[lan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by byronyu wouldn't spdif be the limitation for cdp's too?

Well yes if you're going out to external DAC but I'm talking just using the CD player.

For most computer as source users, the convenience outweighs other factors I would imagine. You can get pretty far up the scale but not enough for me

 

[trains are bad]

Quote:

For serious music collection, CD is still a really good idea, since they can easily last for decades. For CD playback using a CD player is still much more convenient than computers.

I agree that keeping the CDs for collection purposes is a good idea. I disagree, however, that CD playback is easier than HDD playback. Most people (or it seems to me, a college student) spend their life, school, work, play on the computer anyway. Nothing could be more convenient than making a few clicks to play, repeat, or shuffle your entire music collection.

 

[byronyu]

Computers don't have to be that complex. If a friend wanted to make an audio rig like mine, i'd tell him to buy a dell, which is almost as quiet as mine.

After that he could buy a squeezebox and stream music for instance. or just install a EMU which natively bypasses the kmixer.

Ripping isn';t that hard. I just use Windows media player with the autocorrection on.

Sure it's more complex than buying a cdp.. but cdp can cost a lot more, and who wants to get up to change cd's?

The mix tape/cd is dead! it's called shuffle!

 

[Tim D]

Biggest drawbacks are acoustic noise and ground noise and computer literacy/expertise. Former issues can be worked around with research. If a CD is in such poor condition that it produces bad rips assuming you are using good quality reader and rip software, even a home CD player wouldn't play it back perfectly. My Dell laptop is not silent and I have it use its fan rather conservatively. Apple iBook's are silent (Mac Mini's too), and not to mention have usb audio class drivers or an audio subsystem that isn't subpar. I stuck with the Dell because it has enough horsepower to play h.264 without hurtin.

 

[Ferbose]

Quote:

Originally Posted by byronyu Ferbose, i hate cd's cause they can scratch.. and i can be as careful as i want, but they always end up scratching.. bad cases, clumsy gf's, etc.... I Just have one backup of my music on a usb external hd that's off except when backing up. And i don't bother keeping the cd's, since to me there just clutter that gather dust.

But a single virus could wipe out your entire music collection this way, if you don't keep a hard copy somewhere else.
CD scratches can be removed by resurfacing, although I don't have to do this yet.

 

[Ypoknons]

I backup my computer as a rule - it's not just the music, but the years of work, online chat log memories, diaries and most of all, graphics work that I can't bear to lose. When you are using that frame of mind towards your computer, the potenial HD crash doesn't really scare you that much. Even an 500GB hard drive only costs you $500 these days, IIRC - and hard drives that the biggest and best have a big premium; 320GB hard drives go for less than $150 - so when you're an audiophile it's that such a big deal. Audio files aren't that big in mp3 format; loseless of course is another story.

 

[MikoLayer]

damn... my page long reply is GONE, boohoo

to sum it up, a lot of times you get hdd failures that can be recovered through recovery programs. But I would really wanna see some improvement in longevity of strage in the next new medium.

As for virus, I only have had a handful of non-critical infections, which were all promptly detected and cured by free online scans; none of them pertained any mp3/ogg/flac/ape/mpc files, and it is very unusual for any virus for that matter, correct me if I am wrong. I still refuse to believe we are that succeptible to virii (viruses?) even when there is effort made to stay away from questionable sources. If anything, thats what secondary rigs are for!

 

[byronyu]

Viruses? thats' y i have antivirus, and i never surf on it anyways. It's my htpc. dedicated, only for playing media. I have other ones to surf. If ur afraid of getting viruses from downloading music.. well that's illegal, and another issue.

i dont' see it as an issue of should i buy a +$1000 cdp or use my existing computer. It's about I'm dropping over +$1000. WHat should i get? So if u get the pc, keep the computer dedicated!.

For someone computer illiterate, pc's can be daunting. And u do have to worry about backing up ur info. But they do have conveniences, and u don't have to sacrifice sound for it. Buying a mac mini and a squeezebox with an external usb hd for backup can be a simple process, and still cost less than high end cdp. If that's too complex, then go for the cdp.

So back to the original topic: What are the negatives?

1. Complexity?
-if ur pc illiterate, don't get it. If u want to keep is simple, geta mini mac or dell, a squeezebox, and a backup hd. Ur set.

2.Sound Quality?
-there's some debate about whether it can sound better on pc. But there are a lot of audiophile articles out there saying it can sound better on pc. Including ones from stereophile

3. Instability or viruses?
-keep it dedicated. Don't do anything else on it.

4. Having to wait for it to boot up
-don't turn it off

5. Risk of losing ur music
-backup on a external hd, and don't turn it on except to back up. Also, modern hd's are much more robust then hd's 4 years ago.


P.S. About dell notebooks being loud, yes they are. But my dell desktop is quieter than my dell notebook, and notebooks are right in front of u, while ur music rig can be 10 feet away, or in the other room.

 

[zutme]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Asmo Everything really, consider a computer like a car, turning it off, and letting everything cool down, and powering it back up, is harder on the computer than leaving it running 24/7.

Do you have any proof of this? I run my computer 24/7 for convenience, but I have heard people argue this to me many times and it seems somewhat logical but also like ********. So basically what I am asking is where you learned this piece of information because I'm not convinced.

 

[steevc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zutme Do you have any proof of this? I run my computer 24/7 for convenience, but I have heard people argue this to me many times and it seems somewhat logical but also like ********. So basically what I am asking is where you learned this piece of information because I'm not convinced.

My home PC gets switched off every night. This is mainly to save on the electricity bill. Leaving it on 24/7 probably adds up to at least a hundred pounds a year and prices are rising quickly. I can use that money to buy a new hard drive if mine should fail. My current drive has been going for around 6 years so switching off cannot be that bad for it.

To save on running costs you could get one of the VIA EPIA boards as seen at http://mini-itx.com/. These use a fraction of the power of an AMD or Intel chip, but should have plenty of power for music listening. Some boards are fanless and can use fanless power supplies so the PC can be totally silent.

 

[randyruiz]

I currently have two PC's one is a server and the other my workstation. I store all of my .FLAC files on the server and have an external USB harddrive attached to the server. I do nightly backups to the USB drive and a weekly backup to the extra drive I have in my workstation.

I use Hard Drives because this is the only medium that will provide me the greatest amount of flexibility and reliability. (given my configuration) It also happens to be the most conveinent. Everything is going the way of the computer and the Hard Drive is the best medium to operate in that space.

DVD's and CD's have problems with reliability and format longevity. Granted a HD can fail too but as noted above in many cases its recoverable, cant do that with failed DVD or CD's. Original CD's can last for decades but the days of the CD and current DVD's are numbered from a format perspective. DVD/CD's will soon to be replaced by higer capacity formats which will be incompatible with current media. 20 years from now the hardware will not be able to read current formats. Hard Drives on the other hand will be able to transfer their files easily and when it comes from moving from one medium to another its as simple as a single copy command. On the DVD/CD side you will be feeding a thousand cd/dvd's into a player to copy the music off or worse ripping the music, this could take weeks of effort.

 

[chadh]

I've just entered the computer audio world, using a wireless squeezebox to deliver music to my home stereo from my PC. I'm a big fan of this approach. My comments obviously refer only to this type of approach, rather than computer audio in general.

If I use a wireless squeezebox, then I can listen to music well removed from my computer: i.e. no computer noise. Alas, I have to worry now about my wifi arrangements - but that's all fine if I choose the right router, and the right telephone, and never use the microwave (it's not really that bad...except for the telephone thing). Alternatively, I can use a long ethernet cable, and still distance my listening from the PC.

I can also use some sort of networked storage arrangement, so that I don't have to have a whole PC fired up - slim server and my music harddrives can all be attached to this. And as I'm not using this server for any downloading etc., it's pretty safe from viruses etc.

The squeezebox is amenable to modification at relatively low cost, allowing excellent audio quality.

Obviously, I need to back up my collection. And this backup needs to be stored offsite. But that's okay too, as I can now take my whole music collection to work and claim that it's a safety precaution.

If I have an appropriate handheld device with wifi capabilities, I can organise an extremely user-friendly and totally portable user interface for controlling the squeezebox (an improvement over the very simple and reasonably user-friendly interface provided by the squeezebox itself with the remote control), and can even arrange to have album art and liner notes etc. displayed on the handheld screen as a really convenient way of carrying around all of the "nice" stuff one might like about having CDs and CD cases around.

Problems? Well, things go wrong with my computer much more frequently than things go wrong with my CD player. Perhaps this would not factor in if I were using networked storage, or a dedicated music server.

I obviously have to rip my whole collection to a hard drive - big PITA. This is even more of a PITA if I care about generating excellent digital copies, as ripping with something like EAC can be slow. On the bright side, though, the EAC-ripped version on my hard drive is almost certainly better than the version this is read from my CDP/transport and then sent to the DAC.

Presuming I want high quality source material, I'll not be able to compress the files much. That means I need a lot of storage. I think I fit around 600 CDs in FLAC format onto a 250GB hard drive. Fortunately, hard drives are getting cheaper all the time. So even if I need two 250GB hard drives (one for back-up), and need to replace these as a matter of course every two years, it will probably cost less than $300 this year and significantly less in two years time, and less again four years from now...

Also, I no longer have to have 600 CDs stacked anywhere - that's a lot of space saved. Even having stuck all of my CDs into slappa cases, there's a lot of space saved by sending the CDs to the garage. Furthermore, by setting the sharing rights on the music server properly, I could have access to my whole music collection ANYWHERE, as long as I have an internet connection.

There are teething problems that one doesn't associate with using a CD player, though: setting up software, making sure hardware is configured properly etc. And this isn't necessarily a one-time deal. Each time you change hardware, you potentially have this problem. For suckers like me who are stuck with a windows environment, you're just waiting for the service pack update that is automatically loaded onto the PC that will completely disable the whole audio system. But there are upsides on this level as well. Slimserver is opensource, and is continually being improved and plug-ins developed - the range of functions is expanding like crazy.

I'm not sure that the squeezebox makes so much sense if you intend doing all of your listening while at your computer, as most of the cool functionality is available at your fingertips while you sit at the PC, without having to deal with slimserver (so, I don't imagine I'll incorporate a squeezebox into my office system. More likely, I'll use a USB DAC). But if you're simply looking for the most cost-effective, and widely functional transport for an audio rig, then I can't imagine finding anything better than the squeezebox.

Chad