[Hoots]

Are you using a PC for your best stereo listening?  Or, is your CD player better?

I am getting excited again about jukeboxing and now that I have a nice DAC in my pre-pro and interpolation from my PT P1A w/SOCS for REf 3 I think I can get good PC-audio...especially if I focus on bit perfect....not sure if that will be better than using my Denon 2900 with P1a and DAC...buy hoping.

My problem is that I'm learning that bit perfect isn't easy with popular windows players like MusicMatch which I like for ease of use.

What are you using?  Here are the options I see:

1) Squeezebox - I have tried this and it sounds great.  I just don't want to limit myself to the little box display when I have a 55" display and I like to see the album art.   Otherwise SB will allow me to play compressed files like FLAC, I can put the PC in another room for quiet playback from SB, and it's bit perfect.

2) 44.1 soundcard at around $25 that supports kernel streaming and ASIO.  I could use a player like Foobar2000 that doesn't upsample through k-mixer and sound is bit perfect for the lowest price.  The downside is that I can't  use MCE or MusicMatch or iTunes which I like.  No album art and super tagging with Foobar2000.

3) m-audio Transit usb audio card - this would support my windows players and get around k-mixer.  The downside is that it needs to be manually configured to switch back and forth from DTS/DD to stereo.

The other concern I have is that MCE and MM seem to only support wma, wav and mp3.  If I used EAC and FLAC then I would need to convert.  If I use an iPod I would need to convert to one of their formats....all that makes me want to simply use .WAV files.

I'm also concerned about EAC...it doesn't seem to tag as well automatically.  I seem to need to retag in my player ap to get the album art and more data.   MCE with wma is real easy to use.

I have been tempted to just use lossless windows format but then I don't get the retry until perfect copy like with EAC.   Ripping a lot of CDs seems to require doing it right the first time.

[audioengr]

For your player issues, I would recommend iTunes player.  Better on a MAC, but works good on a PC as well.

I use a modded Transit (Off-Ramp Turbo) with Foobar2000 upsampling to 24/96 using SRC upsampler plug-in.  This is the bery best audio that I have heard.  The only better is the Off-Ramp I2S driving the P-3A DAC directly through the I2S input.  With ASIO, Foobar2000 avoids Windows Kmixer.

I just completed a white-paper and submitted it to Positive-feedback.com that talks about PC audio in some detail.  You might look for this one to be published in the next couple of weeks.

Steve N.

[EchiDna]

Hey Hoots, (I'm the facilitator, so you can consider this blatant self promotion   ) you might like to raise your question in the circle intended for this concept -
the Square Circle.

You will find quite few ideas, concepts and more there...

Myself - I'm with Steve N, minus the USB output (for now) as I'm using the same software setup and a lynx soundcard... controlled via PDA over wireless network. Fantastic sound and fantastic user friendliness.

[Hoots]

Thanks...I guess  I should have looked at the SQUARE...I really didn't know what that was...thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Steve, thanks...very interesting..I saw your site and that is of interest..more questions on the other section.

[SCUBADON]

Hoot, I use Steve's system and suggestions.  Before this, I was using a $5000.00 Wadia 850 CD Player.  The usb with the turbo mod and a Benchmark Dac-1 (less than $2,000 for the set), sounds much better than the Wadia.

Having over 1,800 CD available on hard drives with instant access is a huge advantage.

Hope this helps.

[pennylane]

I'm using a modded M-Audio Revolution.  But that costs more than $25.

Over at http://www.head-fi.org, people have been very impressed with this this Chaintech AV-710

I can look for some threads later, but supposedly it's not much worse than my Revo (at stock).

[rbrb]

I'm using a modded M-Audio Revolution.  But that costs more than $25.

Over at http://www.head-fi.org, people have been very impressed with this this Chaintech AV-710

I can look for some threads later, but supposedly it's not much worse than my Revo (at stock).

I am in the process of building a Media Center PC using a M-Audio Audiophile 192 and a Revolution 5.1, what mods have you had done to your Revolution??