For those posters here who are not only involved in Music but also Music
in connection with IT, can you help me with the following query and I
apologise if some here feel this post is somewhat more suitable for the
IT newsgroups, needless to say, I have also posted it in just such a
newsgroup.
I have converted a double garage to an excellent Music Room with a Quad
system using Quad 989 Electrostatic Speakers. I have the usual Library
of Classical CD's residing on shelves and my PC, mostly used for office
business, is in the same room. The room has the type of PVC Skirting
Board that can contain wires and therefore I can if I wish connect my PC
to the Audio system but have not yet done so.

Having the need now to update my PC I was considering building or buying
a PC that could not only manage my Media, but in fact store most of my
CD's so that I can find a piece of music very quickly and even arrange a
concert for my friends. I did in fact previously install Music Label in
order to catalogue my collection of CDs but all it did was tell me if I
had a particular work, I still had to "find it" on my shelves, not
always easy.

I should now like to have a very high spec PC with an enormous hard
drive and masses of RAM that could, (in theory), store my entire
collection but also allow me to arrange quick accessibility to my
collection for immediate playback. I would also need to retain some
capacity for ordinary business and office needs. I must add, I don't
envisage editing or composing music, I only want my PC, when needed, to
access my audio system to manage and store music etc.

Can I ask you to help me in building or even buying such a PC with a
spectacular spec that would fulfil the above criteria.
--
Derrick Fawsitt

Can I ask you to help me in building or even buying such a PC with a
spectacular spec that would fulfil the above criteria.

I wouldn't say that you need a particularly impressive PC; about the
only thing that matters is the quality of the sound card, and you should
aim for something impressive there. I researched this area because the
soundcard in my (Lenovo ThinkCentre M52) PC caused earth-loop hum when
connected to my QUAD 33 pre-amp. Almost any PC with current specs will
do the job.

I keep my CD collection (about 500 at the moment) on an external 400Gb
USB2 drive. I notice the performance penalty of even the USB2, so put
your monster inside your new PC.

In calculating the space needed, it's worthwhile allocating ~200Mb per
CD for the MP3 files, and also about 700Mb to keep an image copy of the
CD itself. This way you can re-create your original CD when (as is
inevitable) it fails. There are bacteria specialising in eating CDs...
Armed with the image copies (I use Nero for those) you can "Mount" the
image on a virtual CD drive (Using Alcohol 52%) and then play your
original CD-quality music. I always rip my MP3's from the CD image, as
this is a good way to check that the image is a "good" one - my CD drive
is failing, and sometimes introduces glitches.

A fast CPU is helpful when ripping to high-quality MP3. I use CDEX and
it drives my 3GHz Pentium 4 to 100%, so is the limiting factor in
ripping a CD (Takes about 10 minutes)

I don't use my PC for Hi-Fi listening, but if you plan on previewing the
music, and don't have any need for more than 2 speakers I can highly
recommend the Creative Gigaworks T20 speakers - I'm revelling in the
sound from mine as I type (Pat Metheny - American Garage). They are
spectacularly good, given their diminutive (in Hi-Fi terms) size.

If there's anything specific you need to know, just ask!

--
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/swifty.html
http://www.ringers.org.uk

In article , Derrick Fawsitt
writes
For those posters here who are not only involved in Music but also Music
in connection with IT, can you help me with the following query and I
apologise if some here feel this post is somewhat more suitable for the
IT newsgroups, needless to say, I have also posted it in just such a
newsgroup.
I have converted a double garage to an excellent Music Room with a Quad
system using Quad 989 Electrostatic Speakers. I have the usual Library
of Classical CD's residing on shelves and my PC, mostly used for office
business, is in the same room. The room has the type of PVC Skirting
Board that can contain wires and therefore I can if I wish connect my PC
to the Audio system but have not yet done so.

Having the need now to update my PC I was considering building or buying
a PC that could not only manage my Media, but in fact store most of my
CD's so that I can find a piece of music very quickly and even arrange a
concert for my friends. I did in fact previously install Music Label in
order to catalogue my collection of CDs but all it did was tell me if I
had a particular work, I still had to "find it" on my shelves, not
always easy.

I should now like to have a very high spec PC with an enormous hard
drive and masses of RAM that could, (in theory), store my entire
collection but also allow me to arrange quick accessibility to my
collection for immediate playback. I would also need to retain some
capacity for ordinary business and office needs. I must add, I don't
envisage editing or composing music, I only want my PC, when needed, to
access my audio system to manage and store music etc.

Can I ask you to help me in building or even buying such a PC with a
spectacular spec that would fulfil the above criteria.

The main problem is where to put the PC.. their very awkward to keep
quiet!. If you have somewhere nearby to put it in another room and run
some extender cables then that can get around that one. As to soundcards
there are quite a few around I might suggest that you use the SPDIF
output and get a separate Digital to analogue converter.

Audio from soundcards whilst very good usually has some interface
problems linking the audio outs to your amp.

Have a look on the digital village web site for some examples at
"reasonable" prices.

You could use a Digigram but these are rather pricey albeit very good
indeed.. As to software their are quite a few around that are used for
radio playout purposes which allow you to set up playlists and indexing
is very comprehensive. You wont need ENCO or RCS Master control!! but
there is one that doesn't come to mind now I'll look it up later but its
quite inexpensive and works well we used it last year on an RSL...
--
Tony Sayer

tony sayer wrote:
In article , Derrick Fawsitt
writes
For those posters here who are not only involved in Music but also Music
in connection with IT, can you help me with the following query and I
apologise if some here feel this post is somewhat more suitable for the
IT newsgroups, needless to say, I have also posted it in just such a
newsgroup.
I have converted a double garage to an excellent Music Room with a Quad
system using Quad 989 Electrostatic Speakers. I have the usual Library
of Classical CD's residing on shelves and my PC, mostly used for office
business, is in the same room. The room has the type of PVC Skirting
Board that can contain wires and therefore I can if I wish connect my PC
to the Audio system but have not yet done so.

Having the need now to update my PC I was considering building or buying
a PC that could not only manage my Media, but in fact store most of my
CD's so that I can find a piece of music very quickly and even arrange a
concert for my friends. I did in fact previously install Music Label in
order to catalogue my collection of CDs but all it did was tell me if I
had a particular work, I still had to "find it" on my shelves, not
always easy.

I should now like to have a very high spec PC with an enormous hard
drive and masses of RAM that could, (in theory), store my entire
collection but also allow me to arrange quick accessibility to my
collection for immediate playback. I would also need to retain some
capacity for ordinary business and office needs. I must add, I don't
envisage editing or composing music, I only want my PC, when needed, to
access my audio system to manage and store music etc.

Can I ask you to help me in building or even buying such a PC with a
spectacular spec that would fulfil the above criteria.

The main problem is where to put the PC.. their very awkward to keep
quiet!. If you have somewhere nearby to put it in another room and run
some extender cables then that can get around that one. As to soundcards
there are quite a few around I might suggest that you use the SPDIF
output and get a separate Digital to analogue converter.

Audio from soundcards whilst very good usually has some interface
problems linking the audio outs to your amp.

Have a look on the digital village web site for some examples at
"reasonable" prices.

You could use a Digigram but these are rather pricey albeit very good
indeed.. As to software their are quite a few around that are used for
radio playout purposes which allow you to set up playlists and indexing
is very comprehensive. You wont need ENCO or RCS Master control!! but
there is one that doesn't come to mind now I'll look it up later but its
quite inexpensive and works well we used it last year on an RSL...

I use MusicMatch Jukebox for my PC music when away from my main system.
It does everything I need for domestic music reproduction with the
exception that it always has a small gap between tracks, so albums
intended to be played continuously (like Dark Side of the Moon or
Beethoven 9th Symphony 4th movement) play with a short gap as the player
goes from one track to the next. There's a workaround, to record the CD
as one track as well as separate tracks, but that's a bit clumsy.

It's Freeware, and you only need to pay if you also want it to burn CDs
from playlists (you only get 5 free burns with the trial version)

S.


--
http://audiopages.googlepages.com

Steve Swift writes:

In calculating the space needed, it's worthwhile allocating ~200Mb per
CD for the MP3 files, and also about 700Mb to keep an image copy of
the CD itself.

This is probably more complex than Derrick needs. Since he just wants
to be able to play all the CDs he's got, it would be more
straightforward to just store everything in a lossless compressed
format like FLAC, and not worry about MP3 copies. With that you're
looking at about 400MB per (full) CD.

Big hard disks are cheap these days -- 400GB for under sixty quid. My
preferred approach would be to buy four (or more) large SATA disks and
use them as a software RAID5 array. The performance will be more than
adequate for the application, and using RAID5 means that you can
replace a failed disk without losing any data.

--
Adam Sampson http://offog.org/

My preferred approach would be to buy four (or more) large SATA disks
and use them as a software RAID5 array.

I've always been fascinated by RAID arrays - especially their ability to
increase the size of your "disc" without ever going offline. However,
for domestic applications, the noise of four or more discs could get
quite distracting.
I used to run a mainframe disk subsystem that contained 60 PC disks. You
couldn't make yourself heard standing near it.

--
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/swifty.html
http://www.ringers.org.uk

In message , Steve Swift
writes
My preferred approach would be to buy four (or more) large SATA disks
and use them as a software RAID5 array.

I've always been fascinated by RAID arrays - especially their ability
to increase the size of your "disc" without ever going offline.
However, for domestic applications, the noise of four or more discs
could get quite distracting.
I used to run a mainframe disk subsystem that contained 60 PC disks.
You couldn't make yourself heard standing near it.

I am sitting here absorbing all of the posters generous advice with
amazement and gratitude. I won't comment for now except to say thank you
again and give copies of all the posts to the chap who is going to make
up my PC for me so he can "translate" it and use it to help me.
I will try to comment further after I have properly read and assimilated
all the advice herein.

Thank you all again.
--
Derrick Fawsitt

I'd recommend J River Media Centre for your software
http://www.jrmediacenter.com/ it'll do everything you want and If you want
to put the pc somewhere remote, you could always use a Squeezebox instead of
a pc soundcard.

Craig

Thank you all again.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier: Before spending money on an
up-market soundcard (even though I recommended one), at least give the
one that comes with your PC a chance; you can always add a better one
later, as long as you end up with a free PCI slot, or perhaps USB2
connection.

I was all set to upgrade my PC soundcard until I connected it to my QUAD
33/303 system. Apart from the mains hum, the sound quality was excellent
(certainly good enough for my ears) and this is using an IBM system
aimed primarily at business users, so the sound chip is probably a
relatively lowly one.

So I changed my PC speakers, and now I'm in Nirvana.

--
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/swifty.html
http://www.ringers.org.uk

In article , Derrick Fawsitt
writes
In message , Steve Swift
writes
My preferred approach would be to buy four (or more) large SATA disks
and use them as a software RAID5 array.

I've always been fascinated by RAID arrays - especially their ability
to increase the size of your "disc" without ever going offline.
However, for domestic applications, the noise of four or more discs
could get quite distracting.
I used to run a mainframe disk subsystem that contained 60 PC disks.
You couldn't make yourself heard standing near it.

I am sitting here absorbing all of the posters generous advice with
amazement and gratitude. I won't comment for now except to say thank you
again and give copies of all the posts to the chap who is going to make
up my PC for me so he can "translate" it and use it to help me.


He shouldn't need to do much with the translation Derrick, the PC in use
doesn't have to be a stunning fast performer, its more of a file server
than much else. The idea of RAID is a good one and with disc costs
falling on a daily basis you can now record at very high rates. I don't
bother with MP3's just use linear PCM or as some have suggested FLAC.

The bit that "does" deserve attention is the soundcard and I reckon you
might be better off using the inbuilt, as most PC's are these days,
SPDIF digital out and use a high performance external DAC for that
unless you have a very good soundcard the onboard sound just doesn't cut
it for the quality of your replay system!.

The power supply rails in a PC aren't designed with high quality audio
at least analogue audio in mind, thats were the external unit or high
grade soundcard come in.

I've used a relatively low cost Terratec Phase 22 for some applications
as it comes with balanced in's and outs which go quite some way to
eliminate things like ground loops etc which can cause interface
problems..


--
Tony Sayer