[adydula]

For the past several months I have been looking at several PC based solutions for all my ripped Flacs.....500 cds, 7K songs etc.

I played with a vortexbox and a WIN 7 laptop and looked at a ALIX solution as well.

I am what I will say is a 'expert' level pc person. I have been a system engineer for IBM and have been there since day 1 of the PC1 and still muck around with them.

Presently I have 5 towers and 4 laptops and a tablet plus several experiments!! LOL..

I went thru the Squeezeox Touch thing, playing FLACS via Laptop and enet to my Oppo BD83SE to use its Sabre Dacs...

Used a Tablet and an Android phone as a controller to  a Laptop via Jriver and Gizmo.

in the end I have settled in on a WIN 7 PC notebook, stripped down to minimal services and its working very well.

The notebook has WIN 7 64 bit Professional on it, runnning Jriver Music Center 16.

All flacs are on the single 320gb hard drive, no SSD in it.

I have an Iomega USB wireless keyboard that controls the PC very well over 20 feet away if needed.
I sit 15 feet from the speakers in the sweet spot.

With most solutions the display ie Squeezebox is very small and hard to read from 15 feet away. Even with the Gizmo app on the Android phone things are just well SMALL even with a Tablet things are better but the real deal here is :

HDMI from the notebook to my 58" plasma TV/Display...

JRiver has a a Theater view and using this and the hdmi connection to the 58" plasma you have a wonderful visual display of your albums / cd's etc...and there are more integrated items available as well....YouTube, Hulu, your TV, etc.....even the C:\ and the WIN7 file system...

I see no need for a Android app on a phone or Tablet...all the information is easliy readable even for me at a ripe old age of 62!!! Without any glasses!!

Another neat thing with the Jriver solution is in Theater Mode while your music is playing you get visual photos being streamed from the internet that gives you a visual slideshow of the artist...and it really adds to the overall presentation.

I have the system tuned so there are no skips or hesitations...took a little service stopping etc to get this to be good.

The laptop is connected to a USB DAC to a PreAmp then on to the AMP and speakers.

The vortexbox was ok but you need a device to access the Logitech Server code running on the Linux distro...the VB needs to be close to your hardware etc...and the Jriver Theater mode just blows the Squeeze Server stuff away....

With the Win7 solution my remote device is a $50 USB wireless keyboard made by Iomega. Its almost full size, light , easy to type on, not like these mini micro usb controllers....couldnt stand that...they are like texting on your phone..try that in a dimly lit room!

So I have saved the cost of second cost controller like a Tablet or IPAD2, only uses a note book...and the sound quality I have AB'd with CD's in the high end CD player and you can not tell the difference in sound quality....

So after lots of playing and mucking around the solution for me is here and working!!
The only thing in the furure is getting a larger hdrive in the notebook or using a eSata type drive if I exceed the remaining 100gb I have left on the drive.

And finally all this is 'backup' up on an external device, including the Operating System, Music files and Jriver Music Libraray csutomizations..

Just thougth I would share!
All the best
Alex
 

[wired4sound]

Just wondering, what brand of USB DAC (on laptop) are you using? I am also thinking of using a laptop for music server. Any unique features I should have on the laptop that is not usually included at the current market of laptops?
Thanks for sharing.

[audioseduction]

Thanks for sharing!

I also us a Win 7 64bit Pro edition OS with 8GB of ram.  I have JRMC 16 loaded on it also.  I use my Motorola  Xoom Android tablet with Gizmo to remote control which I love! I have a 3TB Sata 3 drive in the music server for my music files which are uncompressed FLAC files using dBpoweramp to rip with. This OS is bare to the bones and just works Perfect! I have it play the tracks from memory.  Sound so good!  Here is my signal path below.

FLAC stored on Dedicated Music Server/JRiver Media Center 16 > Audioquest Carbon USB cable > Bel Canto USB Light Link 24/96 "ST Fiber Media Converter"> Bel Canto DAC3.5VB/REF VB Cable/VBS1 Power Supply > Tara Labs ISM XLR Cables > Pass Labs XP-20 Preamp > Tara Labs ISM XLR Cables > Pass Labs xa160.5 Mono Blocks > Tara Labs ISM The One Speaker Cables > Martin Logan Summit X speakers

Here are a couple of pics of my dedicated 2CH rig.

[adydula]

wired4sound.....

Have to remember that I am a slow convert to most things technically, so digital audio was really well.....not for me for a long time until I was convinced that I could do bit perfect, have software that would rip accurately and have the ability to turn those bits back into analog and not be able to discern any differences...mainly because there isnt any difference!

When FLACS came into being I was willing to play.

The DAC I have is my second its a HRT Music Streamer ii +, all of $350. I had a HRT MSii and was convinced to trade up. I have a SCHIIT Audio Bifrost coming as a demo unit so I will compare etc....

The thing in a laptop I would look for is HDMI output, eSata output and USB 3.0 ports.
Also a solid state drive would be nice but they still are costly. I have a desktop tower game system with (4) of them in it plus sevearl TB drives (sata). (note their are several laptops with DisplayPort output.....these are not HDMI....HDMI is what you want).

The neat thing about this setup is the use of you HT display in Theater Mode....it makes a tablet look well...just "small" neat albeit but the wow factor and useability to dwarfed by a large screen display....

My TV has only 2 HDMI inputs the laptops HDMI goes to HDMI 2, the HDMI 1 input comes from my AVR for HT BlueRay and yes the old red version of HD format!! The one that lost!! LOL!

Audioseduction! WOW! What an awesome system....nice setup...I had a set of Maggies, a set of Acoustat 2+2 electrostatics, a pair of Mirage M1's (180 lbs each)...and now a set of SongTowers from Jim Salk....use a AVA Ultravalve Tube amp with a whopping 35+ watts of so per channel....it will make your ears very uncomfortable...but very, very musical.

I actually think I saw your pictures of your Motorola Xoom etc somewhere...and started thinking a Tablet...got a few from work and played with Gizmo...amazing how fast it is in response for a controller....still might do this, but the Theater View to me is really nice.

All the best!
Alex

Note the laptop only has 4gb of memory, is running wireless and the wireless USB for the IOMEGA keyboard, the CPU is 1.2 Ghx and it handles this stuff very well....maybe upgrade here someday..to a faster CPU.

[gkinberg]

I am very interested in this thread. Adydula, your setup is much like what I eventually want to achieve. I am still a ways away. In part, I'm trying to determine how to connect a server from the office to the audio system in the living room.

[chip]

Is there a reason you chose Jriver over Foobar?
Are you using wasapi in Jriver?

[cnm_mike]

I also have a dedicated PC acting as a server and using MC15. Would you mind sharing with us the services that you have left running on your PC?

Thx,
Mike

[adydula]

Also note I have an ethenet cable from the laptop musinc server to my Oppo BD83SE and can play the flacs to the Oppo and use its high end Sabre DAC's by using Asset from DBpoweramp...the Flacs get transcoded back to the original redbook cd pcm....the interface here is on the Oppo which gets to the 58" plasma screen via HDMI to the AVR and then to the large screen...the sound is identical to me but the Oppo interface is well.....a bit dated and 'crude' but does work.

Having the laptop connected directly to the TV always me not to have the AVR on at all when playing 2 channel audio. If I want to watch a bluray etc I easliy select the hdmi input on the TV ( remember I have 2 on the plasma) and its coming from the AVR to which the 2 HD players are connected.

Mike I will take a look later, am at work...but all the normal services like Themes, auto updating, printservices etc are all turned off. I went thru a laborious process of turning them off in small groups and just playing for a few days...etc...I found this link and played with this set as a base:

http://files.computeraudiophile.com/2011/0623/C.A.P.S.v2-Services.pdf

Jriver is plain nice visually in Theater Mode, its designed to see from across the room. Instead of enlarging fonts, icon sizes etc...and its FAST, simple to very detailed. I do use WASAPI event mode. I tried them all.
Remember WASAPI is used for sound from the pc to soundcard in the pc. In a notebook I dont use a soundcard, I use USB out..so exclusive mode is selected but the WASAPI is selected as well in the DSP options in MC16. By the way I cant tell any difference in using Direct Sound, ASIO or the WASAPI modes. But let it stay in what the experts say is the WASAPI for Win7...in the XP days it was ASIO....those day for me are over..lol.

A good link:
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Windows-7-Audio-J-River-Media-Center-14-Configuration

I did try Foobar a few times and just didnt like the useability...I hear there is a new 'better' interface?? I have not checked '...might be ok now...but Jriver is well....very nicely done for audio for me. Makes Tagging stuff very easy to do...

gkinberg, the server in your office can be connected in many ways.....my setup is in the dedicated man cave ie the room over the garage...I have my wireless hub there, but it could be anywhere. The limiting factor I found was the connection to my 2 ch audio gear, if using a USB dac. well the dac has to connect to the laptop music server, and the dac to the preamp..so it has to be close to the gear in my case near the 58" plasma screen.

The wireless keyboard resolved my being 15 feet away in the listening position.

What is your office server?? Is it a desktop running windows, a NAS etc...there are many ways to do this.
DLNA etc.

Alex
 

NOTE: It wasnt until the USB Dacs were running in Asynchronous mode and made affordable that I decided to go digital..the HRT Music Streamers brought this technology down to an affordable level....
Aint technology wonderful.

[cnm_mike]

Thanks for the pointer for the serves. If you find the time, I would be interested in what you did over and above the PDF list.

thx again,
Mike