Like Marbles, I too was about done. Until today. . .

zybar · « **Reply #40 on:** 9 Dec 2003, 01:37 pm »

Brandon,

Can you give a list of the parts you will using in the pc?

GW

JoshK · « **Reply #41 on:** 9 Dec 2003, 02:11 pm »

Quote from: Hantra

I'm just curious why VRS does not allow a user to use a digital output from the sound card. From everything I read, this card has an amazing digital out. I wonder if that would improve it even further.

You should be able to use something like the M-Audio USB Audiophile external soundcard like I use with it, assuming it has atleast one USB port. USB is suppose to yield a much lower noise floor versus a digital out from an internal SC anyway. The M-Audio has a digital output (converts USB > SPDIF) that you can then use into an external DAC. Viola!

Hantra · « **Reply #42 on:** 9 Dec 2003, 04:36 pm »

Quote from: zybar

Brandon,

Can you give a list of the parts you will using in the pc?

GW

I really don't have them all nailed down yet. Looking at a few quiet power supplies. Likely I will use the Seagate Barracuda IV drives. they are supposed to be as quiet as anything out there.

I'm still struggling with the sound card issue. Not sure if I want to go with the one I really want, or take a chance at using my DAC with one that could be inferior as far as analog output, but save a few hundred dollars.

Hmmm. . . Any ideas? I would like to eliminate the DAC if possible, but if it sounds better with an outboard DAC, then it sounds better. That leaves me with having to have a DAC though, and won't give me the cost savings I was hoping for. But hey, if it sounds better, it sounds better. .

B

Hantra · « **Reply #43 on:** 28 Dec 2003, 04:31 am »

A few weeks ago, I said this:

Quote

These amps had everything the Art Audio Diavolo had, but they had slam! Amazing dynamics, and great bass! Todd tells me much of the dynamics comes from the VRS front-end. I believe it.

Todd is right. My system has not changed a bit except for the addition of my audio PC. And I can tell you that 90% of what I heard at his place was this PC. I never thought ribbons could do what mine are doing right now. This thing just has IMPACT. DYNAMICS by the TON. More dynamics than I have heard, even from my old vinyl rig.

I am going to try it with the Nixon DAC later this weekend, but for now, I am just sitting here mezmerized at every disc I am ripping. . .

B

Marbles · « **Reply #44 on:** 28 Dec 2003, 04:36 am »

What is the PC config?

satfrat · « **Reply #45 on:** 28 Dec 2003, 04:39 am »

What was your final price tag again? Regards, Robin

Hantra · « **Reply #46 on:** 28 Dec 2003, 05:01 am »

Quote

What is the PC config?

Well, I used the Lynx L22 card. I am using a Seagate Barracuda Iv 160GB for the music, and another small one for the OS. Using Windows XP Pro, ripping with EAC in secure mode, and using Foobar2K for playback.

I used a Gateway P4 1.4 with 384MB of RDRAM, and I use a USB wireless network card so I can get the wireless out of the box and away from the system. Not even sure if that matters, but I feel better about it. I bought the CoolerMaster Wave case b/c it matches the Piegas flawlessly.

Honestly, this thing uses less than 100MB of memory in total, even when ripping. Virtually no processor. So any machine would work I suppose. I use RealVNC and control everything from the laptop. I am enjoying it man more than any digital I have had in my system.

Quote

What was your final price tag again?

Robin: I think I ended up with $1,000 in it or thereabouts. Only $525 in the soundcard off ebay.

ALSO, I convered the soundcard with ERS. Don't do that. It shaves a lot of the HF detail off, and seems to slow things down, taking away from the AMAZING Naim-Like pace this thing has. . .

Now. . If I could land a pair of these in silver, that would be divine!

B

satfrat · « **Reply #47 on:** 28 Dec 2003, 05:17 am »

I hear ya about ERS, I'm finding that Z-Sleeves are much a better use of ERS that clears the highs and brings out the detail. 6moons seems to be talking about them allot lately. Sound like I'm gonna have to take some computer classes, webtv is as far as I've gotten. Pretty much preschool, hea?

Regards, Robin

cjr888 · « **Reply #48 on:** 28 Dec 2003, 07:26 am »

There's something I've been considering for a PC/Source setup that I think would be beneficial from both a ripping perspective, and a playback perspective.

Drives, even the fastest are both potentially noisy and potentially never providing the ideal read speeds we'd like, whether you are saving audio, or playing back audio.

The ideal would be doing all this in memory vs. spinning platters. And yes, some drives do have nice buffers to work with, but again, its still a buffer, and you still have the platters.

This would include saving audio to memory, and then copying over to disk when saving audio, and when playing, doing directly from memory.

There are a lot of options in this space, most that are extremely expensive, and usually geared to specific database operations, items typically heaving on cashing, and a lot of video.

Sure you could always do this on the cheap using large software based ram drives, but....

There is one product that's relatively affordable in this space, and can be populated with up to 4GB of memory to use as live storage. That unit is the Cenatak Rocket Drive and Rocket Drive DL. Link: http://www.cenatek.com/product_rocketdrive.cfm

You can also span or stripe multiple rocket drives if you really wanted to go all out on storage.

You won't find a faster access time, something along the lines of .5ms, it eliminates I/O bottlenecks, and you don't have a product with moving parts.

Would certainly be nice to have no latency whatsoever, and essentially completely eliminate the potential for noise due to no moving parts.

So essentially you have the storage area pinned down with lightning fast access, whether for all media, some media, or at time of play. You've eliminated the issues of potentially noisy drives or latency.

Take this and a well cooled, very silent PC, a solid sound card, and good power, and you have a great source from a hardware perspective.

As for software, using EAC and a solid player is good. But there are so, so many options on the software front that can take things further, or provide you with unlimited flexibility, whether you are doing a digital audio workstation, and want 1000 filters available to you, or want to simulate the sound of a triode, or EQ, whether you want to create your own custom filters, or use the thousands that are available for free or at a price.

Tons of options available out there, even those that are simply to set up, like the Asioxo package that can be found http://www2.gol.com/users/pcazeles/asioxo.htm that can provide you with a digital crossover within PC for bi/tri/etc.-amping, PDA remote control, upsampling, convolver support, and room EQ. Anyone interested in it, should also join the Yahoo PAMS and HIFI_DSP mailing lists.

And not being stuck with a single-CD source, and being able to generate playlists, and control everything from a remote with a screen certainly will enhance your listening pleasure....

bubba966 · « **Reply #49 on:** 28 Dec 2003, 07:57 am »

Quote from: cjr888

There is one product that's relatively affordable in this space, and can be populated with up to 4GB of memory to use as live storage. That unit is the Cenatak Rocket Drive and Rocket Drive DL. Link: http://www.cenatek.com/product_rocketdrive.cfm

Relatively affordable huh?

Boy, I wouldn't mind your paychecks if $3,600 for a 4GB Rocket Drive is "relatively affordable"...

Honestly I'd not looked much at SSD's because I was under the impression they were horrendously expensive. So if the affordable type is $3.6K for 4Gigs, how much do the "expensive" one's cost?

cjr888 · « **Reply #50 on:** 28 Dec 2003, 08:06 am »

I was thinking more along the lines of getting a 1GB/2GB/4GB DL board for $499/$659/$819, and populating it with cheap memory... When you figure in your case, power supply, DVD/CD source, card, and have software take care of the rest of the funtionality, and functionality that you'd potentially need several boxes for, or that can be compared with some of the best......

bubba966 · « **Reply #51 on:** 28 Dec 2003, 08:19 am »

Just checked what it'd cost for a 4GB DL board & 4 1GB Kingston chips to populate it with.

The Kingston 1GB chips that Cenatek says are ok to use are $352 each. Which makes the cost of a fully populated 4GB Rocket Drive DL $2,227.

Better than the 4GB Rocket Drive's $3,600. But still seems kinda spendy...

cjr888 · « **Reply #52 on:** 28 Dec 2003, 02:45 pm »

Still not that cheap per se, but looks like you could do a 1gb setup for about $700, and a 4gb at about $1600 using Crucial Memory. What I was thinking was even one of the smaller units, and having a system where it writes to the Rocket Drive while ripping music, and automatically moves to disc afterward, and for playback either pre-stages songs prior to playback, or something to that effect.

Granted you could probably do such things simply by using a ram disk, doing everything in software, and buying a ton of memory to decent effect, but..

Need to peek around more I guess to see all products in the SSD space.

Hantra · « **Reply #53 on:** 28 Dec 2003, 05:30 pm »

Quote

Drives, even the fastest are both potentially noisy and potentially never providing the ideal read speeds we'd like, whether you are saving audio, or playing back audio.

Unless you are going to run your operating system off an SSD, then you still have the noise issue. Not only that, but the SLOWEST hard drive is too fast for reading audio.

It just seems like way too much trouble if you're going to sit down and move the files to the SSD every time you want to listen to a particular disc.

But if you're into overkill, that's cool too. I wouldn't mind hearing it.

B

cryotweaks · « **Reply #54 on:** 29 Dec 2003, 08:14 pm »

Forgive my ignorance, but has anyone had experience with this sytem?

http://www.digiphase.com

skchow · « **Reply #55 on:** 29 Dec 2003, 08:28 pm »

I don't think using these pricy SSDs will make even the slightest difference in playback quality. Given a memory buffer that is large enough to store just a few seconds of audio data, then as far as the computer is concerned, all the audio data is present in memory at all times. Even though a few seconds may seem short to us, the few seconds are an eternity for a modern computer.

Sunny.

Hantra · « **Reply #56 on:** 29 Dec 2003, 09:08 pm »

Quote from: cryotweaks

Forgive my ignorance, but has anyone had experience with this sytem?

http://www.digiphase.com

I have never seen that. I wonder if they'd sell the card.

EchiDna · « **Reply #57 on:** 30 Dec 2003, 12:09 am »

this is really a square circle thread guys

perhaps you can take a look at the info there? most or all of this has been previously discussed...

eico1 · « **Reply #58 on:** 30 Dec 2003, 12:27 am »

hey if you want something to tweek you can try one of these:

http://orban.com/orban/products/stream/1100_overview.html

steve

lkosova · « **Reply #59 on:** 30 Dec 2003, 01:37 am »

For hardware tips check out www.tomshardware.com It rates things like quiet hardrives. I use a IBM deskstar for a speech recognition computer and it was rated the "queitest" at the time.

Another external soundcard is the Andrea usb pod at www.andrea.com I am not sure what you are trying to do with it but it is rated as good as a soundblaster live card ... at least for speech recogniton or the m-audio as mentioned works well plus Soundblaster has an newer external card also that might work better the the m-audio card.

In a "quiet Machine" computer I had they used slicone at every connection and joint any metal to metal interface. When using the computer you could not hear it even with your ear very close it.

Plus you should be able to build a computer for a lot less then what is being said.

www.avscience.com has a whole section on htpc and things being discussed here.

Larry