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Hi-fi via computer


Alan Zoff
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I will again demonstrate my ignorance of things computer-related.

I have acquired a "cleaned" second-hand PC with a 250GB hard drive that I thought I might use as a music server. It was apparently built by a computer enthusiast (not for the same purpose), who I am told used only top-spec hardware, including a very solid and quiet case and a DVD/CD combo rewriter.

My idea is to transfer most of my CD albums to the hard drive and use this in place of my (recently expired) CD player, in conjunction with my reasonably high quality Denon amp and JBL floor-stander speakers. The PC monitor combined with a PC remote control adaptor enables me to control and display things very neatly.

All quite straightforward until I come to play back through my amp. The only audio output from the PC is the standard mini-headphone type jack. I have a lead which adapts this to 2 RCA sockets and have wired the amp to that but, although it works, the sound quality is far short of the quality normally produced by the old separate CD player.

I am guessing that I need some other card to put into the PC that will produce a better quality input to the amp and will presumably have phono-type sockets built in. There are spare USB sockets on the PC but I don't know if they provide a means of connecting directly to the amp.

Can anyone advise on how best to proceed and where best to obtain any extra bits needed? Or am I expecting it to do more than is achievable without spending a fortune?

Many thanks
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Am currently looking into this myself with the addition of transfering my vinyl to digital. Not at the play back stage yet but have bought Easy Roxio LP to MP3which also handles CD's. Can't answer your question but will be interested in your experiences.

How did you 'rip' the CD's, and in what file format did you save them for play back. Did you use windows media player?

Sorry for barrage of questions.

JFB

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I have my Technics amp wired into my PC the same way you have and the sound quality is great.  Any idea what sound card you have, if any?  I have an old Yamaha X-wave sound card knocking round you could have for the postage costs but the driver disc might not be present and there was compatibility issues with XP.

A decent sound card should be available cheaply.  I don't have any special sound card now and the sound is good, I would check your connections and more importantly the setting on your PC.  Right click on the speaker icon on the bottom of your desktop and click adjust audio properties you can make quite a lot of adjustments from there.

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On my NAD amp I have, to quote the handbook "a Front panel Media Player (MP) input for attaching portable MP3 Player".

I can connect either my iPod directly to the amp via this or my laptop via the headphone socket.  I don't use either as my prime music input but when I do use it I've found the quality to be pretty good... and this is in compressed mp3 format. I haven't played back straight ripped audio via this method but I would presume this would be even better.

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[quote user="JohnFB"]Am currently looking into this myself with the addition of transfering my vinyl to digital. Not at the play back stage yet but have bought Easy Roxio LP to MP3which also handles CD's. B
[/quote]

I have transferred several LPs to digital. As always with vinyl the joint enemies are static and dust. I was recommended a disc washing product from Germany called Disco-Antistat from a firm called Knosti. Since the details on the box are printed in German, English and France I assume it is available in all three countries - I obtained mine in Cheltenham.

I use this and the results are reasonably good, but there is always some residual surface noise - I suppose that gives the resulting cd an aura of retro-authenticity!

EDIT -  Apparently can be bought from Amazon.

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Instead of converting vinyl to mp3, why don't you just download the albums via torrents? Far easier, cheaper and better quality.

As for sound, I had a pc with a soundblaster card which had digital output. I connected a mono 3.5mm connector to it, and used an adaptor to convert it to a high quality digital cable which plugged straight into my surround sound system.

Very good quality, and I too used that pc as a server for music and also movies too.
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Yes i thought about downloading, but there is a little matter of he Hadopi law, think i got the name right, 3 strikes and your out. I know that no one thinks its enforceable but i just do not want the agro. Besides its winter what better way to pass it than listening to all your old music and reliving the memories.

JFB

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The problem comes with albums not available on line.  Like THIS for instance.  I have a hundred or so albums the rights for which were bought by a guy who has subsequently refused to release them in any form.  This particular one, for instance, regularly changes hands for over £100 on the internet.  Hadopi or not, it's the music you can't download which causes the trouble, Richard.

I have a USB turntable but it's no competition for my proper deck and a decent amp, although it does mean I don't have wires trailing all over my room which is what happens when I'm transferring from my hi-fi.[:-))]

Audio Cleaning Lab software is quite good, Alan.

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[quote user="cooperlola"]The problem comes with albums not available on line.  Like THIS for instance.[/quote]You're not trying hard enough Coops [;-)]

Took me under 5 minutes to find The Noah's Ark Trap along with:

Ballads and Songs

Nic jones 1971

From the Devil to a Stranger

Penguin Eggs

In Search Of

Unearthed

Game Set & Match

Knaresborougt folk Club 1981,

Also from the same source

The Bandoggs 1978

Halliard - The Irish In Me

Halliard 1967

Jon Raven, Nic Jones & Tony Rose - Songs Of A Changing World (1973)

Everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, is out there if you know how and where to look [Www]

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Wow! Just checked back to see if anyone had responded and found all these replies! Many thanks for the comments and suggestions.

As I indicated, I'm a bit of a dunce with computer stuff. It doesn't help that the PC is loaded with unfamiliar software.   E.g. the main operating platform(?) is called Ubantu rather than Microsoft or anything else I might recognise.   "Linux" also features when it's booting up.

I haven't actually succeeded in putting anything onto the hard drive yet and have merely played CDs using the disk drive and an audio program called Rhythmbox. I have played around further but the sound quality is definitely inferior to the normal hi-fi set-up. So looks as if I should get one of the recommended sound cards.

I have found another potential problem in that access to certain areas is protected by a password that was not given to me by the seller - a second-hand shop in England. I will contact them to see if they can get it from the original owner and hope he is traceable and will co-operate.

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Alan, you have a Linux machine (Ubuntu is a flavour of Linux) which IMHO is far superiourt o Micoweak BUT needs a reasonable knowledge of 'puters to get the best (or indeed anything) out of it.. Can I suggest that you beg/borrow/steal a copy of Windows XP, flatten your hard drive and install XP from scratch.  You would probably be unwise to install say Windows 7 as your machine doesn't sound as though it would cope well. With XP, issues such as drivers and incomapatability should largely disappear, with Linux you'll be searching for and installing all sorts of stuff.

BTW, a hard drive of only 250Gb is quite small and you'll soon run out of space.  You can pick up a 1.5 Tb drive these days for around £50 (see ebuyer as previously advised for the sound cards)

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It will just be for music storage.

Someone else has just said to me that I could get all my 7 - 800 CDs on a 250GB HD if I compressed them but would lose quality. The aim here to maintain quality so I was going to be selective about which ones went into the PC and which were simply used as individual discs.
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If ripped in a lossless format 750 Cd's at say 600mb apiece will equate to around 450gb so no, you won't get them all onto a 250gb drive.

I understand your desire to maintain quality however whatever it's spec and whatever the sound card no PC is really going to give you the sort of quality you might be accustomed to from a dedicted HiFi system, just the inherent noise of the power supply and all the processing which is going on will instantly compromise it, so in practical terms you would lose little by compressing to say 256kbps MP3. 256kbps would compress a CD by about a factor of 8.

The thing to do is experiment before committing by ripping a test piece in various bitrates and seeing at which point you can actually detect a significant deterioration. Remember, aural acuity decreases with age and you might be surprised how low you can go before it becomes unacceptable.

Think also if at some time you might want to get a portable player as their capacity is limited so obviously the bigger your files the less you will get onto one.

It's important to try to get it right first time as ripping 7-800 CD's is not something you will want to do twice [:'(]

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If you ripped a cd to mp3 format you will not lose any noticeable quality.

mp3 format can be likened to a jpeg, in that you have to look very closely (on high end jpegs) to see any noticeable loss compared to say a tiff format.

All my music is in mp3 format and ranges between 128kbs to 256kbs, and I generally cannot tell the difference.

So if you were to rip 700 CDs, they would take far less space than 250gb and still maintain a very high quality.

And if you were to record straight from vinyl to digital, your quality is not going to be as high as if you ripped it straight from cd even at 128kbs.
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A Terabite (sp?) external hard drive is pretty good value these days, Alan, so you could still achieve what you want by buying a bit more memory.  £55 is a snip compared to what all the music cost to buy in the first place.

 

Thanks, ANO, I will keep looking.  When I posted about this problem a couple of years ago, there were still 3 NJ albums which weren't available via the usual sources like Limewire etc.  Things have obviously changed a bit.  A company in Scarborough bought the rights to hundreds of British folk musicians' albums in the 70's and they are still languishing in the guy's attic and he refuses to re-release the CDs.  This is particularly depressing in the case of Mr Jones as he had a terrible car accident and suffered brain damage, thus he  lost his ability to work and also his income, so the lack of royalies is a real tragedy for him.   Another couple of guys - Bob Fox and Stu Luckley - re-released all their songs on a new double CD in the early 90s as the only way they could re-coup the losses they had suffered as a result of this t*sser.  If these were wealthy pop stars I wouldn't be so angry but it's a crying shame when people are prepared to pay huge amounts for these things, that they are not sold in the usual way so the artists get their money.[:@]

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  • 2 weeks later...

By way of update, I bought a Yamaha XG sound card on Ebay which has dramatically improved the sound quality through the amp and speakers. The high quality base unit (Antec Sonata) has proved it's worth as well, as it is extremely quiet.

I have a hearing defect which means I normally have to boost certain low frequencies using an equaliser but audiophiles with good hearing have been impressed by the sound quality with the equaliser bypassed, whether from recordings on the hard drive or simply using the PC's disk drive to play CDs direct.

The next step is to link the "new" PC to the internet (it is in another room from this PC but a new router and patch cable should arrive any day now) so that detailed track listings can be stored as well. I have been told that some downloads even come with videos that will play on the screen while the disk is playing but not sure if I will want to go that far, particularly if videos take up a lot of disk space.

Also waiting for an infa-red remote control to arrive which should enable me to control the whole thing without having to fiddle with a standard mouse.

The sound card came with a Yamaha disk, with drivers and hundreds of other features, most of which mean nothing to me. I haven't so far managed to get the disk to run but Ubuntu recognised the card straightaway so I didn't need to load the driver. (I have been offered some general assistance from someone who is a big fan of Ubuntu and as the PC is doing the job I wanted from it, I have decided to leave the Linux system in place and might one day put in the time to get to understand it.)

Thanks again for the comments through this thread. The end result is proving to be even better than I had hoped for.

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