A Netbook for my new uDAC2 and Grado Headphones, Maybe?

Hello All,

I'm new to Head-Fi and seem to have gotten myself into a corner that I hope you can help me out of. I did search for answers in other threads but did not find an answer to my problem.

First I will warn you that this opening post is going to be a bit lengthy but hopefully entertaining for some and will provide enough background information for those willing to suggest a solution.

I am a programmer that works in a semi-open office environment. That means I spend long hours at my desk, often over night, working and listening to music. A very wide variety of music. More often than not, there are other people in the room so I must use headphones to listen to music while I work.

Recently I was cleaning and rearranging my office and managed to destroy a pair of headphones I have had and enjoyed for many years. So off to Future Shop I went to get some new headphones. After buying and trying several different headphones I settled on the Sennheiser HD408 headphones. I know that many of you will not consider these very good headphones but this is only the beginning of the story.

I chose the HD408 headphones because I found them quite comfortable, and they sounded better than my old headphones. The on-ear design meant my ears did not get all hot and sweaty. I also liked the open design that allowed me to easily hear the phone or a coworker if they spoke to me.

Then the trouble began . . . . .

I was listening to Diana Krall, “Love Letters”, from the Look of Love CD. Actually it was a VBR 128-320 mp3. During the first part of the piece there are some relatively simple tones that I noticed a bit of distortion on. I assumed that something was wrong with the headphones and went back to get a new pair to try. I grabbed a new pair of Sennheiser HD408 headphones and just in case it was the brand and model at fault, I also grabbed a pair of Bose Around-Ear Headphones. Big mistake! Back to the office to have a listen to the two new headphones. The Bose sounded incredible, but I could still hear the distortion. The new HD408 sounded exactly the same as the first pair. So now the trouble shooting began in earnest . . .

At home I listened to the same track, actually the original rip that I had copied to my external hard drive at work. No distortion! So I took the CD and went back to work and popped it into the mini stereo I use for computer speakers. It sounded just fine. Then I put the CD in the PC and listened to it. There was less distortion but still some. OK, now I figured it was the Intel on-board audio in my office PC. Solution, get an external USB audio card like the Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Go! Or the X-Fi Surround 5.1 device. Somewhere along the line I read about the NuForce uDAC2 and FiiO E7 USB DAC/HP Amps. Unable to decide between them I ordered both. I have not received them yet. I figured the uDAC2 will probably work best in my office and the FiiO E7 would make a great headphone amp and remote volume control for setup at home in the living room. That’s whole other story though.

After reading many threads regarding sound quality I also started to re-rip all my CDs to WAV format. I know about FLAC but when you have a 1TB external drive available to store all your music on, why bother. Besides I cannot install Winamp, or Foobar2000 on my office PC. I don’t have administrator privilege and don’t really want it anyway. BUT, to do some of the things you guys have suggested to get the best sound out of my digital music, I need to use one of these media players and setup ASIO and kernel something or other.

OK now the plot really thickens . . . .

I mentioned to my wife that I had tried out the Bose headphones and they sounded amazing. She said that was great because she needed ideas for my upcoming birthday and Christmas. Great except that I had read some less than flattering reviews of the Bose around-ear headphones and wondered if they were the best way to spend close to $200 Cdn. So off I go to the local audio shops to try out the Sennheiser HD555 and HD595 headphones. I had also heard people referring to Grado SR60 headphones. Just my luck the Grado SR80i and SR125i were available to try as well. To be honest I found the Sennheiser HD555 and HD595 rather bland compared to the Grado headphones. The Sennheisers were very nice, comfortable, good looking, but just kind of boring. Sorry Sennheiser fans. Bottom line I liked the Grado 125i the best, and I’m pretty sure my wife went back to the store to get them today. The one store had offered me $50 off and said they would extend that offer to my wife if she came in within a couple of days.

So back to my “problem”. What problem!? . . . I have a very nice mini stereo in my office, I have a uDAC2 on the way, I’m pretty sure I will soon have a pair of Grado headphones, and I have a 1TB external drive soon to be loaded with all my CDs in WAV format. The problem is that damn company PC stuck in the middle of it all. So now I would like to eliminate the company PC from my audio path, but what can I get to take the music off the external hard drive and feed it to my new uDAC2 which will in-turn feed my mini stereo and Grado headphones? It seems like a pretty simple problem. Right!?

Well there are all kinds of media player options but they all assume you are feeding the media to a Home Theater System that has a TV at the center. Or some other type of display to see what you are selecting and so on. So that option is out. Getting a personal media player like the Creative Zen X-Fi2 64GB was tempting but costs the same as a netbook computer.

Wait a minute, a netbook is a computer with USB for the external hard drive, and the uDAC2. It has a nice 10” display to manage my music files. I could install Winamp or Foobar2000 and setup all the ASIO and other stuff to get the bits to the uDAC with as little interference from Windows as possible. Hmmm . . . what about installing Linux and get rid of Windows all together. I only want to use this as a stand-lone music player.

So I started googling “Netbook as media player” and found mostly negative responses to the idea. On the other hand many of you talk about how much better the sound from  your various laptops is, so why not a netbook?

To summarize: I have a great sounding mini stereo, an external hard drive full of my CDs in wav format, a uDAC2, and a set of Grado headphones on the way. Is a netbook, possibly running a stripped down install of Linux a good option to get the music off the hard drive into my uDAC2 and on to my ears through the Grado headphones or my mini stereo? If not then what are the practical alternatives?

If a netbook is a viable option, is the typical Acer/Asus/HP/Samsung/Sony Netbook with an N450 processor, 1GB of ram, and a 160 GB internal drive good enough? Would there be any advantage in going to Linux or should I stick with the Windows 7 Starter that comes on most netbooks?

For The Record:  I have never felt quite right about using the company PC to play my music. It is not forbidden by my employer, but it still feels wrong to me. At one time I considered getting a DVD player that could play mp3 audio files, and a tiny little TV to see the DVD player menus. In the end I settled for buying my own external hard drive and a nice mini stereo and used the company PC to play the mp3 files. The idea of getting the company PC completely out of the equation appeals to me and I am willing to buy the netbook for that reason alone. However I am not willing to shell out more than the typical $300 - $400 dollars on a netbook and I also want something small and unobtrusive.

I look forward to any thoughts and suggestions you may have and thank you in advance for any help you can offer.

Todd in Ottawa

Is this the right forum to ask questions regarding the combination of a uDAC2, Netbook, and possibly switching from Windows 7 Starter to Linux?

Thanks for the great replies!

You have all given me lots to think about.

Thanks for the links Roseval.

I'm not sure what I am going to do yet. I should try Portable Foobar2000 when I get the uDAC2.

Just looking into all the various netbooks is a little overwhelming.You start off looking at N450/1GbDDr2/160Gb5400rpm netbooks and think that for another $100 Cdn you can get into an N455/1GbDDR3/250Gb7200rpm netbook, and then you run across the HP Mini 210-2070CA that is an N455/1GbDDR3/250Gb7200rpm netbook, but it also has "Dolby Advanced Audio" and Bluetooth. I guess using the uDAC would circumvent any benefit of that "Dolby Advanced Audio" but the HP Mini 210-1180CA has the same specs minus the Bluetooth and Dolby Audio for the same price.

The Portable Foobar2000 option may make all that mute of course. I have to admit the idea of taking a cheap netbook, installing Linux, and setting it up as the heart of an office audio system is rather interesting. Getting some hands on experience with Linux could be beneficial in my work as well. As I said above, lots to think about. If I decide to go for it, I could start a thread to log the process.

Todd

I considered the uDAC but did not want to deal with the possible volume control problem.

Regarding the Netbook Linix project:  One thing I would want to be able to do is share my external drives between my Linux netbook and other Windows PCs. Not being able to do that would be a deal breaker for me starting this project. We tried putting one of my external drives on the Linux box here at work and found that it was not recognized because it is NTFS.

Is there a way to share external drives between Linux and Windows systems?

When I posted that my CDs were all ripped "VBR 128-320" I meant Variable Bit Rate minimum 128kbs to max 320kbs, using CDex.

I did pickup a netbook. FS had a deal if you bought two. So one for me and one for my wife. I copied the mp3 of Diana Krall's Love Letters onto a usb stick and tried it in both netbook. Played from the usb stick on either netbook it was flawless. So I am pretty sure it is the company PC on-board audio that is at fault.

I'm not going to rush into the Linux thing right now. Maybe later. First I will experiment with all the toys and see what I think.

Thanks again for all the help and suggestions.

The uDAC2 arrived and I tried it today. The distortion is still there. I copied the mp3 files that I notice the distortion on the most to a USB stick. I took my headphones and went to the local Future Shop. I went to the cheapest netbook they had. An Acer Aspire One. Plugged in the usb stick and headphones and listened . No distortion!?

The strange thing is, the amount of distorion seems to vary. Right now I just have the browser and Windows Media player open and the distorion is not too bad. It still bothers me but it's not as bad as before lunch. I openned all the applications I had open before and it is worse. I also noticed that if I play the wav file there is no distortion.

I will setup the netbook and try the uDAC2 on it and report back how that sounds. First I will try the headphone out on the netbook and then install the uDAC2 and see how that sounds. I will report back when I have done that.

Well I finally got the Acer Aspire One NAV50 out of it's box and powered it up. It has Windows Xp Home on it. I tried plugging the headphones directly into the netbook and played the two songs that I have had trouble with. No distortion! The netbook is still going through some sort of setup and installation process. When it is done I will attach the uDAC2 and see how that works.

The little netbook finally finished all the setup procedures and I attached the uDAC2. It was recognised by Windows Xp and it works.

I can't honestly tell you if the uDAC2 sounds any better than the attaching the headphones directly to the netbook. Both ways there is no distortion, and that is what started this frenzy hardware acquisition and setup.

I am still entertaining the Linux idea. Windows Xp does not seem to be as quick on the netbook as Windows 7. I have found some information about netbook specific distributions of Linux. There is Linux4one that was specifically developed for the Acer Aspire One netbooks. I have also found out that you can get NTSF drivers for linux. So it seems like something that could be done with some success. I am in the middle of a big project at work, that includes some really unrealistic deadlines, so any tinkering will have to wait for a few months. On the bright side I now have a great sounding setup for the many long hours I am going to be stuck in this office banging out code.