Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners PC Audio Advice

I’ve been playing around with PC audio for awhile now and need to stop wasting time and get serious before my collection gets any more out of control. I know this has come up before but I’m having no luck with the search function.

I’m looking for recommendations on software to rip, manage and playback audio files on my VISTA PC. No desire to put anything on a portable player other than perhaps a laptop.

Originally I was just using the built-in WMP ability to rip CDs to WMA files but recently I’ve been using Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to rip them to FLAC on my network server. For playback and management I just started playing with Media Monkey (MM) which seems pretty cool but before I invest a bunch of time in re-ripping everything to FLAC and using Media Monkey to organize everything I wanted to know what people are using and any advantages it may have over the above. I’m Generally of the Unix Philosophy of using simple discrete utilities that do one thing really well and then stringing them together to do complex jobs, but I’m willing to bite the bullet this time if it’s worth it, Media Monkey, for example.

A couple specific questions. Is there really any advantage to using EAC over MM to Rip or am I just wasting a little time switching between them? Also both MM and EAC use the Free db which seems to have many holes in it for the things I listen to any other options?

Also, presently I’m using the onboard SoundBlaster audio from the MSI Diamond P7N motherboard. Will I likely see much improvement if I get a dedicated soundcard and if so any recommendations?

Additionally, is there any advantage to getting dedicated media server other than my network server?

Thanks again for advice already given elsewhere and in advance for the help here. I’ve already saved lots of money and time by listening to the advice around these parts.

Cheers,
Dean

As far as a dedicated soundcard goes, I have a Turtle Beach Montego 7.1 Dolby Digital soundcard in my other computer and absolutely love it. I also have experience with a Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi and I had to return it because it broke down and replaced it with the aforementioned. Right now I'm currently using my onboard sound on my new computer but that's only because I use a Tritton AX360 5.1 surround sound headset with its own digital decoding box. I wouldn't touch any soundcard without DDL (Dolby Digital Live).

I'm going to tag along on this one as I am in a similar situation.

The last time I researched this, I was under the impression that you got the biggest quality gain from going to an outboard soundcard because the pc is a noisy place to do DAC conversion.

Hmmm, I too have heard that, but if that was really the case, you couldn't trust any any computations from your CPU or GPU either. I've never thought that deeply about it but the DAC is just another kind of CPU (in a sense) and why should it be more susceptible to interference than other PUs.

Or are we talking about after it gets converted to analogue? I'm still doubtful but that would at least start to make more sense.

I have to second the vote for the Turtle Beach Card. I picked one up a while back (though I think I paid closer to $60+tax), and it has been great. Of course it replaced a crappy realtek onboard sound source, so the upgrade to the optical out was a night and day change. You can probably pay a lot more for a higher quality card, but I'm quite happy with it.

Can't help you on the latest and greatest file manager. I still use Winamp!

Yes Fred it is true that you can experience noise created from the moving parts inside a computer when using a soundcard, I've experienced that "tingling" noise but it was caused from an extremely noisy CPU fan. It's generally recommended to install a soundcard in the lowest possible slot on your motherboard so it's furthest away from everything else.

Yeah, my asstastic Creative soundcard has some of those issues. When the GPU starts up, I start hearing it in the headphones.

Ferget it, I'm getting an ASUS.

So external cards sound like the way to go. Got it. As I often do, I over analyzed and focused on the risk to the computational ability of the DAC itself, but my afterthought about the analogue side picking up noise makes more sense after hearing from you folks.

This board should enter a world record for the number of technical issues covered by a single board.

Most of us just make fart noises with our hands under our armpits...

Well, that's yet another issue ticked off. Guinness, her we come!!!