unfortunately is ac97 compliant, and the resampling to 48K is implemented in silicon and cannot be defeated - this means that even using asio (which is supported) you can't get a non resampled stream at the spdif output using any wav format audio as the source. (DTS, DD pass through only.) This was the biggest deficit of this board, and the integrated audio is now shut off..
Here in the US it is getting increasingly difficult to find mobos that aren't highly integrated - in my case cost wasn't really a major consideration, but size was. I could have spent far more, but didn't find a compelling reason to.. Incidentally all of my pc's are home built and I prefer Asus mobos - I have built dozens of pc's over the years for friends as well and have had a long procession of units, last count about 12, and 4 laptops. .
My desk top has lots of pci cards in it and the video is agp4, however despite this the mobo in the media server just runs circles around it, and the quality of the video on media playback is far better with this newer asus board. The older machine has an ATI Radeon 9000 in it with 64MB of ram onboard with dual monitor support. It was a very good performer at the time I bought it, and was not too expensive. Unlike the Nvidia chipset on the new mobo which has a hardware mpeg2 decoder built in, this one must do it all in software.
The chipset for this newer machine was designed for multimedia applications and works well, what I really hate is the integrated audio which is based on the realtec 650 chip, which unfortunately is ac97 compliant, and the resampling to 48K is implemented in silicon and cannot be defeated - this means that even using asio (which is supported) you can't get a non resampled stream at the spdif output using any wav format audio as the source. (DTS, DD pass through only.) This was the biggest deficit of this board, and the integrated audio is now shut off..
Here in the US it is getting increasingly difficult to find mobos that aren't highly integrated - in my case cost wasn't really a major consideration, but size was. I could have spent far more, but didn't find a compelling reason to.. Incidentally all of my pc's are home built and I prefer Asus mobos - I have built dozens of pc's over the years for friends as well and have had a long procession of units, last count about 12, and 4 laptops. .
Hi All
I too am trying to use a pc as a juke box / server .
I would like to add graphic eq capabilities.
can anyone suggest a pref 1/3 octave graphic eq with independent left and right channels which also works in real time to alllow playback of cd's etc +mp3's.
Many thanks in advance.
ps.
all the stuff i've found so far is mono or works on one file at a time...
I too am trying to use a pc as a juke box / server .
I would like to add graphic eq capabilities.
can anyone suggest a pref 1/3 octave graphic eq with independent left and right channels which also works in real time to alllow playback of cd's etc +mp3's.
Many thanks in advance.
ps.
all the stuff i've found so far is mono or works on one file at a time...
caoauto said:
Hi Cao, a little late here but, yes, an outboard DAC is required for best sound using computer audio. The evil cousins, jitter and psu noise, exist in abundance in computer electronics and will degrade the performance of any audio component powered by or electrically connected to your computer. Computer audio, IME, offers the possibility of better sound than attainable by what now seems to me old-tech cd/sacd players, but the low-jitter resolution it offers can be undone by ... introducing jitter. I am currently running all my audio through my computer, feeding a digital signal to an outboard DAC. This set-up betters the sound as outputted from my sacd turntable fed to the same DAC.
I have found Steve Nugent to be particularly helpful in explaining the benefits of computer audio. He was interviewed by Positive Feedback here and wrote an article on Positive Feedback on computer audio here. Helpful reading material. Steve sometimes visits these forums, among others, under the moniker audioengr.
I'm sort of late into this thread, but I saw some people talking about writing software to serve audio files and no mention of the open source program (written in PERL) called slimserver that can be DL'd from http://www.slimdevices.com and the companion player (you can use other programs like winamp if you want) called softsqueeze which is a fully functional squeezebox emulator.
I_F
I_F
Status Update
Well it has been nearly a year since I started down this road and I thought I would share my experiences since the last update.
A lightning strike within 50 ft (17m) of the house last week-end reinforced the fact that surge suppressors are a good thing. I have a gas tube arrestor on the cable feed to the set and server tuners as well as power line suppressors. All of the internal network at home and associated pcs are on tripplite or APC suppressors including phone line to our dsl modem. The house has three grounds and all services are tied to a common ground point, the siding which is aluminum is also grounded. So far so good everything in the house still works. My car (A 4 yr old acura rsx) in the adjacent garage just experienced a quasi catastrophic engine electronics failure which probably is unrelated but occured 72 hrs after the strike.
I plan to add a 50kA split phase suppressor at the entrance shortly as additional protection. Maybe lightning rods in the future as well..
Some observations. I upgraded to SageTV V4.0 recently and this seems to work as well as the previous versions. Current version is 5.0 I am not sure I am going to update.
Some mpg codec options in SageTV configuration may make it unstable with certain Nvidia GPU like my MX4, in such a case use the default setting. When using the STV default (Actually SageTV mpg decoder not "default") setting it is very important to make sure that the TV set is set as the primary display in clone mode if you want to see any video on the set. I experimented briefly with spanning and dual mode but full screen mode does not seem to work properly with either.
The streamzap remote provides additional convenience, but I still use the regular mouse quite a lot.
The latest versions of iTunes video work quite well, of course the resolution is pretty low, but usually better than a noisy off air signal. I can't say much for the mediocre iTunes video sound quality however - it is bad.
I am using WinAmp 5x exclusively because it is far more stable than QCD with the flac codec and asio installed. In addition it gives me some compatibility with the stream zap remote which caused some problems with QCD.
To install asio or flac in the Quinnware media player QMP you must install QCD first, then run the installer for flac and asio, and once QMP is installed copy asio and flac from the QCD plugin folder into the QMP plugin folder - one or the other will not install in QMP directly - don't remember which now... Needless to say I like QCD, but I don't care much for the UI in QMP.
The bright blue leds in the Antex Aria case have all failed, first the left side ones and then about a week later the right side ones.
Frankly the Aria case is too small for systems with more than one HD and fully configured runs quite warm. I hesitate to leave it running when it is very hot, which sort of defeats the point of having a pvr in the first place.
Note also that SageTV despite the claims is unable to wake this machine out of hibernation, (for that matter neither can I most of the time) so it goes into standby instead which works fine, but uses more power.
I had problems with the latest version of EAC beta V0.95 B3 and B4 with cdrdao so I downloaded the version without . Make sure that you have Cygwin emulation layer installed if you use cdrdao. Available here: www.cygwin.com since I don't currently burn cds using EAC I don't need these features. Note that you should also make sure that WinAmp is not configured as the default player for CDA either as this can cause EAC to crash at startup.
Sound quality is excellent, and the convenience of having so much music a mouse click or two away is indescribable.
Well it has been nearly a year since I started down this road and I thought I would share my experiences since the last update.
A lightning strike within 50 ft (17m) of the house last week-end reinforced the fact that surge suppressors are a good thing. I have a gas tube arrestor on the cable feed to the set and server tuners as well as power line suppressors. All of the internal network at home and associated pcs are on tripplite or APC suppressors including phone line to our dsl modem. The house has three grounds and all services are tied to a common ground point, the siding which is aluminum is also grounded. So far so good everything in the house still works. My car (A 4 yr old acura rsx) in the adjacent garage just experienced a quasi catastrophic engine electronics failure which probably is unrelated but occured 72 hrs after the strike.
I plan to add a 50kA split phase suppressor at the entrance shortly as additional protection. Maybe lightning rods in the future as well..
Some observations. I upgraded to SageTV V4.0 recently and this seems to work as well as the previous versions. Current version is 5.0 I am not sure I am going to update.
Some mpg codec options in SageTV configuration may make it unstable with certain Nvidia GPU like my MX4, in such a case use the default setting. When using the STV default (Actually SageTV mpg decoder not "default") setting it is very important to make sure that the TV set is set as the primary display in clone mode if you want to see any video on the set. I experimented briefly with spanning and dual mode but full screen mode does not seem to work properly with either.
The streamzap remote provides additional convenience, but I still use the regular mouse quite a lot.
The latest versions of iTunes video work quite well, of course the resolution is pretty low, but usually better than a noisy off air signal. I can't say much for the mediocre iTunes video sound quality however - it is bad.
I am using WinAmp 5x exclusively because it is far more stable than QCD with the flac codec and asio installed. In addition it gives me some compatibility with the stream zap remote which caused some problems with QCD.
To install asio or flac in the Quinnware media player QMP you must install QCD first, then run the installer for flac and asio, and once QMP is installed copy asio and flac from the QCD plugin folder into the QMP plugin folder - one or the other will not install in QMP directly - don't remember which now... Needless to say I like QCD, but I don't care much for the UI in QMP.
The bright blue leds in the Antex Aria case have all failed, first the left side ones and then about a week later the right side ones.
Frankly the Aria case is too small for systems with more than one HD and fully configured runs quite warm. I hesitate to leave it running when it is very hot, which sort of defeats the point of having a pvr in the first place.
Note also that SageTV despite the claims is unable to wake this machine out of hibernation, (for that matter neither can I most of the time) so it goes into standby instead which works fine, but uses more power.
I had problems with the latest version of EAC beta V0.95 B3 and B4 with cdrdao so I downloaded the version without . Make sure that you have Cygwin emulation layer installed if you use cdrdao. Available here: www.cygwin.com since I don't currently burn cds using EAC I don't need these features. Note that you should also make sure that WinAmp is not configured as the default player for CDA either as this can cause EAC to crash at startup.
Sound quality is excellent, and the convenience of having so much music a mouse click or two away is indescribable.
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