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Re: getting started in computer-based audio

There are a lot of posts citing the superiority of audio from Hard Disks. In reality, if you comapre a high end system thru' which a PC transport can play, you will find that PC systems just cannot match high end transports and dacs. Goto diyhifi.org where some manufacturers of PC systems and designers of high quality audio will state this. The plain fact is that PC systems have lousy power supplies, inferior digital and audio outputs and are prone to noise unless quite extreme measures are taken to get rid of fans, isolate computers and or limit processor hear generation. there are also problems with the usb interface. The software used also has no transparency in terms of what they actually do. Just look into all these posts about which output driver sounds better or best, various asio plugins, kernal streaming or whatever. Some will say that a $100 sound card beat a $10000 boxed system!

I say this from having spent several years developing my own fanless pc system alongside a high end audio system. Many PC people have limited knowledge of audio and are prone to make unreasonable claims and generalisations citing the optimisation of may be 30 to 50 software and hardware parameters. They appear to treat computer audio as ideal connecting black boxes with perfect interfaces and perfect software. In the real world these are dependent on the chips used, their programming, and on the mathematical model used in the software.

Having said all this, PC audio is conveneient and can be made to sound good. Just don't think it is the ultimate.

Best of luck. You might start by looking at fanless system. Good ones don't come cheap, or you may need to make several iterations if you DIY - I have gone thru' more than 3 systems in as many years!


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