Hi,
I'm thinking about setting up a PC based audio system and looking at a
way to get something that provides a listenable sound.
I'm intending to rip most of my CDs to FLAC to play on it. (And its
'most' of my CDs because over the years I've ended up buying a few
turkeys.)

I've got an old Denon amp and I've had a look on eBay and there seem to
be loads of fairly decent speakers, Mission, Rogers, B&W etc and at
reasonable prices. The missing bit is the sound card. Looking round the
web, I've stumbled on the UD-10 USB Audio Converter which sounds
interesting.
Beyond that its going to mean adding a second, quiet disk, replacing the
fan with a quiet one and siting the system unit under the desk to
minimise noise.

I'd love to hear some opinions from those who know more than me or who
have done something similar.

There is a bit more info he
http://www.tnt-audio.com/sorgenti/tr...io_ud10_e.html
http://www.trendsaudio.com/EN/Produc...Audio_desc.htm

--
/home/richard/News/signature.text

richard wrote:
Hi,
I'm thinking about setting up a PC based audio system and looking at a
way to get something that provides a listenable sound.
I'm intending to rip most of my CDs to FLAC to play on it. (And its
'most' of my CDs because over the years I've ended up buying a few
turkeys.)


I've done this recently using a Mac Mini, iTunes and Apple lossless.

I've got an old Denon amp and I've had a look on eBay and there seem to
be loads of fairly decent speakers, Mission, Rogers, B&W etc and at
reasonable prices. The missing bit is the sound card. Looking round the
web, I've stumbled on the UD-10 USB Audio Converter which sounds
interesting.

Can't help you there - I note with amusement that Russ Andrews is
charging £180 against the US price of $109. He doubtless breathes on it
or somesuch ;-)

I use the Mac digital out connected to an AV amp, and a Griffin iMic for
recording analogue. Seems to work fine.

Beyond that its going to mean adding a second, quiet disk, replacing the
fan with a quiet one and siting the system unit under the desk to
minimise noise.

I had great difficulty doing all of this with a PC. The best discs I've
used for quietness are Samsung, unless you can get a Maxtor 6L250M0
fitted to iMacs - virtually silent somehow. I sort of bought my way out
of fiddling with PCs by taking the Mac route, and no regrets.


Rob

"Rob" wrote in message
...
richard wrote:
Hi,
I'm thinking about setting up a PC based audio system and looking at
a way to get something that provides a listenable sound. I'm
intending to rip most of my CDs to FLAC to play on it. (And its
'most' of my CDs because over the years I've ended up buying a few
turkeys.)


I've done this recently using a Mac Mini, iTunes and Apple lossless.

I've got an old Denon amp and I've had a look on eBay and there seem
to be loads of fairly decent speakers, Mission, Rogers, B&W etc and
at reasonable prices. The missing bit is the sound card. Looking
round the web, I've stumbled on the UD-10 USB Audio Converter which
sounds interesting.

Can't help you there - I note with amusement that Russ Andrews is
charging £180 against the US price of $109. He doubtless breathes on
it or somesuch ;-)



Frankly, people daft enough to buy his stuff at the prices he charges
deserve to get shafted, IMO....



I use the Mac digital out connected to an AV amp, and a Griffin iMic
for recording analogue. Seems to work fine.

Beyond that its going to mean adding a second, quiet disk, replacing
the fan with a quiet one and siting the system unit under the desk to
minimise noise.

I had great difficulty doing all of this with a PC. The best discs
I've used for quietness are Samsung, unless you can get a Maxtor
6L250M0 fitted to iMacs - virtually silent somehow. I sort of bought
my way out of fiddling with PCs by taking the Mac route, and no
regrets.


No idea about noise &c., but this don't seem a bad price to me:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/r...SIN=B000GLKK5I

Keith G wrote:
"Rob" wrote in message
...
richard wrote:
snip

Beyond that its going to mean adding a second, quiet disk, replacing
the fan with a quiet one and siting the system unit under the desk to
minimise noise.
I had great difficulty doing all of this with a PC. The best discs
I've used for quietness are Samsung, unless you can get a Maxtor
6L250M0 fitted to iMacs - virtually silent somehow. I sort of bought
my way out of fiddling with PCs by taking the Mac route, and no
regrets.


No idea about noise &c., but this don't seem a bad price to me:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/r...SIN=B000GLKK5I


As good as it gets I'd guess - Maplin's has just circulated an email
with a 500 gig HD for £99 - 'down from £160'.

Trying to find a silent drive is difficult, but these people sell stuff
that works IME:

http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/home

"Keith G" wrote in message
...

"Rob" wrote in message
...
richard wrote:
Hi,
I'm thinking about setting up a PC based audio system and looking at
a way to get something that provides a listenable sound. I'm
intending to rip most of my CDs to FLAC to play on it. (And its
'most' of my CDs because over the years I've ended up buying a few
turkeys.)


I've done this recently using a Mac Mini, iTunes and Apple lossless.

I've got an old Denon amp and I've had a look on eBay and there seem
to be loads of fairly decent speakers, Mission, Rogers, B&W etc and
at reasonable prices. The missing bit is the sound card. Looking
round the web, I've stumbled on the UD-10 USB Audio Converter which
sounds interesting.

Can't help you there - I note with amusement that Russ Andrews is
charging £180 against the US price of $109. He doubtless breathes on
it or somesuch ;-)



Frankly, people daft enough to buy his stuff at the prices he charges
deserve to get shafted, IMO....



No, ignore that - the price of having the catheter fitted is included,
apparently....

"Rob" wrote


As good as it gets I'd guess - Maplin's has just circulated an email
with a 500 gig HD for £99 - 'down from £160'.


You have to watch most places including Amazon, I find - nobody's
cheapest all the time...



Trying to find a silent drive is difficult, but these people sell
stuff that works IME:

http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/home



Tbh, I find a networked laptop plenty quiet enough for my needs and
handy to navigate material from the viewing/listening position.

On Sun, 24 Jun 2007 12:01:20 +0100, Keith G wrote:

"Rob" wrote


As good as it gets I'd guess - Maplin's has just circulated an email
with a 500 gig HD for £99 - 'down from £160'.


You have to watch most places including Amazon, I find - nobody's
cheapest all the time...



Trying to find a silent drive is difficult, but these people sell stuff
that works IME:

http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/home



Tbh, I find a networked laptop plenty quiet enough for my needs and
handy to navigate material from the viewing/listening position.



Thanks for the comments. I've been doing a bit more research, reading
some audio sites, looking through a load of the old posts on here and
searching eBay. The quietPC site is interesting but I'm not going to
spend that amount of money on an old PC, at least not until I'm sure this
is going to be worth doing. Their total price to get a new case, power
supply and all the rest is £315.

It seems like a good soundcard is another option. The M-Audio Audiophile
2496 seems to be well regarded and these seem to go for about £30 on
eBay. This seems a better option than using the built in sound.

The current plan is,

0. Softwa (Already working.) This is going to have to be Linux as the
BIOS in the PC I'm going to use doesn't recognise large disks and doesn't
seem to have an upgrade path. As Linux doesn't rely on the BIOS for disk
info, its going to work fine when I upgrade the disk and I quite like
Amarok as a player anyway.

1. Speakers: Plenty of good ones on eBay, time to wait for a bargain.
With luck, I can find something suitable for under £100 that I can reuse
if I abandon this project.

2. Soundcard: Again, wait and watch on eBay.Say £35.

If its progressing well, I'll do 3, 4 and 5, otherwise I'll probably
abandon the project before it becomes a money pit.
The simple test is going to be to plug a CD player into the amp and see
how it sounds. If the PC based system sounds anywhere near as good, I'll
know I'm not wasting my time. Then I can start to look at any other
obvious factors like moving the speakers and furniture in the room.


3. DAC: A choice of the UD-10 or a second hand DAC from eBay. I can get
the UD-10, including postage for £75 though I have no idea if there would
be any duty to pay on it. So what I'm going to do is hold off on this for
now, set up the rest and if I'm not happy with the results, I'll try
either the UD-10 or a DAC.

4. New disk drive: Should be easy enough to find something of 250Gb or
over. I'll need a load of new Cds to fill a 500Gb drive. Say £60 though
the prices keep dropping.

5. Fan and silencing the PC: Shouldn't cost too much, I just need to get
it below the background noise level so allow £30 for a heatsink and CPU
fan.

I'm off to eBay to do a spot of monitoring but I'll be lurking around
here as well.

Thanks,
Richard


--
/home/richard/News/signature.text

"richard" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 24 Jun 2007 12:01:20 +0100, Keith G wrote:

"Rob" wrote


As good as it gets I'd guess - Maplin's has just circulated an email
with a 500 gig HD for £99 - 'down from £160'.


You have to watch most places including Amazon, I find - nobody's
cheapest all the time...



Trying to find a silent drive is difficult, but these people sell stuff
that works IME:

http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/home



Tbh, I find a networked laptop plenty quiet enough for my needs and
handy to navigate material from the viewing/listening position.



Thanks for the comments. I've been doing a bit more research, reading
some audio sites, looking through a load of the old posts on here and
searching eBay. The quietPC site is interesting but I'm not going to
spend that amount of money on an old PC, at least not until I'm sure this
is going to be worth doing. Their total price to get a new case, power
supply and all the rest is £315.

It seems like a good soundcard is another option. The M-Audio Audiophile
2496 seems to be well regarded and these seem to go for about £30 on
eBay. This seems a better option than using the built in sound.

The current plan is,

0. Softwa (Already working.) This is going to have to be Linux as the
BIOS in the PC I'm going to use doesn't recognise large disks and doesn't
seem to have an upgrade path. As Linux doesn't rely on the BIOS for disk
info, its going to work fine when I upgrade the disk and I quite like
Amarok as a player anyway.

1. Speakers: Plenty of good ones on eBay, time to wait for a bargain.
With luck, I can find something suitable for under £100 that I can reuse
if I abandon this project.

2. Soundcard: Again, wait and watch on eBay.Say £35.

If its progressing well, I'll do 3, 4 and 5, otherwise I'll probably
abandon the project before it becomes a money pit.
The simple test is going to be to plug a CD player into the amp and see
how it sounds. If the PC based system sounds anywhere near as good, I'll
know I'm not wasting my time. Then I can start to look at any other
obvious factors like moving the speakers and furniture in the room.


3. DAC: A choice of the UD-10 or a second hand DAC from eBay. I can get
the UD-10, including postage for £75 though I have no idea if there would
be any duty to pay on it. So what I'm going to do is hold off on this for
now, set up the rest and if I'm not happy with the results, I'll try
either the UD-10 or a DAC.

4. New disk drive: Should be easy enough to find something of 250Gb or
over. I'll need a load of new Cds to fill a 500Gb drive. Say £60 though
the prices keep dropping.

5. Fan and silencing the PC: Shouldn't cost too much, I just need to get
it below the background noise level so allow £30 for a heatsink and CPU
fan.

I'm off to eBay to do a spot of monitoring but I'll be lurking around
here as well.

Thanks,
Richard


--
/home/richard/News/signature.text

I would budget for a RAID 5 disc array at some stage. If you don't then one
day, your single 500G drive *will* fail, and you'll lose your entire music
library. I know that if you have the CDs, you can reinstall everything, but
ripping 500-1000 CDs isn't a trivial task, and in my view, a RAID 5 array is
good value if it avoids that.

S.

--
http://audiopages.googlepages.com

On Sun, 24 Jun 2007 19:53:50 +0100, Serge Auckland wrote:

---- snip ----

I would budget for a RAID 5 disc array at some stage. If you don't then
one day, your single 500G drive *will* fail, and you'll lose your entire
music library. I know that if you have the CDs, you can reinstall
everything, but ripping 500-1000 CDs isn't a trivial task, and in my
view, a RAID 5 array is good value if it avoids that.

S.

Thanks for the suggestion Serge. On my main PC I have a USB drive that
contains copies of important stuff and I'll probably do the same with the
music. (For the first 120GB...then the USB disk will be full.) Although
it means managing the backups manually it also provides easy movement
between machines and I can leave it switched off and unplugged. The idea
is that it would survive the proverbial lightning strike but that's
probably an illusion as I tend to leave it sitting on top of the system
case. The greatest risk is probably theft but so far I haven't worried
about that enough to do anything about it.
Now you have started me down this route, I really wonder what would get
nicked first.......

Richard


--
/home/richard/News/signature.text

"richard" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 24 Jun 2007 19:53:50 +0100, Serge Auckland wrote:

---- snip ----

I would budget for a RAID 5 disc array at some stage. If you don't then
one day, your single 500G drive *will* fail, and you'll lose your entire
music library. I know that if you have the CDs, you can reinstall
everything, but ripping 500-1000 CDs isn't a trivial task, and in my
view, a RAID 5 array is good value if it avoids that.

S.

Thanks for the suggestion Serge. On my main PC I have a USB drive that
contains copies of important stuff and I'll probably do the same with the
music. (For the first 120GB...then the USB disk will be full.) Although
it means managing the backups manually it also provides easy movement
between machines and I can leave it switched off and unplugged. The idea
is that it would survive the proverbial lightning strike but that's
probably an illusion as I tend to leave it sitting on top of the system
case. The greatest risk is probably theft but so far I haven't worried
about that enough to do anything about it.
Now you have started me down this route, I really wonder what would get
nicked first.......

Richard



I have been doing this for quite a while. I use a cheap HP laptop hard
wired to my home network so I can control all content from my sitting
position in my listening room. My main computer has 2.65TB of storage and
now the new 1TB drives are here and are quite cheap it will solve all our
problems. I run cheap USB external HDs to back up all my music/videos so it
can't get lost.

I use a E-MU Cardbus http://tinyurl.com/grn2j proffessional sound card and
this has a break-out box that sits amongst all my hi-fi gear. You can
conect it straight to an amp via analog or digital but I use it to feed a
high end DAC/pre-amp
http://tinyurl.com/3d7zkd

I settled on Nero Show Time as the software as it will allow play back of
192/24 files that I have ripped from DVD-Audio. You can also make endless
favourite play lists very simply.

I found using the wiresless conection gave me drop outs in high bitrate
applications when someone else was on the network or Windoze/virus scanner
wanted to an update etc.

So I can surf the net, download music etc, talk to you guys and play any
digitised music I have without moving my fat arse ;-)

Cheers TT