Computer audio discussion

[tomp]

Tom,

Your PC is much more versatile than the pre-canned systems I see on Amazon. What CPU does it have? I presume memory can be upgraded.

I tried Daphile from a thumb drive. Loved the user interface but found couple of issues while playing music like, I get static in the background on some of the hirez FLACs downloaded from HDTracks.com which doesnt seem to happen with foobar2000. Sound stage information is compromised with Daphile's upsampling. With all the pain of configuration of foobar2000, I found it subjectively better than Daphile. We can do a comparison.

Yes, I would love if you can bring the PC. Is it WiFi or wired?

The motherboard is an ASRock D1800B-ITX. The SSD is a Samsung SSD 850 EVO which is supposed to be one of the most reliable. Memory is Kingston. It only has hard wired networking.
Tom

Attachments

[Cogito]

i'm curious, why do you want to avoid RDP?

I will be using iPad to access the music player. RDP opens up the Windows OS desktop on a 7"/10" screen. That is too much information on a small screen. Windows OS is designed to control applications with a mouse which provides precise x,y coordinates of the location of click. iPad does not have a mouse interface. Finger touch does not generated precise locations which makes it almost impossible to accurately control windows applications via Remote Desktop from iPad.

[Cogito]

Tom,

Your PC is much more versatile than the pre-canned systems I see on Amazon. What CPU does it have? I presume memory can be upgraded.

I tried Daphile from a thumb drive. Loved the user interface but found couple of issues while playing music like, I get static in the background on some of the hirez FLACs downloaded from HDTracks.com which doesnt seem to happen with foobar2000. Sound stage information is compromised with Daphile's upsampling. With all the pain of configuration of foobar2000, I found it subjectively better than Daphile. We can do a comparison.

Yes, I would love if you can bring the PC. Is it WiFi or wired?

The motherboard is an ASRock D1800B-ITX. The SSD is a Samsung SSD 850 EVO which is supposed to be one of the most reliable. Memory is Kingston. It only has hard wired networking.
Tom

Neat. I like the idea of assembling the system. I will talk to Roscoe. Guess I need to strip down the windows of all the unnecessary crap Microsoft includes for it to work efficiently with a dual core celeron.

[Roscoe Primrose]

Guess I need to strip down the windows of all the unnecessary crap Microsoft includes for it to work efficiently with a dual core celeron.

There are better choices in motherboards these days, they came out with a quad-core version of the same board just weeks after Tom bought his... Linux is another option, and Jriver runs on linux...

Roscoe

[brombo]

You may wish to look at this (audiophile linux) -

https://www.ap-linux.com/about/

[Roscoe Primrose]

https://www.amazon.com/ASRock-Q1900-ITX ... B00JQHUE3G

[Cogito]

Thanks.
jRiver is $50, far less than the cost of Windows OS.

I will try both jRiver and Audiophile Linux.

[Grover Gardner]

Don't forget Snakeoil-OS.

Snakeoil-os.net

Tiny Ubuntu core. You can choose from different players, like MPD or LMS. Very lean, very clean. Works with web interface or any MPD or LMS control app. If you make a small donation it unlocks some extra features. A lot easier than installing MPD yourself and no Pulse Audio to get in the way. You can run a live USB or install it.

[brombo]

I have one problem with Jriver. It does not support closed captions on digital tv channels (I am using a Silicondust HD Homerun prime cablecard tuner). I watch a lot of British and Australian tv shows and I need the closed captions to understand the dialects.

Thus I wind up using Kodi 17 on Ubuntu 16.04. Note that locally there is a problem with closed captions on standard definition digital sub-channels such as WETA-UK. On both my Kodi system and my wife's TIVO the closed captions are not properly synced to the audio track. For definition of sub-channel see -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_subchannel

[Cogito]

Don't forget Snakeoil-OS.

Audiophiles with a sense of humor. I like that.