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PC based music server from TAS

I wanted to share my experiences with building the PC based music server that talked about in the December 2007 TAS. I was running it on an dual core Athlon with 1GB memory. At first I used an internal sound card from creative, the Audigy Soundblaster 2. I loaded Exact Audio Copy ( a great program by the way!) along with foobar2000. The sound was just Ok. I added the Kernel Streaming dll file and things got somewhat better. So I went for the whole setup and bought the Echo Gina 3G sound card with decent but not great TSR to XLR cables. I installed ASIO, Purewave and copied in a few Cds using the EAC uncompressed WAV file type. Hooked it all up expecting great things etc. etc. Just as a sidebar my system is all ARC stuff i.e. Ref 1 preamp, Vt100 MkIII, Cd 2 and a PH3 running into Tyler Acoustics Signiture Monitors. The sound was very clear and detailed but it lacked something intangible. The best adjective I can think of is "vitality". It was very lifeless, a quality that I don't get listening to the normal setup. I would be curious to hear if anyone else has attempted this PC setup and what their experiences are. If what I can up with is the expectation of music server sound, I'm not too excited about this trend.
rtaylor
riffer
362 posts
 
I have to admit, I felt the same as you until I added a Slimdevices Transporter to my system. Before that I was using a fairly inexpensive USB DAC, the Stereo-link. It's not that it was bad, it was just a little dry to my ears. Same basic stuff as you EAC/FLAC/Foobar/ASIO4ALL etc. Now, with the Transporter, I am actually playing more digital than vinyl, for the first time.

Also, look at your system. Is a $275 soundcard really in the same bracket as your other components?
tmhaudio
122 posts
 
High quality, external DACs will sigificantly upgrade any computer hard drive transport system.

Jim Ricketts/tmhaudio
dokosan
58 posts
 
The TAS article also has me experimenting with running the PC directly into an integrated using both EAC/Foobar and Apple Lossless/Itunes. This setup does not use the echo soundcard, just a cable from the computer headphone jack to rcas. Thus far, Foobar seems to be slightly better than Itunes (not sure why) but both are flatter than a very dated CDP. This is not to say that the computer source is terrible and would certainly work well for a party but the CD is preferred source right now for critical listening.

Planning on testing Benchmark DAC 1 and Apogee Mini Dac which will hopefully boost performance.
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