Digital Music dilemma

B

Blue Star

Active Member
Hi Guys,

I have a reasonably decent set of CD players (denon and Marantz), amps (denon SS and audiospace tube) and speakers (JBL, KEF). I have a lot of music in digital lossless format on a PC and my dilemma is how best to listen to this.

1. Option 1 - convert all FLAC's to wav, burn to CD and listen on CD player
Pros: Hopefully pure unaltered digital music
cons: Lots of CD burns, i tend to get by most songs over time and hence CD's will continue to become scrap. Additionally my PC destroys half of the CD's during write and hence overall scrap factor will be high

2. Option 2 - play the lossless digital music on a digital music player and hook that up to the amp.
option 2.1 - I have been using iAudio X5 and A3 to do this for me, both can play flac/wav but the inbuilt DAC is not that high resolution
option 2.2 - buy a digital music player with huge HDD and high resolutuion DAC or digital putput that can be hooked with an external DAC
Pros: (hopefully) best quality digital music/DAC
cons: expensive....
for example,
http://www.olive.us/products/opus4_overview.html

3. Option 3 - play all flac's on my laptop and connect laptop to amp
pros: cheap
cons: dont have digital output, inbuilt DAC cant be so good, its a 4 year old sony, sound may not be completly unaltered before delivering to the amp

4. Option 4: build a PC from scratch with best digital sound card available, purchase a good external DAC and hook up to amp
pros: no need to transfer music anywhere
cons: labour, expensive

So I am just not able to make up my mind and would like to seek advice. Has anyone else gone thru' similir dilemma and worked out a good solution ?

any thoughts/advice is highly appriciated!
 
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What about an external DAC with USB input, connected to your laptop? Some of those are now relatively inexpensive.
 
I would build a computer with a USB DAC attached. I think Jolida has one coming out or that came out for $99. I heard it at the fest and was quite impressed with it.

Then again I have the parts to build four or five computers laying around. :D
 
Definetly build a computer. I went that route, and built my comp. for around $350. I made mine out of an old cd player, so it meshes with the rest of my components:smoke:
 
I would invest in a Sqeezebox Classic / Duet / Transporter (depending on budget) (the Duet is sweet, I`m using that'un hooked up to my stereo, and it communicates with the htpc upstairs where all the Flacs (and mp3`s) are located.) You can add an external dac to the squeezebox if you feel like upgrading. "As is", I feel it plays almost indistinguishable (oh difficult world for a Norwegian) from my Denon DCD1450 and Kenwood dp7030 cd players.

The userfriendliness and the FUN factor is on the other hand absolutely "priceless"... all my music is at the tip om my fingers... listening to music now, with the duet remote (with albumart and a lot of info about artists) is imho superb! I will add a DAC to this when my economy allows, but for now I`m VERY happy with things as they are!
 
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I'd go with the custom built computer. Not sure how spectacular the sound card has to be but it should have optical and coax digital out. Then into a decent external dac. I guess you should avoid Windows XP because it does some of the sound processing in the 'kernel'. Not too sure about that but I went with Windows 7 RC1 anyway and it works very well.
The nice thing about this is that you can hook the computer up to an LCD TV for the interface. I also wrote custom software to retrieve and play the files from a server. I download each file to a USB memory stick before playing to minimize the complexity of the chain. The bits just flow from the USB key to the sound card and out to the DAC that way. To be honest I don't know if it makes a difference but if you can eliminate mechanicals and networking why not?
I think the computer came in around $600 and the DAC is an older BelCanto for $400. So, it's a fairly big nut but I like the flexibility it gives me.
I also set it up to do the CD ripping and put on a copy of BOXEE just for fun.
Oh, and most versions of Windows 7 come with Media Center which is a pretty spiffy interface if you choose to use it.
 
I am not a fan of a computer for playing music.

I prefer to separate the music server from the music player.

In my case, I have a little Linksys NSLU2 as a streaming server. It functions as the digital music library, and emulates an iTunes server.

I use a Roku Soundbridge as my music player.... connected to my stereo via an external DAC.
 
oneinchside, I have a thread in PC Music Servers, under Digital Formats & Music Server Forums that has it all, but here is one pic.
IMG_0472.jpg
 
I would suggest building a computer along with others. I have some time so lemme go over to Newegg and piece together a system just to fill in a few minutes of my day, and well, because its fun for me. Here's a quick throw together list of parts that are similar to the system I have here in my setup:

Case:Silverstone LC13B - $110.00
(Very nice case simple front, sort of looks like a power amplifier)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163117

Motherboard/CPU: ASUS M4A78-E w/ AMD Phenom II X4 945 - $254.00
(Asus has always been very reliable for me, and this board has all sorts of good features. Add in a decently fast quad core and your set for audio and HD video.)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.237639

Memory: 4GB of Crucial Memory - $52.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145184

Video Card: Non required motherboard has onboard VGA/DVI and HDMI outputs.

Soundcard:ASUS Xonar Essance $200.00
(OK a bit expensive for a sound card but according to reviews here and elsewhere on the net this could be the best sound card out there, and with it you may not need to buy an outboard DAC)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132010

Powersupply: Antec Trupower 750w PSU $100.00
(Nothing to be said here that can't be read anywhere, antec is reliable, efficient and inexpensive)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371025

Hard drive: Western Digital 750GB $65.00
(These are personal preference, I prefer WD drives myself)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136359

Optical drive:Pioneer 8x Bluray/DVD/CD Burner/Reader $200.00
(Again personal prefernce I prefer Pioneer drives here, and the price is good)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827129037

So, price tally on this lil flight of fancy is: $981.00. All tings considered this isn't a bad way to spend a thousand dollars to get a decent media PC that will handle HD video as well as audio needs.
 
Thanks guys. Thank you all for your suggestions. hpsenika I see your point and basially at some point i would prfer to have a dedicated music server, something other then a PC but for now, given my financial situation and the fact that I can use a desktop in more then one way, I am inclined towards the PC based solution.

Ender, thanks for comping all the information. Its very useful for a person not computer geek(like me) I guess your post stands up to your title :)

So I called a local computer center yesterday and they basically gave a following quotation:
Intel Pentium 4, Core 2 Duo 2.66ghz
2 GB memory Can exapnd up to 4GB
1 TB HDD
Asus P5Q
20" wide screen flat panel
G54 graphics card
firewire included
Cost ~850$


he sayd the onboard sound card is pretty decent, 8 channels etc etc but for 150-250USD I can upgrade. I can also go to ATI Radeon graphics for 80$ and for another 50$ I can go wi-fi
Onboard sound coard with spdif output included

If I go for Core 2 quad processer then the price will change by a huge margin. On top of that the guys says If i really care abt speed then I should go fo Core i7

I think the basic package plus and upgraded sound card should be OK for me. I have a choice of winXP or vista on top of it.

Is there anything I should be looking for in particular ? any suggestions ?
 
You don't need a lot of CPU if you are just going to listen to music. You could use a PIII and it would have plenty of power for simply playing back an audio file. Core 2 Quad is just insane overkill for a media server. I have a older P4 3.2GHz and 768MB of RAM and a crappy old SIS based motherboard. I bought a nice case and cobbled the rest together out of spare parts I acquired on the job. I'm using WinXP to run XBMC, and it runs smooth as silk. Don't use Vista, use XP.

IMO, buy quality parts, but nothing too outrageous like the Quad Core, and spend the saved money on a quality audio card with ASIO drivers. I wouldn't bother with any on-board audio if it doesn't have ASIO drivers, as they bypass all the Windows sound mixer BS that is said to sample everything to 48KHz.

Get the best quality motherboard, soundcard, and power supply that you can. Places where you can save money are the CPU ( basic Core2 is fine) and hard drive (it's going to fail anyway), and memory (1 Gig is fine for a media server with XP). The reason I say that the hard drive is going to fail is because it is the most fail prone part on a PC, so if you approach it thinking that it's going to fail and you backup your data, you are on the right track. Get the cheapest drive with the best warranty. I've seen em all die. Kingston Value RAM is good RAM for cheap.

I keep my flac files on a Linux server, and I have a script that mirrors the directory to my media server every time I boot it up, so I have 2 copies of the same data.

IMO if you are only going to listen to music, a Squeezebox duet would probably be really nice, but I like my media server. I never planned to use it for video, but I find that I really enjoy the convenience for movies.
 
Blue Star said:
Thanks guys. Thank you all for your suggestions. hpsenika I see your point and basially at some point i would prfer to have a dedicated music server, something other then a PC but for now, given my financial situation and the fact that I can use a desktop in more then one way, I am inclined towards the PC based solution.

Ender, thanks for comping all the information. Its very useful for a person not computer geek(like me) I guess your post stands up to your title :)

So I called a local computer center yesterday and they basically gave a following quotation:
Intel Pentium 4, Core 2 Duo 2.66ghz
2 GB memory Can exapnd up to 4GB
1 TB HDD
Asus P5Q
20" wide screen flat panel
G54 graphics card
firewire included
Cost ~850$


he sayd the onboard sound card is pretty decent, 8 channels etc etc but for 150-250USD I can upgrade. I can also go to ATI Radeon graphics for 80$ and for another 50$ I can go wi-fi
Onboard sound coard with spdif output included

If I go for Core 2 quad processer then the price will change by a huge margin. On top of that the guys says If i really care abt speed then I should go fo Core i7

I think the basic package plus and upgraded sound card should be OK for me. I have a choice of winXP or vista on top of it.

Is there anything I should be looking for in particular ? any suggestions ?
Click to expand...

Only reason I showed quad instead of dual was the price, a quad for the cost of a dual seemed worth it to me, in the arena of video as well as sound. I wouldn't bother with i7 based on your requirements you will not see a justifiable cost/performance ratio.

As for onboard sound I tend to shy away from that for several reasons, but basically OB sound is typically lower quality, noticeably so. I would go with XP as the OS has more software support and the drivers are more mature. Seems he is trying to bluster a bit as well. $50.00USD is high for wireless. Firewire is included on the motherboard so it shouldn't be itemized as a cost. Also did he happen to mention if the 'upgrade' sound card was a creative product? If yes then don't bother your money is better spent elsewhere. I suggest Turtle Beach or Azuentech and as I said above ASUS' Xonar line. For the final thought on audio I would suggest something with both analogue and digital connections such as coax or optical out. For upgraded video cards, I am not sure what G54 graphics is, but you likely won't need much in the way of upgrades as you plan to use it for a music server. If you plan to use it to play video on your TV be it HD or SD, then some sort of upgrade may be required to have the correct connection options because alot of TV's don't have 15 pin Dsub connections.

I think I aswered some of your questions any others I can field?
 
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