[poseidonsvoice]

Just wanted to ask the opinion of other AC'ers here. Yesterday, I upgraded my entire computer system. I went from a laptop with 1 gigabyte of memory, AMD Athlon (1st generation) CPU, running Windows XP to a new desktop. The new desktop contains an AMD Phenom (Quad Core) processor with 4 gigabytes of memory and two 640GB hard drives, running the 64 bit version of Windows Vista. I also upgraded my Squeezebox software from version 7.3 to 7.4 beta.

Music is noticeably smoother, yet more detailed, more dimensional etc...a pretty huge difference. I'm wondering if everything is because of the upgraded software or if the major hardware upgrade is also part of this. The newer computer can also multitask amazingly well. I can run Mozilla Firefox, while running the Squeezebox software, while downloading a major file off the net, while reading the latest edition of Tone Audio with incredible graphics, etc...credit to my 22 inch Viewsonic monitor.

All for $600.

Pretty amazing if you ask me, and much cheaper than that Sooloos stuff.

[JEaton]

There's no way that new server hardware would affect the sound quality of music played on the Squeezebox.  Unless you were getting dropouts before.  The server just has to keep the player's buffer filled.

You upgraded to SC 7.4, so the firmware in the SB was also upgraded.  I suppose if you buy into the theory that different firmware versions on the SB sound different, then that might account for a difference.  I've seen some wacky opinions posted on AC on how different firmware sounds.

One thing you will probably notice is that the SB operates more smoothly, with faster response times, due to the much faster new server.  With the faster server, you might give a try to setting your player's display settings to something like Scroll Pixels=1 and Scroll Rate=0.012 (adjust the second number to suite your tastes - smaller numbers will be faster).  Should give you a much smoother scrolling display on the SB.

[Bob in St. Louis]

There's a several page thread >HERE< that talks about sonic changes when upgrading (or otherwise changing) SqueezeCenter versions.
I've never heard a difference myself and have been through three versions of software for the SB3.

I doubt the PC itself would have had an affect.

Bob

[poseidonsvoice]

Bob and all,

Thanks for your opinions! Bob, I absolutely love what you have done with your system and my favorite picture is the one of your family being oh so appreciative of your hardwork!

Great work!

Anand.

[Bob in St. Louis]

  Yea, I get a lot of comments about that one Anand. My wife still doesn't know I've got that picture on there.
The story behind it was that I was playing with my new camera and they were cuddled in, ready to watch a movie and I was screwing around instead of pressing [PLAY] on the movie. I doubt my wife would think it's a very flattering photo of her.
Thank you for the complement on the system, it means a lot to hear that from my "audio dudes" (as my wife calls all of you). 

Glad to hear you're happy with the way your system is sounding.
Maybe that will help ease the pain of spending money on the upcoming vacation. 

Bob