[Target1]

Lets say that one were to build a computer, it would have to be a desktop, and design it exclusively around being a music playing machine. Putting an excellent transport in it, say one fo the new Terabyte drives (or 4 quarter terbyte drives to save loads of money), and innards that would basically get the wound from the drive to an on board DAC, to an onboard amp, and finally to your headphone jack (or speakers) cleanly and efficiently with no jitter. I'm relatively sure it could be done, and probably for not much more money than it would be to source out the componants. With a bit of input here on the proper innards, some money, and the help of a very good electrical engineer (I know a couple) I'm not sure it would be overly difficult.

Mark

PS this may have been suggested before, and if so you can just post the link here to the previous topic because I didn't really search at all.

 

[drminky]

Your biggest hurdle will be noise. More drives + more fans = lots of annoying noise - not good for a music server. Can be done on a desktop with specialised cases, power supply, heatpipes etc. This you would have to figure into the cost. Or you could get a zero-fan iBook of course, or another quiet laptop (look for ones with cool-running procs).

As far as interfaces from pc to dac goes, best to worst:

1) USB2 (data only - no power feed, and no usb-spdif conversion like m-audio etc) easy to implement on the pc side (probably already there) but difficult on the dac side (only a few support at this stage, or you have to get your dac modded)

2) USB1 (as above)

3) coaxial spdif

4) optical (toslink) although can compete with coaxial at same price point with a good cable.

-also pcmcia, but not sure where that would fit on the list.

 

[kunwar]

you are better off getting a Chaintech AV710a and then hooking up something like the DAC1 or another dac whose flavor appeals to you.
Why I recommend chosing a dac is because not everyone likes music presented the way the DAC1 does it.
Some like the BelCanto dac2 and still others seem to like the Apogee mini Dac or for that matter something like the Grace910.
it just depends on what your aim is in terms of sound quality.
Of course you can just get an EMU 1212M and be quite happy with it.

but it is my experience that one tends to spend more money to try and improve their rigs once they have heard a better one.
the DAC1, dac2, mini-DAC and Grace901 ( to a lesser extent) border on the verge of best return for least money before one forks out megabucks to get better sound quality.

 

[Target1]

I'm not really discussing specific amps or DACs to put in the machine. I think you could put just about anything in barring those that are too big. Further, liquid cooling is about 1 year away from being mainstream, and its already offered on some desktops. A normal fan is like $30, and a full desktop liquid cooling system is about $400 and dropping. So we can eliminate noise. I know very little about the best way to transport the data from one spot to another though that will do it smoothly and efficiently. Namely from the RAM to the DAC. Further the drive spinning won't be a problem at all. You can easily get drives that spin at 15k rpm. These will load a song into the RAM SUPER fast. And if they computer is devoted 100% to music you simply have about a gig of ram, and an entire album in any lossless encoding can be held in the RAM no problem.

Target

 

[mikechai]

A good discussion of this topic can be found here and here.

 

[knestle]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Target1 A normal fan is like $30, and a full desktop liquid cooling system is about $400 and dropping. Target

A 'normal' fan is more like $15, but there is always more than one (seven in my system).

Effective water cooling systems are already well below the $400 range.

Unfortunately, water cooling does not eliminate fans. You still need at least one for the radiator.

Is the water pump totally silent?

Have fun

Ken

 

[aug1516]

I don't think this would be a profitable endeavor. By integrating the DAC and AMP into the computer you would render both un-upgradeable to some degree. Besides that, you would have a very large problem with power. The power supplies that run things like DAC's and Amps are usually designed to provide very clean power to these devices, a computer power supply is not. You would have to integrate multiple power supplies into this single unit which would be quite difficult to do and generate lots of heat needing to be dissipated. Even with good power supply components I imagine the power could still become relatively unclean with all the other stuff going on inside the PC. The insides of a computer and not the ideal environment for audio. That's why most people prefer to use optical digital output from the computer because the optical output doesn't carry over any of the garbage that can be picked up inside the pc.

 

[gaboo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by knestle Is the water pump totally silent? Ken

This one is: Zalman Reserator1.

 

[Skarecrow]

I have 3 computers in this room.
One is cooled by a Koolance Exos external watercooling setup.
One is cooled by an internal Dangerden/Eheim setup.
One is cooled by the retail heatsink/fan supplied with AMD cpus.

The most silent pc is... the amd heatsink/fan combo. I kid you not. watercooling is quiet compared to 8000rpm 60mm and 7000rpm 80mm fans, but it is NOT silent. I simply cannot hear the AMD fan until my ear is within 6-8 inches of it.

Not to mention that bacterial growth in watercooling systems (it DOES happen no matter how much anti-bacterial solution you use. I've even resorted to using clorox bleach, which kills the bacteria but it comes back a few months later every time) and corrosion are pretty much par for the course. If I was to rebuild these systems from scratch, they'd all be air cooled with retail heatsinks, or maybe zalman setups. Watercooling is a hastle the likes of which you just don't know until you've dealt with it.

oh btw, if you think a fan is loud and annoying to your headphone listening, try a water pump that's gotten a few air bubbles in it. UGH that can almost wake me up from my sleep.

BTW, where did you see these 1 terrabyte drives? The biggest drives I've seen for sale are in the 400gb range. I really think that two 250gb drives should be enough for most people's music collection. I currently have 354 albums compressed with FLAC stored in 122gb, so 500gb should be enough for at least 1400 albums. how many do you really have?

 

[laughingman]

Ulternatively, completely sealed water cooling is coming out, I think apple g5 has it. It don't have the problem of bacteria, you don't nee to change water, in term of cooling performance, probably inbetween water cool and air cooling.

Why get slow spinning harddrive when you can get use a noise isolating hd cases?

Someone should build headphone amps that fit into the 5 inch bays, with LCD display screens on them, and allow the change of rechargable battery from outside

if you are rich, get this

ps: harddrive are cheap as dirt now days, get 5 200 gig if you want, they are like below $70 each if you can find the deal (fatwallet, slickdeal, anandtech...).

 

[Mr.Radar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by laughingman Why get slow spinning harddrive when you can get use a noise isolating hd cases?

Because fast HDDs make a lot of heat, heat that those noise-isolating HDD cases can't handle without a fan, which means you either have the noise from a fan (usually really annoying 40mm fans too) or noise from the drive in a standard case.

 

[JazzJackRabbit]

Quote:

Originally Posted by laughingman if you are rich, get this

Sadly it was proven unsafe for harddrives. One guy on another forum got one and put his barraIV in a it, the SMART temps were up to 60 degrees celsius and two weeks later the hard drive died. The guy insists that is a coincidence, but there is no way I'd trust my hard drives to TNN. Hard drives simply need active cooling nowadays.

 

[lini]

http://www.hushtechnologies.net/start.html

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

 

[JeffL]

Hey, you all said high-end right?

I'm surprised nobody has considered SERIOUS watercooling as a vialble option.

By this I mean completely custom.

Water cooling is kinda pointless since most setups just move the heat from the CPU to outside the case for extraction, and although this does lower noise, the hassle is increased.

There is one thing I have yet to see: A water cooling/refrigeration setup that not only cools the CPU, but the chipset, the VGA, all the hard drives, AND the AIR itself in the case. By cooling the air in the case, you could completely seal all air openings (thus eliminating dust problems, and a source of noise leakage). Thusly, you could pump the water outside the case via PVC piping (in wall perhaps!) to another room for refrigeration and pumping back to the computer (and also where the reservoir would be located).

Not only would this setup be extremely effective, but could cool multiple computers, and even power amps and projectors too, if so enclined, and the heat could be safely extracted in the next room over or even outside (lowering AC bills perhaps).

 

[natgun]

i am an IT person, and i build computers for friends/family on the side. i currently have a HTPC in my living room running cableTV, MP3 audio and DVD playback, and of course its a fully functioning computer. ive been planning a dedicated hi-fi computer for a long time, but unfortunately my funds have been limited so i can only dream. basically the only way i would do a hi-fi computer is in fact 2 separate computers with some special hardware choices.

first of all, you would need a quiet computer for playback.. the only way to accomplish this is with a heatsink/fan combo. the zalman heatsink/fan combos work extrodinarily well while basically eliminating audible noise outside the case. the cnps7000 series has a switch for low/high operating speeds, at the low setting it is inaudible from more than 6 inches away. a silent power supply would also be needed, silentx has gotten rave reviews and i believe enermax has just announced a fanless PS unit. you would also need a fanless video card, which are easy to find, and quiet case fans. again silentx has a line of silent case fans which put out no sound from more than a few inches away.

second you would need a quiet hard drive. only 1 drive is needed and i should be something small for just your OS and winamp(or whatever your fav playback software is). hell a 10 gig would probably do it, but those basically no longer exist. the seagate 7200 series i belive is just about the quietest hard drive your going to find. you can also find drive quieting kits, but i think that might be a little overboard. as long as you put a decent ammount of memory in the computer, disk access will be essentially none once the OS and playback software is loaded. the only other consideration would be a sound card. unless you are planning to purchase a very expensive RME card or comeparable, i would not go with analog output because of the ELM noise inherant on the inside of a computer case. i would pass a digital signal out via digital coax or optical cable to an external DAC. the m-audio audiophile would be my choice as it has mature drivers, lots of software support, and ASIO output via the digital output connector.

ASIO is a type of interface that allowes your audio to bypass a peice of software called Kmixer. kmixer upsamples all 44.1khz audio on a windows computer to 48khz. normally thats not a problem, but kmixer uses a crappy algorithm that actually decreases the quality of your music output. without getting into too much detail, you want ASIO output and the only cards that do it via digital output at 44.1khz are pro-recording sound cards, hence the m-audio.

now the 2nd componant would be a dedicated storage server for your music files. some sort of lossless encoding would be the name of the game(flac, wma-lossless, aac-lossless, ape or wav) it doesnt have to be anything special, just a simple(cheap) system with a bunch of hard drives configured in either a raid 1 or raid 5 array for redundancy. stick this computer in another room/closet, and run a network connection to your plaback machine. if you wanted to get real fancy, you could even run wireless. now your music playback machine will pull its files off of the network, not the local hard drives so hard drive noise will be essentially eliminated.

what would i pay for the whole setup, including both computers? i could probably build it for ~$1200-1500 im guessing, possibly cheaper because you dont need any real horsepower to playback music files. depending on how much hard drive space you would want. and of course, this would not include the external DAC.