Audio PC


How important is it to make sure an audio PC is built specifically for that purpose. Is cross talk between PC parts common in terms of creating noise that will be audible through monitors or headphones.

What steps would you guys reccomend to figure out if noise is being generated by components rather than a power outlet?

Is it very expensive to hire an electrician to install audio friendly outlets in your home/studio?

angusdalemon
I built my PC music server based upon information and listening to different devices as the music server to different DACs.

What I have is, an 8Watt (yes eight) commercial grade, two core fanless CPU. Not very powerful, and not high current use, or generating much heat.
Two SSD, one strictly for all software, the other just for media files.

JCat FEMTO USB card.
A 200Watt HDPlex linear power supply with four separate feeds, that feeds 5VDC directly into the USB card, and feeds 5VDC to the SSDs, and 19VDC to the motherboard and CPU.
I use a fanless PC case, with copper and aluminum heat sink.

The operating system is WIN Server 2012 R2 in core mode, software is Fidelizer Pro, Audio Optimizer, JPlay FEMTO.

There are no moving parts to create electrical noise, the power supplies are linear and isolated, the software is quite possibly the biggest player here as it’s designed to turn off processes that just aren’t helping my audio playback.
Everything is plugged into a Puritan PSM-156 power conditioner - cleaning the AC power with exceptional sonic improvement overall. I say cleaning, the PSM-156 shunts high frequency hash in two stages off the active and neutral lines to ground, leaving the AC sinusoidal wave completely intact with no loss of amperage, just minus the high frequency hash/noise.

I am hoping that there is going to be released an operating system written specifically for a music server PC that offers a suite of tools to make it as good as possible. I am still waiting, it may exist already and I have to discover it.

All music servers are computers, the best are designed and " built specifically for that purpose" YES, it makes a significant difference to SQ.


Depending where you live and what tools you have, are you handy man?
In the US, isolate the circuit by turning off the circuit breaker (make sure nobody can turn it on while you work).
Confirm that you have isolated the circuit, there are AC pens that light up, like the Southwire one I have, or a multimeter to measure the potential volts between the contacts, do measure on and off to ensure you’re getting contact with conductors. The guy in the video uses a doo-dad hahahaha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhwClKlh_G8

If you’re stateside, get a hospital grade outlet at the very least.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGG_pYJdar4


What is best? there are many better options
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVBHXSJNTaQ

I am hoping that there is going to be released an operating system written specifically for a music server PC that offers a suite of tools to make it as good as possible. I am still waiting, it may exist already and I have to discover it.

Yes, there is.  Euphony Stylus, which is more of a Linux operating system that has been pre-tuned to work best in most systems.  It contains it's own music player or you can install Roon Core, HQPlayer, NetworkAudio HQP endpoint, Squeezelite LMS endpoint, or Airplay audio server.

https://euphony-audio.com/euphony-stylus-operating-system/

Alternatively, you can get Arch linux and start digging into all the configuration.  This can ultimately get you better than Euphany, but it requires tons of time and experimentation as well as Linux knowledge.