Audiophile hard drive

[jamesfeline]

Hello every one

Please see my audiophile hard drive (well that's what I call it) its a 1TB western digital black hard drive with suspension. I also made a high current power supply to power the drive .. I use it to store my WAV music files. I wanted to make a hard drive look like a piece of hifi equipment and be reliable as possible. I also added side mounted heatsinks to keep the unit cool. The drive is nice and silent once the lid is on .... what do you all think?













all the best

Nick (jamesfeline)

[N Brock]

Two thumbs up!

What sort of outputs does it have?
From the pictures it looks like USB, are you running that into a computer?

I want more details on this project. It looks really nice.

Keep up the good work
-Nelson

[kevinkr]

Very nicely put together, and I am sure rather quiet..

[jamesfeline]

Hi

Thanks for your kind words, yes I run it into a music pc that I have just made, I have moved over to using a PC as my music source .. I then feed the out put from my pc (using high quality sound card) into the power amplifiers that I make. I have been making power amps for the last 20 years and have now got very interested in PC audio, hence my hard drive project. I have a couple of DJ's who have asked me to make a couple for them.

The hard Drive is USB2 output which is fast enough, my nest one will be USB3, I find the linear PSU has great results to power the drive .. better then those small switch mode psu that plug into the wall socket. I also use a on / off latching power socket, so when it is off it draws zero stand by current .. I use this on all my projects now. I use DBpower amp to rip my cd's into wav and this gives me great tagging support when I use other music players.

please find pic of the music pc I have just made











the pc uses win 7 64 bit with a SSD boot drive

regards

Nick

regards

Nick

[tade]

I like it a lot! Really nice looking system.

I see you have a video card too. You must be watching some high def video? If you wanted a strictly music only pc, did you consider a micro pc like one of those intel atom ones? They have some neat fanless options and are ultra small form factor. How is the fan noise?

Intel Mini-ITX Motherboards (Atom Core / Mount Olive / Pine Trail )

[vacuphile]

Very nice. A new venue in high end has been opened, and a very sensible one.

Is that a Silverstone PSU in your PC? Great stuff if you need complete silence, have one myself running 24/7 for over 4 years now.

[jamesfeline]

Hi every one

This pc was a difficult brief as I wanted to play music files, some occasional games and watch blue ray films.
The PSU is a Silverstone passive cooled as well as the graphics card. The fans run at 790 rpm, which is enough to keep the case cool .. and are hardly audible. My next pc for my music room will be just music only, so that will be a total fan less design, using solid state drive as a boot drive and my audiophile hard drive as a music data drive.

But to be honest I am really pleased with the results of this pc as I would class the unit as silent, with the fans running at low RPM they are totally inaudible. But when I play a game I just turn the fans up to full revs as in this mode (gamer mode) it does not matter. But even on full blast its still very quiet.

[i2k92]

That's very nicely done, but I'd rather put the music on a NAS box connected via wifi-n to the music pc (that's 150 - 300 Mbps which should be more than enough for music), can hold lot more music and can be accessed by more than 1 device in a multiroom scenario.

I built a music PC, lot smaller and less complex than yours, using atom d410. I'm perfectly happy although I'll do some improvement on it. I believe that pc is the future of music.

What sound card do you use ?

[vacuphile]

Originally Posted by i2k92

That's very nicely done, but I'd rather put the music on a NAS box connected via wifi-n to the music pc (that's 150 - 300 Mbps which should be more than enough for music), can hold lot more music and can be accessed by more than 1 device in a multiroom scenario.

I built a music PC, lot smaller and less complex than yours, using atom d410. I'm perfectly happy although I'll do some improvement on it. I believe that pc is the future of music.

What sound card do you use ?

I fully agree with you that pc is the future of music, and all young people understand this. High end audio has some catching up to do.

vac

[sandyK]

Nick
Seeing that you are using a high quality Linear PSU for the external HDD, also try disconnecting Vbus (+5V SMPS) at the PC end of the incoming USB cable.
There are numerous reports in various forums of USB sounding better with expensive USB cables, which invariably have better separation between Vbus (+5V red wire ) and the twisted pair D- and D+ data leads.
A further enhancement could be the use of a "super regulator"
with the Linear PSU . A "JLH"as featured in a GB thread in DIYAudio , does a great job there, as would other high current capable shunt regulators.
Alex