Your Computer Based Transport Setup

I have almost 3TB of digital files housed on a Seagate 3TB USB drive, cost was about $120. I religiously back those up to 2 Seagate 1.5 TB drives. Cost on those was about $65 each.

For backups, I'm using a very nice free program I found on SourceForge, it's called Create Synchronicity. You can schedule the backups to occur unattended any time you like. The interface is dead-nuts simple to use and it works perfectly.

I play the files back using my Oppo BDP-93. This is hard-wired to my router using an Ethernet cable. I can play them back using the Oppo's interface (a little bit clunky, but serviceable) or any DLNA capable software like Foobar 2000 - also a free program.

Including the cost of the Oppo, I have about $750 invested. It sounds terrific and is very easy to use. And one of the nice things about the Oppo is that I can playback movies (NTSC and PAL) in hi-definition (1080P or 720P) as well as music files (multi-channel, up to 24 bit, 192 kHz) , giving me a total home theater solution for a very easy to swallow price...

-RW-

One thing I forgot to mention is that I am using a 4 year old Toshiba laptop (Satellite, A505-6980) which has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at 2.2 gHz. I am running Windows 7, the latest version.

It has 8GB of RAM and a 500 GB drive built in. The cost on that was about $700 when I bought it. Newer models from Toshiba are blazingly fast and cost about the same.

Setting up a PC-based playback system is really quite easy to do and the cost for the performance you get is really quite low. If you have not looked into PC-based playback, perhaps you owe it to yourself to look into it. I think you will be quite pleasantly surprised...

-RW-

I bought a 21" iMac specifically for digital playback and nothing else . I run Audioniorvana Plus then via USB into my own DAC. User interface is easy with either iPhone or iPad via the remote software. I use iTunes for my library.

I'd state the this is better sounding than any transport system based I've ever owned, and I've had some pretty heavy ones, including the big Wadia, dCS and the big Esoteric stacks.

Good Listening

Peter

Well I am up and running on my maiden voyage into the world of PC playback. I am doing a quick proof of concept test this weekend before I take a monetary plunge. So I borrowed a mini mac from work with OS 10.7, 2 GB ram with duo core processor.

Ripped about 7 cd's with XLD in AIFF format

Loaded Audirvana + and the QuteHD driver and voila!

I have not done any optimizations to the Mac OS.

I am remote controlling the headless mini via my Linux laptop VNC connection. So cool to control from my couch.

First impressions are "It works and it sounds like music" but I cannot tell whether it is better or not than my CDP setup.

PBnaudio,
What remote app do you use on your ipad?

thanks

I use the laptop I had on hand + Stellu U3 + Benchmark DAC-1 (as preamp direct to power amp using balanced). I took the battery out of the laptop.

JRiver for player. Memory playback.