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Computer Audio Asylum Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies. |
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In Reply to: Does sound improve with higher end PCs? posted by audiogremlin on November 19, 2011 at 12:47:38:
A computer does not have to be fast by today's standards to handle the audio data stream. Given the price of RAM, there's no excuse to have less than 4GB these days. 5400rpm hard drives are plenty fast.
If you're sending USB out, make sure you check latency speed with DPC Checker (www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml).
As for internal sound cards, I worry more about noisy output due to RF interference inside the computer box.
IMO after 15 years of building HTPC's as a hobby and for family & friends:
1. If the computer *feels* sluggish starting up programs like foobar or whatever else you use to play (iTunes, JRiver...), then it's too slow. Too frustrating to care what it sounds like if the machine is no fun to browse around the music with.
2. As a rule of thumb, if you open the task manager when it's playing music, and > 20% computing power is being used to decode the FLAC/MP3/AAC/etc... then it's too slow. (Even a lowly single core 2GHz CPU should be able to decode 16/44 FLAC at <10%.)
3. Play the highest bit rate song you have - 24/192, 5.1 24/96 FLAC, etc. in point 2 above and evaluate.
4. I've never felt there was any benefit in mods like shutting down printing services if the above criteria are satisfied. I don't think there's any sonic degradation when I surf the web or do light tasks on any of the machines I've built in the last 5 years based on above principles.
5. Do everything you can to achieve bit-perfect output - use ASIO, Kernel Streaming, etc... Whatever works for your DAC/sound card.
6. Do everything you can to keep the computer silent. Nothing worse than fan noise while listening to music.
Good luck. Keep it simple. Don't believe everything you read, test for yourself. Enjoy the music.
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Archimago's Musings: A 'more objective' audiophile blog.
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- Not necessarily - IMHO... - Archimago 11/19/1123:21:59 11/19/11 (0)
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