Let's talk digital!

[koushik]

I would request mods to remove all posts including this one except Ranjeetrain's as it looks like it is going to be a fantastic know how and I would love this thread to be clean and uncluttered. So any post which is not really contributing to this thread can be safely removed including this one.

Many thanks to Ranjeetrain for this lovely thread.

Vinod

I would vouch for that as well...

 

[jimtranr]

Great thread, and I appreciate ranjeetrain's clear and straightforward explain-the-basics "tutorial" approach. I'm one of those creatures who uses his PC for "everything," since it's the operating engine for virtually all of my home office activities (writing, Web surfing [not least to learn from threads like this one], etc.). The pertinent system components are listed below. The only "tweak" is the bypassing of the PC's internal sound card via the USB feed to the TEAC-501 DAC purchased a couple of weeks ago.

This is a "secondary" system (the main system, which incorporates vinyl as well as digital, resides in a much larger, separate room), and, notwithstanding its less-than-ideal acoustics environment, has become a de facto test bed for determining whether, how, and to what extent I'll employ computer digital in the main system. The last two weeks of listening to primarily DSD downloads has already answered the "whether" in the affirmative.

I've not found CPU usage, latency, etc., to be overriding issues in this setup. There are no detectable playback hiccups. What is an issue is the generation of spurious noise artifacts requiring careful (I'm tempted to say "fastidious") cable placement and dress of the USB and power cables.

I realize that this post doesn't contribute to the knowledge base per se, but thought it might be useful as an example of a computer digital system used by someone who's just "jumping in."

Home Office: HP Win 7 PC (i5 CPU @ 2.67GHz, 6 Gb RAM), JRiver Media Center 19/TEAC's own "HR Audio Player" software, Wireworld Starlight 7 USB cable to TEAC UD-501 DAC, Counterpoint SA-2000 line stage, c-j Sonographe SA-250 amp, Kimber Silver Streak IC's, standmounted Paradigm SE-1 speakers.

 

[ranjeetrain]

Welcome to HFV jimtranr!

A computer does make a great multipurpose device. Even as a multipurpose device role it offers a good platform for music playback. Even an un-optimized computer is a very good playback device. However, tweaking it takes it to another level.

What I am talking about in this thread is - using computer for reference level playback. That is - you will not just hear everything, but you will hear everything correctly timed with purest tone, timer and voicing.

I'll save my comments on DSD. I have a certain pattern for developing this thread in my mind, and must supress temptation to jump at the topic now.

Thanks for posting about your setup. It's always enriching to know how others are doing their things.

 

[manniraj]

Yesterday I cross checked my CPU/RAM usage and it is coming around 50%/500mb usage when I run Foobar FLAC files. I realized the reason of high usage is because I run "Teamviewer" as its a headless PC. So I uninstalled the Teamviewer and checked again, voila the usage has come down to 5%/100mb. But either with running Teamviewer or not the playback does not make any difference as I hear the same quality over my ODAC.

 

[ranjeetrain]

Manni, in a way you are lucky that you don't hear an improvement. May be rest of your chain is unable to benefit from the improvement. Probably there is no point in you tweaking your PC further till you feel something is lacking. When you find something, then you might want to start upgrading from the weakest link in your chain.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

It's a contrary viewpoint, bear with it or skip over it if you want, but...

What's to worry about 50% CPU usage? One could say that is what it is there for! Equally, the RAM is there to be filled up, and modern operating systems do so, as clearing out unnecessary data is more work than leaving it there until the space is needed (and it is this, not working quite as well in practice as in theory, that I currently have a problem with).

Tweak, but don't sweat unless you have a problem you can hear!

 

[manniraj]

It's a contrary viewpoint, bear with it or skip over it if you want, but...

What's to worry about 50% CPU usage? One could say that is what it is there for! Equally, the RAM is there to be filled up, and modern operating systems do so, as clearing out unnecessary data is more work than leaving it there until the space is needed (and it is this, not working quite as well in practice as in theory, that I currently have a problem with).

Tweak, but don't sweat unless you have a problem you can hear!

@Thad

The reason most of us gunning for less CPU usage is mostly to do with the reduction or no CPU fan usage in the PC thereby less noise, less interference and more audiophile sound
Even though mine is stated to be fanless PC there is a very small ( I would say miniature fan) in the case which starts working when the CPU usage goes beyond the 50%. May be with the tweaks as Ranjeet is going to suggest I can make the fan idle or get rid of it completely .

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Yes, manniraj: that was hovering in the back of my mind, asking to be said

I do agree. Less CPU usage = less heat = less noise, and that is desirable for an audio PC.

Ideally, a CPU that will run at any percent would be ideal, and I've seen some "audiophile" cases where heat pipes connect to the case itself as heatsink. I don't know how well they work, but the idea is good, and the cases look good too.

 

[haisaikat]

@Thad

The reason most of us gunning for less CPU usage is mostly to do with the reduction or no CPU fan usage in the PC thereby less noise, less interference and more audiophile sound
Even though mine is stated to be fanless PC there is a very small ( I would say miniature fan) in the case which starts working when the CPU usage goes beyond the 50%. May be with the tweaks as Ranjeet is going to suggest I can make the fan idle or get rid of it completely .

I agree with this thought, if noise is not a factor then is there any difference in SQ if CPU usage is 50% vs 1%? Afterall 50% is still free.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

There should be none, even at 100%. But I'd hate to claim that any PC running at 100% utilisation is going to sound great, because it really would be the beginning of the story, not the end. It might sound great ...or something could be wrong.

It also rather depends on what it is doing. 1% for sound and 99% for something else is very unlikely to sound the same: it is not even likely to sound continuous!.

If there is a disadvantage to PC playback that Ranjeet has not touched on it is that when it doesn't work well, it can be very, very difficult to troubleshoot. The waters get deep very quickly.

 

[manniraj]

I agree with this thought, if noise is not a factor then is there any difference in SQ if CPU usage is 50% vs 1%? Afterall 50% is still free.

I am not sure what difference it makes as I reported earlier in this thread, I have not heard any difference with either 50% CPU or 5% CPU usage on playing a FLAC file over the ODAC in Foobar. But as Ranjeet hinted may be I do not have a revealing system to point out the difference. The reason I am looking forward to this thread is to reduce the CPU/RAM consumption when I play any kind of file in the Foobar application whether it makes any difference to the sound quality or not but yes I believe that less power consumption will not harm anything but definitely less power bills .

 

[ranjeetrain]

It also rather depends on what it is doing. 1% for sound and 99% for something else is very unlikely to sound the same: it is not even likely to sound continuous!.

Completely agree. Beyond 90% usage I would expect play back to stutter, not to mention CPU heat and fan noise.

If there is a disadvantage to PC playback that Ranjeet has not touched on it is that when it doesn't work well, it can be very, very difficult to troubleshoot.

Oops Okay, adding that to the list of topics to discuss. Thanks for making the point.

I am not sure what difference it makes as I reported earlier in this thread, I have not heard any difference with either 50% CPU or 5% CPU usage on playing a FLAC file over the ODAC in Foobar. But as Ranjeet hinted may be I do not have a revealing system to point out the difference. The reason I am looking forward to this thread is to reduce the CPU/RAM consumption when I play any kind of file in the Foobar application whether it makes any difference to the sound quality or not but yes I believe that less power consumption will not harm anything but definitely less power bills .

Exactly. Most of the tweaks I will be talking about, will not hurt any system. Any tweaks that has any side-effects/possible damages, I would be adding warnings in bold red letters. But any tweaks that are harmless, people can try. If they like it, they can keep. If not, just undo it.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Exactly. Most of the tweaks I will be talking about, will not hurt any system. Any tweaks that has any side-effects/possible damages, I would be adding warnings in bold red letters. But any tweaks that are harmless, people can try. If they like it, they can keep. If not, just undo it.

I used to tweak Windows, sometimes, just to get it to work half decently, never mind playing audio etc. Here's the rule... err, rules...

1. Make as note of everything that you change. Do not trust your memory. Write it down, along with original and new parameters. Changes, especially if you are disabling subsystems etc, can have very unexpected results.

2. Change only one or two things at a time. That way, you can know what worked ...or what went wrong.

 

[manoj.p]

Fantastic thread. Might get me back to HTPC. ;-)

Ranjeet - you should have put a placeholder on at least first 10 posts of this thread, where you would have written the entire process. That would have made the reading very easy, rather than now sifting through different posts. still a great thread though.

Or If mod can still help you with that, it would be fantastic.

 

[Santy]

Is it possible to reserve first few posts and edit anytime? I think we cannot edit a post after 1 day. So best is to wait till ranjeet completes all his chapters and then request mod to place all links in the first post.

 

[sound1]

Hi Vinod, Thad,

All discussions here are in the spirit of contributing to the knowledge. Some discussion will facilitate understanding or certain points I forgot/overlooked or didn't elaborate upon enough. It is very possible I might overlook stuff or mis-communicate some. I hope discussions will add to the learning

I second this. I believe some off-topic discussion is okay, even welcome, than losing that knowledge/learning completely because this context may never come up again to discuss it. Even I am eager to hear about memory management issues Thad faced & resolved with the permission of OP of course I know that there is a separate thread Thad created but if this can be shared here without derailing the tread, it would make this discussion much more valuable & complete IMHO.

 

[manoj.p]

Is it possible to reserve first few posts and edit anytime? I think we cannot edit a post after 1 day. So best is to wait till ranjeet completes all his chapters and then request mod to place all links in the first post.

Yes, you are right. I forgot the 1 day limit at HFV.

Although, other forums allow longer limits. AFAIK, avsforum does allow people to reserve and then update later. Makes a very nice reading.

 

[haisaikat]

Yesterday I cross checked my CPU/RAM usage and it is coming around 50%/500mb usage when I run Foobar FLAC files. I realized the reason of high usage is because I run "Teamviewer" as its a headless PC. So I uninstalled the Teamviewer and checked again, voila the usage has come down to 5%/100mb. But either with running Teamviewer or not the playback does not make any difference as I hear the same quality over my ODAC.

If controlling foobar is an issue for which Team Viewer was installed better get the foo http control plugin and control remotely.

Also on the CPU usage, FLACs are compressed lossless files so at run time uncompressing needs to be done and hence CPU usage. Try converting the same FLAC to WAV (uncompressed PCM) and I am sure CPU will go down further.

In my setup I have a dual boot HTPC cum Music PC that boots default to music pc. It is a slim cabinet (in my signature) and space is less so I had to thoughfully deploy 2 fans in intake and exhaust mode. During startup the fan noise with no music playing is easily noticable from listening position of 10 feet away but during playback even at low volumes it is un-noticeable. I do not feel any perceptible difference if I use my laptop instead (of course with the rest of the chain intact). So in my opinion little noise should not be a problem as long as the noise floor of the sound supercedes it.

 

[manniraj]

If controlling foobar is an issue for which Team Viewer was installed better get the foo http control plugin and control remotely.

Also on the CPU usage, FLACs are compressed lossless files so at run time uncompressing needs to be done and hence CPU usage. Try converting the same FLAC to WAV (uncompressed PCM) and I am sure CPU will go down further.

In my setup I have a dual boot HTPC cum Music PC that boots default to music pc. It is a slim cabinet (in my signature) and space is less so I had to thoughfully deploy 2 fans in intake and exhaust mode. During startup the fan noise with no music playing is easily noticable from listening position of 10 feet away but during playback even at low volumes it is un-noticeable. I do not feel any perceptible difference if I use my laptop instead (of course with the rest of the chain intact). So in my opinion little noise should not be a problem as long as the noise floor of the sound supercedes it.

I also use the foobar http controller as well as MonkeyMote controller to access the Foobar on my Android and iPhone mobiles for playlists and playback. The reason I have Teamviewer installed is that with the audiophile script on the Win 8 OS I have disabled the remote logging using the Windows default option on the music-pc and to access it for creating/modifying/copying music I use my personal laptop to access the Teamviewer of the music-pc as mine is completely headless PC without any graphic drivers installed. Other than that I do not access the music-pc as I have only the Win 8 OS with the audiophile script tweak + Foobar and disabled even the LAN port in the script (but now it shows as "x" mark in the task bar on the LAN icon even though I can connect the PC using Teamviewer.)

Regarding the CPU usage of WAV/FLAC I am sure with WAV playback the CPU usage will come down but converting all the FLAC files to WAV will be one of the option I will consider time being at the disposal as almost 80% of my music is in FLAC format.

 

[mowgli80]

Also on the CPU usage, FLACs are compressed lossless files so at run time uncompressing needs to be done and hence CPU usage. Try converting the same FLAC to WAV (uncompressed PCM) and I am sure CPU will go down further.

But then you need to use extra CPU cycles to execute network/disk driver code to fetch more data i.e. larger file, so there is no way to say you always save on the CPU usage. You may end up using more CPU . Infact, looking at the big picture of how computers work, I can think of several more reasons why FLAC is far better WAV.

My personal belief is that some of these claim/concerns may have been genuine in early systems which were slow and resources were limited. With modern systems which are thousands of times faster, most of these claims do not stand enough merit.