Killer Specs for High End PC in 2006

“Think Mac”
I am using a Power G-5 with OS X. The G-5 has an programable (software)internal audio output selector. Using digital out with AirPort Extreme and Express system it connects wirelessly to a DA Processor in my music room. iTunes is used for interface. I use Roxio’s Toast 7 Titanium ($80.00) burning software for CD, DVD-A and DVD-V recording.
I converted from Windows based computers in 05 after spending years and bags of money getting my computers to do what a Mac does out of the box. Like all Apple products it’s easy to use, looks cool and engineered like a BMW!

Happy New Years
Allan

CW - Apple makes all the things you're asking about very user friendly in
their iTunes interface. You certainly don't need tons of RAM to stream music,
but modern operating systems, certainly the current Apple OSX, are memory
hogs and you'd do better with a gig of RAM, though you can certainly get by
with less. Hard disk (storage) space is going to be more vital to you than
RAM. If you are planning on ripping a CD collection in .WAV you're going to
be needing quite a bit of storage. You might want to consider Apple Lossless
which takes up half the space and is a true lossless format. You also may
want to consider storing your library on an external hard. That way it is a
portable device you can take with you easily..bring it on trips, entertain the
neighbors..etc. Also considering the time it will take you to rip a CD
collection to a server you'll want to consider a backup solution. Either a
duplicate hard drive since storage is relatively cheap, or copy your hard drive
to DVD's (also a lenghthy process, but pretty safe). You could certainly
stream music all about your home using Apple's Airport Express. Which
brings me to another response; If you are into critical sound quality...sitting
in the sweet spot with goosebumps and like that...the critical part of your PC
system will be the interface that converts/clocks the digital stream from your
hard drive/server. The conventional gamer's approach is to have an internal
audio card, of which many are available. Arguably better sound can be had
by going to either an external USB>S/PDIF convertor such as a Waveterminal
U24, or going directly to a USB DAC which will provide the clocking internally.
The knee-jerk reaction to your spending a buttload on a SOTA computer that
is maxed out, is likely based upon the fact that the demands of streaming
music is just not that great, and the money you would put towards additional
memory and fast processors would largely go unrewarded in comparison to
compromising there and putting the money into the USB DAC or USB interface
or audio card. Yes, do get plenty of hard disk space, especially if you are
running video applications and or storing video. If you gotta go with PC I
know there are some professional audio stores that market PC's that are
supposedly optimized for audio use. The one I know about is
Sweetwater where I purchased my Waveterminal a while ago. The link
is to their PC Audio section of their site, where you will find all you are asking
about. They have both Mac and PC systems. The only reason I'd go with PC
is if you are used to the interface and or have all PC software anyway.
Otherwise the Mac audio interface (also available on PC as iTunes) is very easy
to use. BTW, their new iMac computers come with a hand-held remote
control, which I'd imagine may be a nice feature for a PC audio system. No
idea how the interface for the remote works other than you point it at the
screen and click.

Good luck!

Marco

In response to the PC part of your post I would recommend Building the Perfect PC by Robert Bruce Thompson. I believe that reading this will give you a firm basis for designing the PC system you want, and also for dealing with custom PC builders. There is a website associated with the book: www.hardwareguys.com.

First of all, the recommendations for a Mac OS X based system is a great start. It sounds like you want more than just a music media server. In general, Apple's OS X and their Mac computers are really better geared for handling digital media like audio and video than PCs.

There are some good guidelines for building a Windows XP PC and optimizing the OS for best audio performance. The first reference, I would go to is Tascam who manufactures professional audio products (http://www.tascam.com/Products/US-428/W2k_XP_Optimize.pdf). They have a great guide to optimizing Windows XP and Windows 2000 for professional audio applications. For the most part, the same recomendations would hold true for a music server as well. You can use Google or any other Web search portal to find out how to best build a quiet, or even silent, PC.

For a high end Windows XP system, I would recommend the following:

- 1 GB RAM minimum from reputable manufacturer
- Intel chipset-based motherboard with IEEE 1394 (FireWire) controller and port(s) and AGP support and room for at least one PCI slot for soundcard
- ATI Radeon or nVidea AGP graphics card with required video output
- Intel P4 (single or dual core processor) with Hyperthreading
- 80 GB hard drive for Windows XP and audio applications
- Additional quiet drives (i.e., Seagate Barracudas): 1 drive for audio (7200 rpm or faster, SATA), 1-2 drives for video (7200 rpm or faster, SATA). I recommend Glyph Technologies FireWire drive systems as they are encased in quiet enclosures and optimized for best performance for digital media.
- Plextor DVD/CD optical drive for playback and writing
- Prosumer-level PCI soundcard from M-Audio, Emu, ESI, Echo Audio, RME Audio or Lynx Technologies with S/PDIF and/or Toslink digital output
- Aluminum silent or quiet PC case
- Noiseless or quiet 350W (minimum) power supply and silent cooling like heatpipes or ultra-quiet fans. Zalman makes very nice products for this.

Since a high end PC is going to cost some bucks, I really recommend buying a pre-built unit rather than rolling your own. Let a qualified technician with professional test equipment and experience sweat hardware and driver compatibility issues. For custom builders, I would recommend companies that build pro audio digital audio workstations (DAWs) for starters:

http://www.adkproaudio.com/systems/Hometheatre.cfm
http://www.carillondirect.com/clnweb/index.jsp?country=US
http://www.centralcomputer.com/systems/Pro_Audio/system.asp
http://www.hushtechnologies.net/

Some of these builders have the flexibilty of building a PC with any HTPC case of your choice.

The Glyph Technologies FireWire drives work very well with both Macs and PCs. Most Glyph customers are musicians like Herbie Hancock who use Macs exclusively for music production. If you have a large budget for hard drives and even RAID systems, go with archiving your entire libraray in uncompressed files like AIFF or WAV (a.k.a. PCM files); otherwise, you can use the lossless file compression formats like FLAC, ALE, etc. Besides FireWire for connecting the computer to the outboard media drives, you could go with a Network Attached Storage (NAS) RAID or multi-drive appliance that can sit somewhere else in your home. I would use 100Base-T or 1000Base-T (Giga-Bit) Ethernet connections. Wireless is great, but it's not bullet-proof and not as secure as a wired LAN. How would you like a slacker to tap into your big dollar rig and destroy your archived music files? That's one reason why I am not thrilled with the Squeeze Box technology.

Again, by the time you invest in the hardware to make a Windows XP sing (and do it quietly), you could have easily saved a lot of trouble buying a Mac system that does the same thing straight out-of-the-box. iTunes on a Mac is far better than iTunes on a PC since iTunes on a PC relies on the Windows OS K-Mixer that can compromise streaming digital playback of your tunes. iTunes has a superior user interface and it works seamlessly with iPods which are great for portable audio.

For digital-to-analog conversion, get a good DAC with S/PDIF input that has a clock and circuitry for minimizing jitter. On the other hand, you could get a USB DAC like the Wavelength Audio's Brick USB DAC that also minimizes jitter through using USB bus technology. Be careful regarding USB audio interfaces, because some USB devices don't incorporate the same technology as Wavelength Audio to reduce jitter. As hard drive-based music servers gain popularity, I believe we'll see more USB DACs on the market.

If you plan on using nearfield, active monitors, you'll still need a preamp or passive volume control to control your volume via analog means and to serve as a source switching device if you plan to use more than a PC as a music source. Some active monitors only have balanced 1/4" TRS or XLR inputs which means you would need a preamp with balanced outputs to extract the best audio performance. One of the nicer active monitors I have heard were the Dynaudio BM6as, which I feel are every bit as good as anything I've heard from an audiophile stand-mounted monitor.

Rhing

In the words of Charlie Brown: THAT'S IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hope to hear more from others who have built windows systems for audio, but you really covered the topic here so thank you very much!