do computers make good sources?
Nov 5, 2003 at 2:28 PM Post #33 of 160
In addition to the issues already raised -- it also depends on what else are you doing. Are you running other applications on the same computer? Are there services running? Are there processes running in the system tray?
 
Nov 5, 2003 at 3:49 PM Post #34 of 160
You can use a PC as transport, and have it sound as good if not better then an a decent/good expensive CD player. I guaruntee most of the people who were quick to judge haven't heard a combo such as an maudio audiophile with digital out to a benchmark dac1. Though that is in't fully a "pc setup" My source is in fact a PC.

Sure a Soundcard's dac sucks usually, and so does the fact it's tied into your computer and picks up noise. My setup here at school sounds pretty damn good. In a few weeks i'll do a comparison between it and my sacdmods555es.
 
Nov 6, 2003 at 10:02 AM Post #35 of 160
Have to agree there.. soundcard is critical to a computer's performance on music playback... Given that though, I think it's still easier to deal with a separate CD player at any given day...

I don't think computer could ever match the quality of a truly high-end CD player though... There's too much variable in place, from the software you use to play back to the music, the protocol used communicating with the sound card, the sound card driver support.. the actual hardware.. there's just too many things going on.

The noise is always a concern as well... When I listen to quiet music (jazz with a lot of silent notes), I can definitely hear the fans from my computer... Most of the time I can ignore it, but that still factors into part of the enjoyment.
 
Nov 6, 2003 at 2:45 PM Post #36 of 160
I listen to music through my PC using a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and Winamp2.9.1 with the MAD decoder. Soon I hope to upgrade to a Bithead!!

I like PC's, they're quite convienient.
 
Nov 6, 2003 at 3:05 PM Post #37 of 160
I have this Antec Sonata Quiet Case at work. There's a bit of noise here from air conditioners and such but when I'm in first thing in the morning before everyone I'm suprised that you can't hear a thing from it and it's sitting right beside me. My old system (which I have at home now) sounds like a jet airplane.
 
Nov 24, 2003 at 8:08 AM Post #38 of 160
Iron Dreamer made a believer out of me.
Monkey Audio is very impressive. I will be running some heavy duty A<-->B tests when I get my Muse 2 DAC.
I simply cannot stand MP3's. Hard drives are getting cheaper every day, so it's about time to rip everything to disk.

I already have a nearly dead silent PC. I put together a Home Theater PC that is cooled only with two 80mm Panaflos at 7volts.
Of course passively cooling a PIII is easy. I am going to upgrade it early next year to a Pentium M 1.6 or 1.7. But that's another story for another time.......
wink.gif


-Ed
 
Nov 25, 2003 at 7:45 AM Post #41 of 160
Quote:

Originally posted by Guild
I can fairly easily notice a difference between flac (even at a compression of 0) and wav


You know that uncompressed flac is digitally identical to wav files, right?
 
Nov 25, 2003 at 7:48 AM Post #42 of 160
I enjoy listening to internet radio -- lots of interesting stuff out there (admittedly at some fairly poor audio quality!) The hardest part is dealing with computer noise. My current solution is to play audio such as real audio on one computer in a different room, and then rebroadcast that over my home network as a wav file to a silent device such as an Audiotron or SLIMP3 (I actually have both) on my stereo rack. Still a truly silent PC that also had reasonable computing power would be a wonderful addition.

One of the nicest things about a truly silent PC would be being able to listen to music in the purest way while still reading head-fi.org!
 
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