M Audio PCI Sound Cards and a Computer as a Music Server
rnigel -- Mon, 08/07/2006 - 12:25
Does anyone have any experience hooking up a computer with the M Audio PCI sound cards (Audiophile 2496 or Audiophile 192) to be a music server? I will hookup to my Primare Integrated with JM Lab Cobalt speakers. I would use uncompressed files.
Thanks
I haven't tried those sound cards but would be interested to learn of your experience with them. I think using a PC with a large external hard drive is a superb way to create a music server with uncompressed files.
Keep us informed of your progress!
Barry Willis
rnigel,
Another approach you might want to explore is one advocated by Empirical Audio, where the basic strategy is to use a very low-noise interface device (such as Empirical's USB Off-Ramp or USB Freeway products) to transfer digital audio data to a high-quality outboard DAC.
Interestingly, some enthusiasts feel the best approach is to use a very high-performance sound card in the PC, while others feel the PC environment is simply too noisy, so that it is better to transfer data to an isolated, outboard DAC. What's your take on this?
Best,
Chris Martens
TPV/TAS
Chris Martens
Editor, Avguide.com/Playback/The Perfect Vision
Decided to give the M-Audio Audiophile USB a try, I have it hooked up to my Compaq laptop and with the exception of the volume level you cannot hear the difference between the computer and the CD.
I am using Itunes 7 for ripping and playback. I rip the CD's using the WAV encoder, Sample Rate of 48.00kHz, and a Sample size 16 bit. Basically the rip size is 10mb per minute with the average CD needing about 600 mb.
So far so good, just need another external hard drive.
Nigel
Do this setup provide an option for lossless compression?
ITunes supports a number of formats including WAV, AIFF, and Apple Lossless Encoder.
Nigel
Also, Take a look at external computer sound cards, they have better noise and THD's than the internals. There is a lot of noise on the computers bus. There are internal sound cards that have a very low noise but are expensive.
I use the M-Audio Transit for Loud Speaker testing. It's great for the money..
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