Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Using a compter as a CD source?

Hi, I am currently running a pair of m3ti's with an older Denon avc-2800 receiver (if anyone knows where I can get a manual, plese let me know). I am looking for the best way to connect my computer to the receiver. Right now, I'm just using an Acoustic Research chord that goes from the 1/8th out on my SB Audigy 2 to the rca-in on the Denon. I guess my question is:

What kind of quality does a computer CD drive provide?
Will my current setup cause a significant loss of sound quality?

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

-Josh

Josh

are you sending a digital signal from your Audigy? If so, it should be just fine. All it is doing is sending 1's and 0's. A 5000$ player won't send better 1's and 0's.

The one thing I didn't like about using my computer was the noise issue. Computers run much louder than a CD or DVD player. Try placing the computer as far away from your listening position as possible. Isolate it. Or get a really good noise proof casing.

As Ravi said, so long as your stream is digital, an expensive player won't transmit the binary stream any better. It's a fairly mindless engineering problem to discern two voltage levels in a binary stream.

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The one thing I didn't like about using my computer was the noise issue. Computers run much louder than a CD or DVD player. Try placing the computer as far away from your listening position as possible. Isolate it. Or get a really good noise proof casing.

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Additionally, if you didn't build your own machine, you likely have very obnoxious cooling going on. To quiet down the machine, you can replace the internal fans with a better product like Pabst or Panaflo. The Panaflo L1A doesn't churn out a massive amount of air, but it's VERY quiet for the air it moves.

Zalman makes a series of passive coolers as well. At the very least, replacing your video card's little whiner with a passive heat pump will cut down sound dramatically. They also make a very quiet CPU cooler, but an Alpha or SK-800 and a Panaflo are pretty hard to hear too.

The cheap POS power supplies in most mass produced computers suck too. Replacing yours with an Antec True Power series PSU will cut down almost ALL of the sound from the power unit. They're that quiet.

Lastly, the ultimate move in sound elimination is to go with a water cooled setup. There are decent kits available and the only sound you wind up with is the pump (good ones are pretty quiet) and the 120mm fan that cools the radiator. They are very hard to hear if done properly, though a water cooling kit usually costs you around $200.

He's using headphone out to RCA in, not a digital connection.

I despise Creative as a rule and will never provide them with another dollar, but the Audigy 2 has pretty good DAC's by all accounts, even better than the TBSC (barely) which carries a special place in my heart. The sound quality is superior to their other cards by a signficant margin and better than all onboard systems (though just barely in the case of the Asus nForce2). If you want to get the best quality analog out though, ditch the mass market crappy sound cards and pick up something from M-Audio. The Audiophile 24/96 has always been hailed as the best sound card short of a pro board out there. They've since added the Revolution which provides equal DAC quality (some say better...) plus a host of other features at a price comparable to the Audigy 2 (maybe a bit less).

If you can sell the Audigy 2 or return it, you can grab a Revolution here:
http://www.midiman.net/products/consumer/revolution_page1.php

BTW, it supports 7.1 DVD audio if you watch movies on your computer.

Semi, you're on fire today.

I've got the Turtle Beach SC in my own system. I absolutely hate Creative and their proprietary push in your face software and drivers. But they do have an edge with the hardware onboard.
I've heard of M-Audio lately but haven't read much about it yet.

I am curious as to your impression of the latest water cooled units. Got any recommendations for first time buyers? (I've hated the whiny noise of my Volcano3 now for a year although my Antec PP303x p.s. isn't bad).
The temptation to tweak is upon me.

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I am curious as to your impression of the latest water cooled units.

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Search the case and cooling fetish forum at Ars for discussions of the various kits. I haven't taken the plunge (no pun intended) yet on my system. The only component of my current system that is particularly noisy is the fan on my old GeForce GTS. As soon as ATi releases the 9800 and 9900 (next couple of days supposedly), I'll pick one up, throw a Zalman on it and see if my system is quiet enough. If it's still too loud, I'll probably try a Danger Den kit.

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Got any recommendations for first time buyers?

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First and foremost, read as much as you can about it. Hit up Ars and search the forum. There are a lot of tweakers at HardOCP as well, though I'm not a big fan of their forum in general. Make sure you understand what's going on before you try it. The last thing you want to do is fry your gear.

Once you've done that, you can either buy an entire kit from one of the water cooling websites or save a little money and buy the pieces seperate.

http://www.xoxide.com
http://www.dangerden.com/mall/kits.asp

There are others. I dig the look of the Danger Den stuff and they're VERY highly regarded.

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The temptation to tweak is upon me.

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Be careful. It starts out so easy and cheap in computers that you can get very hooked. Next thing you know, you're spending all your time and money on it. It's very addictive.

For high-quality DAC from computer audio, check out www.stereo-link.com. They make an external USB DAC that avoids the electrically noisy environment inside the computer case and provides analog output much superior to most PC soundcards.

Those with Macs probably don't need the stereo-link: Macs have long had excellent built-in audio capabilities with impressive DAC. If you have a Mac, check out the excellent discussion of digital audio issues at http://www.macintouch.com/usbaudioreader.html before spending additional money on either an internal audio card or an external DAC such as the stereo-link.

Hey, Semi and folks,

To be honest I have always been a bit skeptical about using a computer (equipped with a decent sound card) as a CD player within a "serious" audio system. My prejudice comes in part from the assumption that these consumer cards are in general targeted for PC-oriented low-fi/mid-fi audio gears for gaming etc. But clearly I am ignorant in the recent developments in this particular field. So here are a couple of my questions for you guys...

(1) The web page for the sound card you recommended claims, for example, an S/N ratio of 105dB for audio output - a pretty ambitious spec! On the other hand, the card does not even appear to be electromagnetically shielded, judging from the photo on the web page. So, can these analog-domain specs truly attainable or guaranteed irrespective of the quality of parts and construction for the rest of your computer? For example, I assume that the cleanliness of the internal power-supply voltage could wildly vary from computer to computer; same would be true for the amount or maliciousness of radio-frequency interference inside the computer case. Given these variables, can you plug-and-play and be guaranteed for a decent "hi-fi" audio quality out of these cards? Or do you still have to optimize the power supply and other parts of the computer specifically for audio purposes in order to obtain decent results, even with the fan noise issue set aside? If these modifications can eventually be pricey, then wouldn't it be cheaper and simpler to just buy a Panasonic DVD player and forget about it?

(2) A related question: the HTPC's certainly have an appeal with respect to high-quality video processing, but do they have the level of audio quality that satisfies, say, discerning Axiom owners when configured with an audio processor/DAC card inside the computer, rather than digitally connected to a receiver or pre-pro?

(3) Excuse my ignorance here, but these cards are not capable of DVD-Audio or SACD playback since these formats require a specific transport, right? And, if the computer does have a DVD-A and/or SACD-capable transport, are these cards supposedly firmware/software updatable to make use of it?

By the way, I always listen to my favorite music at work, using a $50 USB-based audio processor connected to my computer and amp -- plenty good enough for casual listening.

Cheers!

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(1) The web page for the sound card you recommended claims, for example, an S/N ratio of 105dB for audio output - a pretty ambitious spec! On the other hand, the card does not even appear to be electromagnetically shielded, judging from the photo on the web page. So, can these analog-domain specs truly attainable or guaranteed irrespective of the quality of parts and construction for the rest of your computer? For example, I assume that the cleanliness of the internal power-supply voltage could wildly vary from computer to computer; same would be true for the amount or maliciousness of radio-frequency interference inside the computer case. Given these variables, can you plug-and-play and be guaranteed for a decent "hi-fi" audio quality out of these cards? Or do you still have to optimize the power supply and other parts of the computer specifically for audio purposes in order to obtain decent results, even with the fan noise issue set aside? If these modifications can eventually be pricey, then wouldn't it be cheaper and simpler to just buy a Panasonic DVD player and forget about it?

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If you do a search of the AVSforum, you'll find a good number of people using a computer as a CD player and/or a DVD player. These individuals all swear by solutions such as the M-Audio. Additionally, M-Audio makes a USB setup similar to the one described above if the internal electrical noise is a concern to you.

Search that forum for more details, but I haven't seen a negative post about such a setup yet.

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(2) A related question: the HTPC's certainly have an appeal with respect to high-quality video processing, but do they have the level of audio quality that satisfies, say, discerning Axiom owners when configured with an audio processor/DAC card inside the computer, rather than digitally connected to a receiver or pre-pro?

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There's actually an entire forum devoted to this at AVS. The consensus has been a resounding yes. I'm actually in the process of building an HTPC for my own use. More important to me is the ability to use it as a central file server for the other computers in the home as well as serving my extensive Divx collection to my HT. Additionally, it should be a bit more flexible for time shifting with my external digital cable box.

I'll actually be using an nForce board though and offloading everything to my receiver digitally as I already have a DVD-A player.

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(3) Excuse my ignorance here, but these cards are not capable of DVD-Audio or SACD playback since these formats require a specific transport, right? And, if the computer does have a DVD-A and/or SACD-capable transport, are these cards supposedly firmware/software updatable to make use of it?

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DVD-A discs are no different from DVD discs. They just use a different encryption scheme to thwart us nefarious computer users. The Audigy 2 named above actually comes with the pertinent software to decode the discs. The Revo was supposed to but apparently the company they contracted to do it wasn't ready and they've been offering people an IOU.

Regards,
Semi

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Those with Macs probably don't need the stereo-link: Macs have long had excellent built-in audio capabilities with impressive DAC.

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Actually I am a Mac user. (shall we start a flame war? - j.k.) And my Mac does not even have a fan; it is the ill-fated G4 Cube, the famous tissue-paper box that became a Smithsonian Museum collection soon after it was discontinued. The noisiest component in my Cube is the hard drive and CD/DVD transport when spinning up to 24x or whatever, if you can hear it at all. A very nice office environment for music lovers. Heh-heh...

Incidentally, the USB-based processor I use at work is Onkyo's MSE-U33HB, a cute little external box. Yes, it is one of those recommended on the macintouch site. It does audibly improve the sound quality on my Cube, especially on the S/N front.

Cheers!

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Be careful. It starts out so easy and cheap in computers that you can get very hooked. Next thing you know, you're spending all your time and money on it. It's very addictive.

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Too late Semi.
I've been into computers for longer than i have home theatre. Since 1997 (now 6 years past) i've had 4 different comp configurations with my first being a clone computer with an AMD K6-3 cpu. I managed to overclock that 50mhz before heat was an issue and since that day, there's been no turning back.

I've slowed down lately b/c work has me busy but needless to say, once i'm done putting together a new little office sound system, i'm moving back onto the computer stuff. Number one is to get the volume down. Number two is to finish off my copper paint job on my Addtronics 6890 tower (the castors are the best addition i've ever had) and number three is to upgrade my cpu. I'm running an Abit KT333-R m/b right now but with a Duron 800 cpu o'ced to 933 ( the pencil trick never worked for me so i had to get out a dissecting microscope from the lab and i did the L1 connections with some permanent material. Sometimes science and its related equipment can really be of use for more than just looking at bugs.) I am going to move up to an Athlon XP at some point in the next half year.

One good thing about it, i'm not a big gamer. Saves the pocketbook on constant vidcard upgrades. However, that being said, i do video editing every other month.

Good to see I'm not the only one here with this bug!

If you enjoy squeezing as much performance out of your dollar with over clocking, a water cooling setup will definitely allow you to overclock more than air cooling. Of course, whether or not it's $200 worth of extra performance is debateable, but the sound improvement is supposedly huge.

I'll probably try my luck at it with my next upgrade. I'm waiting to see the results of Hammer and how well the market embraces it in addition to Intel's Prescott developments. An 800MHz FSB intrigues me... I figure I'll do a major upgrade around next September or so.

Way to break out the engineering skills on your Duron, though. I was always a bit skeptical of the longevity of the pencil trick.

Thanks, Semi, for your answer on the DVD-A.

Regarding my other questions... I did a quick scan of the AVSforum (which I do frequently visit these days), and what I see is that most people who appear to be "serious" about audio choose to connect the HTPC to their receiver/pre-pro digitally, just like you yourself plan to do. Such choice seems to me, as I eluded, entirely reasonable and probably superior than using an in-computer DAC. At any rate, those testimonials do not provide much information on the question about the analog-domain quality of those cards.

Cheers!

I was under the impression that the Cube was unusual in not even having analog audio out capability. The Macs that do sound great. My G4 produces virtually no audible noise. I'm sure there's some room for improvement; I only wanted to urge Mac owners to consider how good their built-in audio is before moving to upgrade it. If indeed the Cube doesn't have built-in audio (other than USB), this wouldn't apply.

Sushi,

Do a specific search on the Revo. There were a number of threads on it when it was released. I believe quite a few people were planning on using the analog outs for DVD-A and such with experiences posted on the stereo analog out capabilities (as the software wasn't present when last I looked at those threads). There should be SOME info for you though I've never seen anything that documents the testing procedure behind the claims of M-Audio.

Personally, I plan on using the Asus A7N8X deluxe. It actually has a Dolby Digital encoder built into the south bridge. Everything is encoded into DD and passed up the SPDIF should you turn on that feature. The net result is positional sound in games which isn't exactly possible under any other solution. Every other card's digital out is merely a pass through in games not encoded in DD (Doom 3 being one of the few if only once it's released) resulting in stereo sound. You can use DPLII to then get some form of positional audio out of it, but that's not really the same...

I don't intend on using my HTPC for gaming often, but having it hooked up to a big screen and my Axioms, it will certainly be used as such some times.

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I was under the impression that the Cube was unusual in not even having analog audio out capability.

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I believe you are correct which is probably part of why Sushi uses a USB solution.

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I was under the impression that the Cube was unusual in not even having analog audio out capability. The Macs that do sound great. My G4 produces virtually no audible noise.

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Yes, the Cube does have an analog audio out, not on the main box but on a little external dongle to which you connect the included ball-shaped H/K speakers. The dongle has a standard headphone output. So, maybe Apple skimped on the analog side of Cube design, and that may be why my inexpensive external DAC improved the sound.

I do agree with you that the Macs in general have a great on-board audio quality. But I guess it depends on models. Yes, I know G4 minitowers sound great, so does the flat-panel iMacs (the inverted lampstand). On the other hand, the CRT iMacs seem to have an audible level of "digital" noise sneaking into the audio output.

Cheers!

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Do a specific search on the Revo.

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Thanks, Semi.

I did find, among other things, some posts showing that the analog circuits on the Revo is basically as good as that of a decent receiver, with respect to the S/N and other actual measurements. Although most of the people who do these elaborate comparisons seem to carefully build their own HTPC (so no guarantee for an easy plug-and-play), I guess my prejudice has largely been eliminated.

I also learned that the sound quality and measured specs can wildly vary among different brands of cards! They are talking about hugely audible differences there.

Cheers!

I justed wanted to say thanks to those people who helped me with my orginal question. I think I'm just going to use the analog line-out on the audigy for now. It claims to have good DAC, and seems to provide very decent sound quality. Plus, my receiver is older and doesn't actually have a digital-in. Why is it that even newer stereo receivers don't have digital inputs by the way, like the denon dra-395??

With that taken care of, I would also like to address the issue of my extremely loud computer. I recently had it custom built and didn't give cooling a second thought. Now I'm regretting it. I'm definitely going to take steps in the very near future to remedy things, but I was wondering if anyone could just give me the order of importance. What is it thats making the most noise? I currently have two internal fans, a cpu fan (pentium 4), vga fan (ati radeon 9000 pro) and the power supply. I've looked at some alternatives, such as the suggested panaflo, but I don't really have a concept of whats good. How audible in your opinion is a 21db fan (e.g. the panaflo L1A)?


Once again, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

In order of impact, it would depend on what you have in there now. The stock fan on an AMD retail chip is significantly louder than an 80mm fan on an after market heat sink for an OEM chip, for example.

Why don't you tell me the specific things we're working with here. Are you using the retail heatsink with your P4? See if you can figure out which model of PSU you're using as well.

That Radeon probably has a tiny little fan running at very high RPM's. You aren't hearing it right now over the other two fans and the CPU cooler, but it will drive you nuts when you get them quiet. Zalman makes a passive heat pump that will make zero noise for that cooler.

An L1A at 21dB is pretty hard to hear. Additionally, if you're not overclocking, you may not need that much cooling. Download Motherboard Monitor and try to set it up. It will let you use the system's temp sensors to monitor your CPU and case temps from within Windows. Pull the two fans and see what the temp difference is. So long as you stay under 60 degrees for a full load on the CPU, you'll never have a problem with cooling. Above 60 is when I start getting uncomfortable.

A good enough heatsink for your CPU to allow for a low flow fan like the L1A will run you $35 or so. Pair it with a Panaflo and you're golden. Pulling the two case fans in favor of a Panaflo, or better yet nothing, will make a difference as well for not much money. The Zalman cooler for your vid card is in the neighborhood of $12 I think. The most expensive upgrade would be the PSU. A True350 from Antec is around $50 I think.

Overclocking is fun but after 2 years on my Intel 700 overclocked to 966 and at one time 1000 something and the GeForce2 GTS overclocked to 400/oh I forget the other number ... one day the machine start GPFing and even after I brought down all the setting to defacto both the CPU and Vid card has not worked to its 100% no crash capacity. Since then that machine has been buggy. I don't know the life expectancy of a normal CPU but overclocking CPUs and Vid card does lessen the lenght of expectancy on the product. As fun as it is I have wasted LOTS of time that I will never get back. Time that could be better spent snowboarding, mtn biking, walking with the fiancee.
With the ever dropping prices of CPUs I would rather spend $200 on a higher priced faster CPU than spend it on a $200 water cooler setup for my CPU. Why do you need all that extra processing power that will need extra cooling (extra noise) while a cheap integrated CPU on motherboard (VIA C3 processor 800Mhz - 1 Ghz - only a good heatsink needed) can easily power a DVD/CD player, video card with hardware MPeg decoding, sound card (digital out). Hell even a Pentium 2 can power that stuff.

I got a VIA mother board and VIA C3-800mhz for like $130 canadian. Powered it with a ANTEC 375W power supply and I don't even hear any sound. The damn computer CD player spinning makes more sound!!!

http://www.via.com.tw/en/viac3/c3.jsp

Thanks for your help Semi!

I've already ordered a pair of the panaflo L1A's, so that should take care of a significant portion of the noise. As for the CPU, its just a stock OEM intel socket 478 fan with the heat sink that came with. I think I'd like to replace with the following Zalman:
http://www.directron.com/cnps5500cu.html

Finally, the power supply is a L&C 350w ATX job. I've looked around on the internet and found that while you can pick on up for about $25, I've seen a few reviews that have said its actually reasonably quiet. So I may just let it alone for the moment. Plus, I've never dealt directly with either the power suply or CPU fan, how hard are they to replace?

Also, thanks for the tip on the Motherboard Monitor, I'll definitely check it out

-Josh

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With the ever dropping prices of CPUs I would rather spend $200 on a higher priced faster CPU than spend it on a $200 water cooler setup for my CPU.

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I agree entirely. CPU prices have dropped so much that it's not really worth it if that's your sole reason for doing so. I'm considering it simply to quiet my machine, but I have a feeling replacing the video card cooler will take away much of the sound.

If all you're doing is the things you mentioned, it's all very much over kill indeed. I still use my home rig for simulations at work once in a blue moon, and, having grown up on Nintendo, I'm still a gamer at heart.

Do a search of Ars for that Zalman model. I've never played with that one and my own rig is AMD based so I don't much pay attention to the threads on P4 cooling. I know quite a few people are happy with their Athlon cooler though.

You should also consider the Alpha:
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduct.asp?description=35-112-003&depa=1

And the Thermalright:
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduct.asp?description=35-109-009&depa=1

Once you get the CPU cooler replaced and the system fans in check, listen to the results. If it's still too loud, pull the side panel off and try to localise the noise. If you have a sound meter laying about from your HT tune up, that might help you identify the source if it's too loud to be specific. A high pitch noise will likely be the Video card. ATi has used relatively good fans on their latest models but it still may be bothersome to you. I'd recommend a passive solution with something like the 9000 as it's not a terribly hot card to begin with. Beyond that, you'll have to consider more creative approaches.

Semi:

When you used your water cooled solution did you ever get the condensation problem when you closed the lid of the box or did you leave on side open. I was going to try that approach a year or two ago but I heard some issues on condensation specially on very hot days.

If anyones is interested I used ot used this site for computer modifications.
overclockers.com
http://overclockers.com/tips1064/
I also thought sometime ago they made liquid nitrogen cooled cases.