PC playback as an alternative to CD Players

[bhagwan]

There are many cabinets you can look at the best Ive come across is from Antec that bhagwan uses, I don't use one as my Heat-sink doesn't permit me to do so because of the size.
Regards,
Satyam Bachani.

Some Cabinets :-

SilverStone LC16S Enclosure (LC16S MR220 HTPC) - Cabinet Casings - Computer Hardware Buy,Sethia, Sethia Infotech, Chennai, India

SilverStone LC17S Enclosure (LC 17S0220 HTPC) - Cabinet Casings - Computer Hardware Buy,Sethia, Sethia Infotech, Chennai, India

Antec Fusion Remote Black - Cabinet Casings - Computer Hardware Buy,Sethia, Sethia Infotech, Chennai, India

Who is 'bhagwan' ?
:clapping:

 

[Rockfella]

How does having no anti-virus help?

Sir,
We are in the same boat;

However, my limited experience in this field has shown / taught me that computer audio is not about what you use - but how you use it;
It Just like vinyl playback. If you do not set up the TT & Arm & the Cartridge etc up in an appropriate manner - the best gear will sound 'lousy' !

I shall try and comment on what you have done & what you can try;

a]
Playback your music in foobar. I find it the best - acoustically -
Other player have super interface - but the sonics are not up to the mark. J River / Media Monkey etc.

b]
PC to have an excellent power supply Cossair etc.

c]
No Antivirus on your machine

d]
Except for Windows 7 - 64 bit - no other software should be present on your PC.

e]
Latency should be very very low - 100 at least

f]
In foobar - play all music off the ram with maximum buffering

g]
100ms is what the figure should be, I work @ 50ms [currently] - the lower the better

h]
Are you using the same DAC for the CD Player & Computer ?

i]
When you rip your CD in dB do it in Pure PCM - get the settings done for pure performance & error free - not for speed. rather important.

j]
Ideally your PC should have a SSD drive for the O/S - this makes a 'huge' difference.

I can write more. Actually I could have helped further - but you are not from Mumbai, else we could have done this together.

Computer Audio is the way to go, just get it right - it is too good !

All the Best !

p.s. Currently my Android device controls my music play back. It is simply very nice...

 

[hydra]

I'm also a firm believer in Computer-based Audio. I'm pretty much Hardware-ignorant too.

I think SHANTI has covered it all very well :clapping: Considering his experience with music and things that make music, I'm flattered to see that I have (nearly) the same things setup on my Music-PC. The only difference is that I use Win 7 Home Basic 32 Bit, and I haven't moved to an SSD-boot drive yet.

Having no anti-virus installed is very important. Anti-virus SW bogs down the PC, leaves a lot of services running and keeps making all kinds of calls to the OS from time to time.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Even a general purpose PC, given a good audio interface (sound card, DAC, whatever) should be capable of giving good-to-excellent sound playback.

1. Some aren't. There seem to be inherent problems with some motherboards, eg DPC latency.

2. Over and above the good-to-excellent --- all the rest is striving for perfection. Where hifi is concerned, I guess that begins with a dedicated machine, cut down Operating system, no other add-in cards, no non-audio applications, etc etc and ...never ends

Edit: add silent cooling to that; probably one of the first things we try to achieve in any machine used for music --- or (in my case (no pun intended)) any machine that we spend several hours a day sitting next to.

 

[venkatcr]

Playback your music in foobar. I find it the best - acoustically - Other player have super interface - but the sonics are not up to the mark. J River / Media Monkey etc.

Shanthi, have you tried the J River Media player? I am interested as I am planning to use this on my Audio PC. J River today has the highest market rating for playback quality.

Cheers

 

[bhagwan]

Shanthi, have you tried the J River Media player? I am interested as I am planning to use this on my Audio PC. J River today has the highest market rating for playback quality.

Cheers

Sir,
You are 100 % right !

J River today has the highest market rating for playback quality.

I have tried J River - 100 US $ version.
Also tried XX High End / Media Monkey / I Tunes / Ammara etc. etc.

To my ears, foobar sounded the most 'balanced' and life like, so I use that & recommend / suggest its use.

However, the others have a far far better interface & look better.
It is my opinion that for most persons any of them will be as good as the other - use 1 that sounds good to your ear & it the easiest to see / look / feel & navigate through.

 

[wtaylorbasil]

Thank you for the steps set out. I will have to have a good think about it. I may need to accept the fact that my FLAC playback is not upto scratch at the moment and spin the CDs. I will try to find a satisfsctory solution in time.
regards

 

[marsilians]

I'm also a firm believer in Computer-based Audio. I'm pretty much Hardware-ignorant too.

...

Anti-virus SW bogs down the PC, leaves a lot of services running and keeps making all kinds of calls to the OS from time to time.

Your note seems contradictory unless you traced a bunch of calls being made to the OS. Also can you elaborate how you came to this conclusion?

 

[hydra]

...
Your note seems contradictory unless you traced a bunch of calls being made to the OS. Also can you elaborate how you came to this conclusion?

No, I did not trace any such calls personally. This is just information I'd gathered while doing a bit of reading on the 'net.

If I'm wrong, please do correct me.

As for being hardware ignorant, I'm what I'll call an armchair enthusiast when it comes to computers. I have some theoretical knowledge I've gained from reading and from what I've heard people (who know stuff about computers) say. Hands-on experience with building a PC from scratch = zero. My skills are limited to upgrading RAM and changing the occasional HDD. The only time I've really got involved in choosing individual components for a PC is when I shopped around for kit to get my Music-PC built.

 

[venkatcr]

Having no anti-virus installed is very important. Anti-virus SW bogs down the PC, leaves a lot of services running and keeps making all kinds of calls to the OS from time to time.

Not having an anti-virus is more dangerous than having one. Ultimately everything boils down to how you configure you computer. Modern CPUs can handle millions of instructions per second, so a little anti virus is not going to affect them much. Use something like Avast or AVG that are light. You can set off regular hard disk scans and limit them to manual runs. That way there will be no load on the CPU or memory.

Here are some essentials.

(1) Having a sound car is important. A sound card reduces dependence upon the CPU for everything other than I/O. Ensure the sound card uses ASIO or WASAPI. This side steps a lot of 'noisy' parts of the MB through which the music data travels.

(2) Un-install all unnecessary programs including IE. At the max, you must use the OS, drivers for the sound card, and a program to play your music. Remove unwanted drivers. Use a cleaner such as CCleaner before your start playing your music. This will wipe out all cookies, clean the registry, and empty the cache.

(3) Use a powerful power unit - between 800 to 1000 watts. Set it on performance mode.

(4) Use 7200 or 10,000 RPM drives. If you are using HDDs with lower speed, transfer your music to high speed drives, and use the old HDDs elsewhere.

(5) Do not connect any external hardware to the machine other than keyboard, mouse, and a monitor. No external drives, no cameras, and no pen drives. If you to transfer data, you must do that, removes the external drives, and the use the PC for playing music.

(6) Use a single software application for playing music. Do not experiment with innumerable versions every time some one screams hoarse about a new version. Remember, playing music is not magical. If your card/software uses ASIO/WASAPI, the system is already optimized to the max.

(7) Enable cache read/write. This will speed up you HDD I/O.

(8) Do not use the PC for ripping your audio CDs. That will mean one more software, and that is a no no. Use another machine and install EAC in that.

(9) Change the power cable that came with the power unit. You can make a very reasonable power cable at less than a 1000 rupees. Use a three pin plug at the power socket end that sits well into your socket. Ensure there is no EMI/RFI or spikes in your power supply.

(10) Do not connect your PC to a local area network. Disable all OS services that are not needed.

(11) Disable all unneeded startup programs

(12) Optimize the OS. I have shown some links below.

The Windows 7 Optimization Guide | The SSD Review

http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/downloads/Windows_7_Optimization_Guide.pdf

Black Vipers Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Service Configurations | Black Viper's Website | www.blackviper.com

Cheers

 

[ajay124]

sbfx, venkat, shanti, hydra, others

Interesting posts. Plenty of information. I have placed all my chips on an Esoteric cdp, therefore for me the computer v/s cdp debate is purely academic at the moment, but there is no harm in watching from the sidelines

From what I have read on international forums it appears that audiophiles seem to prefer a firewire connection over any other kind. As the article in the link below states, USB was created as a data transport and firewire as an audio video transport. If a firewire is indeed the best way of transporting high resolution files to a dac, then the simplest thing would be to use iTunes/Mac OS. It come with firewire ports, does not require anti virus, registery cleaners or the rest of the useless baggage one has to carry along with a PC.

If I had the inclination and the budget, then this is what I would go for:

amarra minerva

 

[venkatcr]

Mac has a number of limitations including file types. It cannot read FLAC that has kind of become the de-facto industry standard for high resolution music storage.

Cheers

 

[bhagwan]

This again is like the PC / Mac thing for computers;
One can choose & use a platform that one prefers....

However, I just need to understand from Ajay24 if you use a Mac & 13944 [firewire] apart from Weiss [I used to use this] what are the other DACs that can be used ?

 

[bhagwan]

The way I see this;

From the computer one can get audio in many ways;
Some of them are :-

a]
USB

b]
Sound Card - Digital

c]
Sound Card - Analogue

d]
13944 - Firewire

Now in each case there is a down side & an up side

[a]
downside - bandwidth limitation - 16/44.1 is perfect [others are constrained]

downside - needs an 'interface' [M2Tech - EVO] to work best.

upside - cheap option


downside - cost
card is expensive & needs an external DAC & Clock to work well.

upside - if done right - this is the best one can get

[c]
downside - performance is limited. Sounds very good up to a price point.

upside - cheap solution - ESI Julia / EMU / ASUS Xonar etc.

d]
downside - not many DAC's are present

upside - maximum bandwidth - this is a MAC platform product [I think] so Windows will not support it 'extensively'
However as always - good products never see the 'light of the day'





The long & short of the story is - there are too many options - one can choose 1 that suits them & fits their budget - the boundries are limitless.
This is a platform, imho that will only take off from here..

 

[baijuxavior]

It is always better to install an antivirus and update it regularly. Two years back all my media files - 150+ movies and 12K+ songs - were infected by a malware which converted all media files to mp3 files with the warning "your computer is f*****". I recommend Avast which is light on system resources and is constantly updating virus definitions. After installing Avast (free version) I have never faced any virus infection.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Firewire is the choice of audio professionals and the manufacturers of studio-aimed interfaces. It is said to stream more data more consistently. If you are intending to set up a home studio, recording and mixing multi-channel, then the difference might matter.

It was the interface of choice for handycams. Mine (bought about 2003) uses it. Because of this, even if I only use the thing once in a year (or five: it was one of my money wasters) I need that firewire interface on the PC. Of course, firewire PCI cards are easily available.

(where did domestic handycams go next/now? I have no idea. hdmi? But a handycam needs a 2-way interface)

Anyway, firewire is available on many PC motherboards. If you have it, it is yetanotherchoice in the matter of getting sound out of your pc. Don't worry about Windows "supporting" it, it does. Think of all those handycams out there! If your firewire audio interface comes with Windows drivers, that's all you need to know. There is some kit (eg Apogee), that looks mouthwatering, but is made for the MacMarket and will not run under Windows. But, of course, anyone buying anything for their PC is going to check the hardware/software supported section of the specs first, right? **

Has the audio interface world even noticed USB3.0 yet? I don't think so. Can't blame it, because nobody else of the pc peripherals market has much noticed it yet either. External drives and thumb drives come in drips and drabs...

If I had the budget, I'd find the oldest working PC with a PCI bus and no fan on the CPU (586? 486?), put a Lynx or RME card in it, load WinXP and foobar, and enjoy the analogue out*. Mind you, I'd probably have to upgrade the amp and speakers to do it justice. As it is, I can't connect the PC directly to the stereo, don't have the furniture arranged for proper hifi listening --- and my Squeezebox Duet will do nicely.

If I had the budget... to experiment with all the kit I'd like to play with, just for fun, then I'd have the house and the room and all too

*then I'd check with Linux, which can generally be trusted to do almost anything better than Windows, with the important exception of driving uncommon hardware.

** Oh YEAH? And guess who didn't notice a higher revision number for a server OS , and that the company's major accounts package did not support that revision, and spent about twenty thousand GBP on the server? Well, I was sooooo lucky. 'not supported' doesn't necessarily mean 'won't work.' It worked very well. Expensive mistakes of our time. Well, my time

 

[samml]

Dear Experts,

I was planning to make my laptop as the source and I came across this thread.I read some of the posts in this thread and found them to be highly technical for me .

I am a novice in this area.Due to some reasons I want to restrict myself to my laptop as the source for the time being.

Would request all of you to advise me on the following.

A.What media player should I use for playing songs?(After going through HFV,currently I have installed Foobar 2000.Any other alternatives?)

B.From all the discussions and reading over net,what I have come to understand is FLAC is the best format for high quality audio.Can anyone suggest me some sites where I can download bollywood movie/other songs for free in FLAC format?


Currently have no plans for installing any sound cards or using any external DACs.I will be simply using a y-cable and conect it to my topping tp-20 amplifier.

My system is Compaq Presario C700
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
3GB RAM
500 GB Internal Seagate HD & 150 GB External Seagate HD.



Thanks again to all of you for sharing so much of valuable info in this forum.

In anticipation of your response.

Regards,
Samml

 

[bhagwan]

@ Sammi
Use a player that you like - interface.
Foobar is not for you.
You will not need Flac either.
MP3 too is very good, just keep the sample rate @ 200 ++
Instead of downloading music, just get it from fellow forum guys, it is much much faster. I am in Mumbai & I have 8 ++ TB of PCM / Flac & I can give it to you.
Just come over with a HDD [portable] & take what ever you want.

 

[bhagwan]

B.From all the discussions and reading over net,what I have come to understand is FLAC is the best format for high quality audio.Can anyone suggest me some sites where I can download bollywood movie/other songs for free in FLAC format?
Regards,
Samml

What will you play it through ?
Speakers i.e.

p.s. The Best is still pure PCM - 16/44.1 [no compression] !

 

[hydra]

Not having an anti-virus is more dangerous than having one. Ultimately everything boils down to how you configure you computer. Modern CPUs can handle millions of instructions per second, so a little anti virus is not going to affect them much. Use something like Avast or AVG that are light. You can set off regular hard disk scans and limit them to manual runs. That way there will be no load on the CPU or memory.
...

It is always better to install an antivirus and update it regularly. Two years back all my media files - 150+ movies and 12K+ songs - were infected by a malware which converted all media files to mp3 files with the warning "your computer is f*****". I recommend Avast which is light on system resources and is constantly updating virus definitions. After installing Avast (free version) I have never faced any virus infection.

For a computer that is used for other tasks also (esp. if it gets connected to the 'net), I completely agree that an AV is absolutely necessary.

In the case of my Music-PC, it does not get connected to the 'net or a network, and I copy all data into the PC myself, after vetting it (scanning it) on my laptop/desktop which have updated AV. Nobody else uses my Music-PC, and I don't stick anybody else's USB drives (or data CDs for that matter) into it.

From personal experience, for whatever the reason, I've seen that any AV program can noticeably slow down a PC.

I too use the Music-PC as a dedicated music playback device (with foobar2000 via WASAPI). I do have VLC player also installed, for the occasional movie that my WDTV won't play. But there's nothing else installed on the machine.

(4) Use 7200 or 10,000 RPM drives. If you are using HDDs with lower speed, transfer your music to high speed drives, and use the old HDDs elsewhere.

Is this necessary? I do use a 7200rpm drive myself but I've read in many places that a slower drive will be less noisier, and the disk-speed really doesn't matter for music playback. I wanted to go for two 2.5" 5400RPM drives (so I have 1TB storage), but I decided to play it prudent (= cheaper) and got a single 1TB 7200rpm 3.5" drive. Now, the HDD is the noisiest part of the machine

(7) Enable cache read/write. This will speed up you HDD I/O.

Same question as above. Won't this just increase the spin cycles and thus increase noise? For music playback is this really necessary? Esp. when there is enough RAM (say 4GB)? I think getting an SSD drive for the OS will let us disable disk caching altogether, right?

(9) Change the power cable that came with the power unit. You can make a very reasonable power cable at less than a 1000 rupees. Use a three pin plug at the power socket end that sits well into your socket. Ensure there is no EMI/RFI or spikes in your power supply.

This I'd like to try. Any more pointers on this? What kind of cable and what gauge would be best? I currently use a 5 meter MX Electronics cable so that I have just a single interface between the PC and the UPS (the UPS sits a bit far away). Also, with a UPS feeding the PC (Offline UPS though), will the power cable make that much difference -- esp. when there's a good SMPS in the PC?

Thanks for the links, @venkatcr. Always interested to know more I'd be grateful for your thoughts on my queries above.