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I'm an IT Professional with over 30 years of experience...Last year I wanted to add 4K video to my audio workstation. My base system could already support it: 32 CPU cores, 128GB of RAM, and a RTX3070 video card. I upgraded to a 42" 4K HDR monitor and put a Sonos soundbar on my desk. I found the right software to get things set up, but making it all work involved a huge learning curve (even for an IT expert such as myself), a lot of trial and error, and a lot of frustration...I have a library of 250 4K UHD movies ripped to MKV files on a 18TB hard disk. Is it something I would recommend...maybe. But only to those who have a high tolerance for goal frustration and masochistic tendencies where computer hardware and software integration are concerned.
I think you have too much knowledge to build a video server although all those cores may be useful to rip Blu-ray into .mkv files.
These days a 12 year old could build a video server in an hour. Plug an Intel i7 11700 in an Asus Prime H570M-Plus. Add 16 GB ram and, just for fun, a M2 SSD for the OS and bingo, you got a video server. Windows 11 and the free VLC Video Player completes the package. The i7 11700 will play 4K - 4096x2160@60Hz over HDMI. NO graphics card needed! It will even do dual monitor so the computer can used for something else while watching a movie (DVI-D & HDMI).
If you think my setup doesn't/can't work...
Why anyone feels the need to get personal or take an offensive tone is beyond me.
Quote from: dlaloum on 3 Jul 2022, 05:04 am1) well recorded digital is superior to Vinyl - well, maybe, maybe not.... but Digital has NO wear. But hard drives crash on a regular basis.
That is not entirely true. CD Audio is brickwalled at ~ 22KHz, or the Nyquist frequency of its 44.1KHz sampling rate. See the spectrum below from a CD track loaded into Adobe Audition and note all of the black space above 22KHz.Vinyl records commonly have content that far exceeds the 22KHz limit of CD audio. My phono cartridge/phono preamp combo can reproduce frequences out to about 65KHz. Here is the spectrum of a recent vinyl recording I made using a 192KHz sampling rate in Adobe Audition:Note the spectrum extends out to about 65KHz. There may be more information on the vinyl, but if there is my cartridge/phono preamp cannot reproduce it. This is why I record vinyl at 24bit/192KHz. I want to capture the full frequency range of a vinyl record that my cart/phono pre can reproduce.Naturally, it is fair to point out we can't hear frequencies above 20KHz. However, I have seen some studies on human ultrasonic frequency perception. I don't claim to understand everything in those studies. But my feeling is why not just capture everything on the record and erase any doubt about the fidelity of my digital captures. Since storage is fairly cheap these days I record everything at 24bit/192KHz and occasionally I do DXD 24bit/352.8KHz even though I think it is overkill for my vinyl set up. I mostly do it to address potential IMD and only then on what I would consider a prized recording. --Jerome
What I do is upsample a recording multiple times, in this case vinyl. Re-record it and upsample again. The end result is a better recording than what was originally recorded.
I don't think that's a valid point. At least it is not consistent with my experience as an IT professional, where our datacenter has thousands of hard disks and we might have one fail in a year. But truth be sold we don't sit around waiting for stuff to fail and have an active refresh program for storage and servers...usually every 5 to 7 years. Personally I have not had a hard disk fail in over 10 years. I currently have about 32TB of storage on my home network. Moreover, storage is dirt cheap these days. A 12TB USB 3.0 hard disk will set you back a little over $200. That is a massive amount of storage, even for someone such as myself who has about 5,500 albums in my digital library, mostly in 24bit/192KHz FLAC, DXD 24bit/352.8KHz FLAC, and DSD256. I keep both an online and offline backup of my entire digital music library and the storage to support it cost me less than $350.So the advantages of digital music can't reasonably be argued, it seems to me. I'm a vinylphile too, and it has some advantages that digital lacks. But it also has some weaknesses as well that do not plague digital music. In short, both have their strengths and weakness.--Jerome
I don't wish to be insensitive or brusk but the "my stereo" playing videos has always been a pet peeve, They never struck me as a rational means of conveying what one's stereo sounds like. If the video contained clips with different components then, yes, there's a basis for comparing differences. Other than that.... FWIW, Vinyl sounds better to me on my system when listening closely. Maybe it's me; maybe it's the system; maybe it's both. I digitize my records. Yes, I hear a difference between them. To me, the difference is clear, maybe even obvious, in A/B comparison. Some folks say maybe they hear the difference or they hear an insignificant difference. Some others say it sounds the same. The digital version is not horrible or unlistenable. Non-A/B is reasonably close--for some value of reasonably and close. Many of the records I listen to are historic live performances. The difference in sound quality between the better and worse recordings is far greater than the difference between my analog originals and my digital copies. Digital has the advantage when it comes to portability, user convenience and wear characteristics compared to vinyl. I play records when I want to sit back & focus only on the music. I listen to digital when allowing myself to simultaneously attend anything else.I asked Gabe Wiener, uber-perfectionist, founder of Quintessential Sound and PGM Recordings & chairman of the New York Section of the AES why his productions were only available on CD. He said, "I can make great sounding LPs and CDs. Digital is easier."Thanks for stirring up memories of my friend. As always, YMMV. /mp
There are a number of assumptions there that bear questioning
Lots of DAC's start to misbehave in the last db before clipping at 0db, and once it clips... typically with a pop or click - it impacts the entire frequency range on not just the bit that peaked....
As for Hard drive reliability - anyone who works in IT, and many who don't, are familiar with concepts such as redundant arrays of disks, mirroring and backup... - I use an array with dual redundancy - and I back it up to seperate offline disks periodically.
How do you know that to be the case? are you sure it isn't simple confirmation bias? - or is this a subjective opinion?
Well I did alter the sound to my liking with a mixer. But I have the proof for comparison if you are ever in the neighborhood, warning I'm a slob.In one case for example I took an mp3 download and elevated it to a high quality recording. Another case where upsampling fixed or corrected distortions in the recording. So I know that it works and I have like 90 gigs worth of my favorites songs/albums as proof. A recording though has to have an element of transparency to work. It won't get rid of bad compression. With a good recording the differences are more subtle but noticable with careful listening.
An MP3 is not a valid starting point!
An MP3 is not a valid starting point! - It is a lossy storage format - that means when an MP3 is created from a standard (nonlossy) digital format - it is processed, and things that the algorhythm believe would not be noticed, are discarded. - These cannot be re-created.Various upsampling methods and bits of software try to artificially generate harmonics and other material to provide a more pleasing "upsampled" version of the MP3 - these are further artificial additions.Like the MP3 they differ from the original too ... you may like it or not, you may consider it an improvement, or not - but the end result is getting even further away from the original recording!There are non-lossy compression methods and file formats (eg: flac, and others)If you want an indication of the capabilities and potential quality / transparency capabilities of digital recordings, you have to start with a lossless format. Then the quality of the recording from LP, including everything from cartridge, loading, phono stage, turntable, through to ADC (digital converter) quality, etc... can be auditioned and/or measured.I do have some high bandwidth mp3 recordings that are very good - but that is simply because at the time of purchase no alternative (ie: lossless format) was available - I don't use MP3 to archive/store my vinyl, as that would defeat its purpose! (IMO)