AudioNervosa

Systemic Development => Digital Audio Devices => Hardware => Topic started by: RoadRunner on November 30, 2009, 12:58:52 PM

Title: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: RoadRunner on November 30, 2009, 12:58:52 PM
Years ago, "experts" stated that you could not get decent audio out of a PC. (Something about  too noisy an environment, electronically speaking) 

Now with  HTPCs and Music Server PCs, that certainly seems possible. 
Can any recommendations be made on  Makes and models of sound cards to use;   
specs to look for, specs to avoid,
What will affect for the good, and
what will affect for the bad.

Reading thru posts, it sounds like Carl and others may be using USB sound cards???
If that is the case, what would be the advantage.

It looks like many sound cards have an  expansion  bay, or external expansion box, but this looks mostly to me to be just for  connection ease, not performance.

My audio system is all andlog, so Toslink/S/PDIF is of little interest at this point.

My main interest is getting  lossless audio off my hard drive and into my audio system with as little distortion and loss to the original signal as was recorded on a CD.

The sound card and of course interconnects seems to be the major area of concern here.
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: Carlman on November 30, 2009, 03:00:49 PM
If you're not interested in an external DAC, you are interested in an internal (to the PC) DAC.  I personally think you'll be getting older technology going this route.  The Buffalo chip and DAC technology are moving fast and not trickling down as quickly to the pro audio cards (which is what you'll be needing). 
I have used an M-Audio Delta DIO for a long time.. and it is a very nice PCI card with analog outs.  I am hesitant to get rid of it because I do like it quite a bit and might need it one day (doubtful)... but I'd be willing to let you borrow it for experimentation.

I went with USB because it's supposedly a better digital feed than spidf.. the 'i2s' or whatever had some technological advantage.  I can't remember the details, just that it made sense at the time.  My DAC accepts coax and toslink also.  I have a really nice USB cable and so far I have not found a reason to change DAC's.  Another reason I like USB is that I can use any PC.. ANY.. so if it's super tiny, quiet, and so on.. I still have an audio PC.. Plus, you can easily bypass all the audio stuff Windows is doing.

All that said.. The Lynx LM22 is also a VERY nice card and the analog output from that is excellent. 

Other than the M-Audio I have and Lynx LM22 I've heard, I do not know of any other excellent cards for analog out.  The break out cables for some cards are for convenience.. or could be needed since there is no RCA jacks.. On my M-Audio there are gold plated RCA jacks.. but on others there are no jacks and you have to use the break-out cable.

If it were me, I'd highly recommend an external dac.  Use the PC as a transport.  You can get a much cheaper sound card or even use what's on the motherboard for the digital out (or usb) and spend that money on a DAC.. then you can try different DAC's... rather than sinking 200-1000 on a sound card that you may or may not like the DAC..  Just a thought.

-C
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: mdconnelly on November 30, 2009, 03:27:42 PM
I've wrestled with this as well.  There is no question that a quiet PC, a good audio board and an external DAC is very doable and sounds great (I've heard Carl's setup and it's pretty damn awesome  :thumb:).  I totally agree with Carl that finding a solid external DAC is the way to go and there are some great DACs out there.  But finding or building a quiet PC and getting a good audio board is not as simple nor as cheap as you'd think.

While I've been toying with doing this for quite some time, the path I have taken is Logitech's Squeezebox.  The SB3 is now out of production but can be picked up cheap.  While the internal DAC is going to sound mid-fi at best, using it with an external DAC is not too shabby. The Logitech Transporter is the high road - sounds great with a pretty good internal DAC but at a substantial price (although probably less than a Lynx audio board + good DAC these days).   Then there is the new, soon-to-be-shipped Logitech Touch which is reported to sound much better than the SB3 (or Duet which is what I'm currently using), capable of 24/96 playback without conversion and just $299.  From what I hear, it's internal DAC is also supposed to be a good bit better than the SB3 (albeit, probably still mid+fi).  What fascinates me about it is that it apparently can work as a server itself by just plugging a USB harddrive into it.  Time will tell on that front but I think I will jump on it once it starts shipping.

P.S... Logitech Touch can be preordered from Crutchfield.com for $279 with promotion code 3A825 but I think it expires today!
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: richidoo on November 30, 2009, 04:11:48 PM
Internal cards have some advantages over USB or SPDIF because they sit right on the PCI bus in the same room with the processor creating the stream. An external sound card on the other end of USB or SPDIF converters must remedy the jitter created in getting the data out of the computer. USB2 is stuck below 48kHz sampling rate. 

State of the art internal sound cards:
CardDeluxe (http://www.digitalaudio.com/)
RME (http://www.rme-audio.de/en_index.php)
Lynx (http://www.lynxstudio.com/)

These are all pro audio parts, so things like air, soundstaging, tonal perfection are not necessarily on the pro audio engineers priority list. You just have to listen to see if it's good enough. Pro gear is all about the specs, and these cards are technically "perfect" in the test lab.

The value sweet spot in the market now is an external DAC which eliminates jitter, fed by a cheap digital source like network player, PC, CDP. DACs using ESS Sabre32 are particularly good at eliminating jitter. Carl refers to it as Buffalo because that is model name of a DAC which uses that chip. They are offered now by many brands from Eastern Electric to McIntosh and Sim Audio and lots more to come. But there are other great DACs like Bryston BDA-1, Oracle DAC1000, PS Audio Perfect Wave DAC which do not use Sabre32 and deal with jitter their own way.

The Cambridge DACMagic is supposed to be decent, USB input <$1000.

A high end audio DAC will have a purist current to voltage and analog output stages that retain all the esoteric sonic attributes that audiophiles crave.
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: djdube525 on November 30, 2009, 07:22:17 PM
Other than the M-Audio I have and Lynx LM22 I've heard, I do not know of any other excellent cards for analog out.  The break out cables for some cards are for convenience.. or could be needed since there is no RCA jacks.. On my M-Audio there are gold plated RCA jacks.. but on others there are no jacks and you have to use the break-out cable.

The Esi Juli@ is another decent sound card with analog outs

http://www.esi-audio.com/products/julia/

Dave
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: bpape on December 01, 2009, 04:55:03 AM
The other option is to use something like a modded Squeezebox or a Transporter and avoid having your DAC anywhere near the noisy PC guts.  You'd stream to the SB or TP over a network connection.  This also allows you to not have to have a physically noisy/loud PC in the listening room.

Bryan
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: rollo on December 01, 2009, 06:23:41 AM
A simple and solution could be the HRT Musicstreamer+ USB DAC at $299. Very close to my Lector CDP7, a steal . Check out Music Direct or the HRT site for details.



charles
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: hometheaterdoc on December 01, 2009, 07:35:16 AM
I've tried more cards than I care to remember as I've been doing audio PC for at least 5+ years now.  Even the ultra expensive internal pro cards are not as good via analog output as the alternatives.  External interfaces like those from MAudio, RME, etc. try to bridge the gap by getting the delicate stuff on a soundcard outside the noisy environment of the PC.

In my opinion, an Audio PC should be used as a transport to feed music digitally to an external DAC.  Trying to do analog out from inside the PC on a sound card is not going to achieve the best possible audiophile sound.

The perk of an audio PC over some of the other alternatives being discussed here (Sonos, Logitech's products based on Slim Server, etc.) is that it's a PC and can do all the other things a PC can do while you are listening to music.  For those of us with the attention spans of a gnat (I'm raising my hand here) you can surf the web, respond to customer emails, do video editing, etc. all at the same time that music is playing since its right on the screen there with the music.  All from one device.  Streaming out digital audio via Foobar, MediaMonkey, etc. is not CPU intensive at all.  You don't need a lot of resources to do that.  So if going the USB method, you can use a rinky dink PC and be fine.  It can be easily done with the ~$120 Linux based fanless all in one board units to $240 Dell desktops, etc.  For what I'm doing, the only caveat is that you need a spare PCI full height slot in the case.

You can get an audio PC pretty darn quiet.  Windows 7 also has some great power saving features built in.  I finally got around to adjusting my bios to control fan speed, put an SSD drive in my machine (no hard drive noise!!) and you can barely hear the PC when you are within a foot of it and everything else is turned off in the house.  At the listening seat, nothing...

For getting digital audio out of the PC, my personal choice is a Lynx sound card with custom dongle to replace the included breakout cable.  I tested it against an asyncrhonous USB to SPDIF converter and I preferred this method.  The Lynx AES16 is the standard amongst computer audiophiles as far as I can tell for folks trying to get AES/EBU out of their audio PCs.  The L22 can do the same thing but is usually more expensive because of it's DAC capability for analog output.
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: RoadRunner on December 03, 2009, 07:14:42 PM
Since I will only be able to upgrade my system by bits and pieces at a time, I am most likely looking at a fairly simple and recyclable solution.

On internal DAC solution that has really caught my attention is from, of all people, ASUS, that's right, the Motherboard people.

They have one product, not long on the market, using TI DACs, (the 24bit  TI Burr-Brown PCM1792A, with a 127dB cited SNR.)

It is the  ASUS Xonar Essence ST/STX soundcard.

This 'sounds' to be the best of all worlds, by the reviews I have read, but  does anyone have some ears on experience with it? 


Your thoughts on the card, if experienced or the TI DACS would be appreciated.
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: Carlman on December 04, 2009, 05:54:59 AM
I doubt very many people have experience with the Asus DAC your referring to.  However, the Asus mobo's are generally very good and they were producing 'deluxe' boards a few years ago with bit perfect digital outs.. and were well reviewed.  Asus clearly has some clue about audio.

It's definitely worth a shot.  Depending on the rest of your system, it may be more than adequate.. What are you hooking it up to.. i.e. what's your system?

-C
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: richidoo on December 04, 2009, 07:24:48 AM
I think it's worth a try. You could unload it easily for $100 if you didn't like it. Funny the marketing they put on it as an audiophile source. Gold engraved noise shield, and gold ribbon on spine of manual. I think they are trying to appeal to gamers who really like their music and listening to headphones while they play their games.

The chips are OK, TI DACs are kinda old hat now, chosen here for price. But they will outperform the analog circuits. Electrolytic and SMD caps no matter how good are limited in the resolution they can deliver - no room for films caps in a PC soundcard's space or budget. But they are using good quality electro caps, Nichicon and Oscon.

Specs: http://hothardware.com/Articles/ASUS-XONAR-Essence-STX-Headphone-Amp-Card/

It has digital output in case you want something better later.  I hope you will write a little review for us when you get it set up and burned in. Thanks!

Card Deluxe CDX-01 (http://store.digitalaudio.com/merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=DAL&Product_Code=CDX-01&Category_Code=CDX) is the only other card that I would recommend. Costs twice as much, but has a real audiophile heritage. Stereophile class A rating for a decade. But you are paying for recording ability, and low latency analog and digital inputs. I like to be able to record radio broadcasts and vinyl, but that may not be important to you.
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: RoadRunner on December 05, 2009, 01:34:26 PM
I doubt very many people have experience with the Asus DAC your referring to.  However, the Asus mobo's are generally very good and they were producing 'deluxe' boards a few years ago with bit perfect digital outs.. and were well reviewed.  Asus clearly has some clue about audio.

It's definitely worth a shot.  Depending on the rest of your system, it may be more than adequate.. What are you hooking it up to.. i.e. what's your system?

-C

Parasound  P3 Preamp
Behringer CX3400 Electronic Crossover
Twin Sony TA-3130F Power Amps
Altec Lansing 18"  horn/807-8A HF Driver,  15" 411-8A LF Loudspeakers


Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: richidoo on December 05, 2009, 01:44:25 PM
Very interesting system!!!
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: RoadRunner on December 05, 2009, 01:47:18 PM
Very interesting system!!!

like in drag racing....'run what ya brung'  then modify upgrade & replace as you have the resources.
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: richidoo on December 14, 2009, 05:29:12 PM
The ASUS Sound cards are on the cover of Stereophile magazine this month!  The review is very good. Looks like a winner for the $200 price.
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: RoadRunner on December 24, 2009, 07:32:59 PM
Any users of the KECES DA-151 series.  Fits Carls  preferences for USB connected external DAC. 

Feedback on this unit would be appreciated from personal use.
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: Carlman on January 08, 2010, 08:05:15 AM
I've never heard of Keces... how is that pronounced? ;)
There are reviews out there.. http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0808/keces_da151.htm
and
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f46/review-keces-da-151-dac-800-hours-burn-297021/

It's too bad it's an either/or design.. you either have a USB (151) dac OR a spdif DAC (131)... but not both.. I like having both in 1. 
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: mgalusha on January 08, 2010, 11:31:24 AM
I have a Keces 131 fed by a hiFace USB/SPDIF on my desktop at work. The Keces isn't bad, not great but not bad either. Works nicely for my office setup. :) Listening to it now in fact.
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: djbnh on January 16, 2010, 09:41:42 AM
I'm wondering if I require a dedicated sound card. My new system is as follows, note pertinent sound mobo information:

CD: Sony 20X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive
CD2: Lite-On IHOS 104 4X Blu-Ray Player
CASE: CoolerMaster Storm Sniper Mid-Tower Gaming Case
CPU: Intel(R) CoreT i7-920 2.66 GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366
FAN: Xigmatek Thor's Hammer Gaming CPU Cooling Fan
FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer
HDD: Extreme Performance with Data Security (RAID-0+1) with 4 Identical Hard Drives (1TB (500GBx4) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
MOTHERBOARD: (3-Way SLI Support) GigaByte GA-X58A-UD7 Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Ultra DurableT3 Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 24 Phase Power ATX Mainboard w/ 7.1 HD Dobly Audio, Dual GbLAN, USB3.0, 2 x SATA-III RAID, 4 Gen2 PCIe, 2 PCIe X1 & 1 PCI
MEMORY: 6GB (2GBx3) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module (Corsair Dominator)
OVERCLOCK: Extreme OC (Extreme Overclock 20% or more)
OS: Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 7 Professional (64-bit Edition)
POWERSUPPLY: Corsair Power Supplies (950 Watts CMPSU-950TX - Quad SLI Ready)
VIDEO: ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB DDR5 16X PCIe Video Card [DirectX 11 Support] (Major Brand Powered by ATI)
VIDEO2: ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB DDR5 16X PCIe Video Card [DirectX 11 Support] (Major Brand Powered by ATI)

I'm gathering information regarding gear I'm considering on the main audio side (ex: Modwright Transport, Squeezebox, etc.) and am wondering if my choice of mobo might let me get away with not going for a dedicated audio card. Opinions are solicited and welcome.
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: richidoo on January 16, 2010, 10:31:50 AM
Hi Dave! In my opinion, if you have a DAC that can deal with jitter, then you can use the stock SPDIF output on any soundcard or mobo if it has one. If you don't have a jitter reducing DAC, then a sound card which is audiophile aware or at least pro audio aware is probably needed to get really good sound out of the computer.

Do you already have the Transporter / Squeezebox, or are you considering buying one of those?

Supposedly the Transporter can accept an external SPDIF stream for decoding, but we've not been able to make bigfish's digital input work yet. Other owners say it works. How well it removes jitter when direct connected to SPDIF I don't know. When receiving data over the network there is no jitter until the transporter receives ethernet packets and converts them into a digital audio stream, but that path is short and well controlled, so jitter should stay low. TP can also accept an external word clock which is used to synchronize all parties of the digital audio conversation and eliminate jitter, in this case PC and DAC. But all parties must be able to accept external word clock, only a few pro audio sound cards can do that.
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: djbnh on January 16, 2010, 11:35:11 AM
Do you already have the Transporter / Squeezebox, or are you considering buying one of those?
Considering, been doing research as time permits.
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: satfrat on January 16, 2010, 01:10:59 PM
Dave, with all those bells and whisles inside that PC case comes added noise & other nasties (IOW, there are better options IMHO than internal soundcards). Don't know what you have for a Dac but if you already have the Dac of your choice, I'd recommend the Empirical Off-Ramp 3 with an Ultraclock option, especially if you are only interested in NOS (non over sampling) CD quality downloads. Maybe one of these days, we could get together for a day of listening with my own Off-Ramp & a few other toys that I could bring along,, as time permits of course.  :thumb:

Cheers,
Robin
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: RoadRunner on January 27, 2010, 07:53:13 PM
I have to  return to the topic of the  Asus Xonar Essence STX PCI Express  card.
Now Steve Guttenberg (The Audiophiliac) at Cnet has taken on the card. 

Doesn't seem like he has actually done a hands, er, ears on approach yet, but what he has read piques his interest.   I hope to see his review soon.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-10440755-47.html?tag=mncol;txt
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: sleepyguy24 on June 24, 2016, 08:32:16 AM
Anyone have any sound card recommendations now for a Music Server PC? I'm thinking about building a music server from an old PC build. Thanks in advance.
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: jessearias on June 28, 2016, 09:36:20 AM
Now you guys have me all curious.  :shock:

I have been toying with the idea of building a music server.

From what I have read, I will need a high quality MB like an Asus, MSI etc. in addition to memory (8 GB) and good processing power. (not overkill, as I am not playing World of Warcraft, but speedy)

My question is: I have a built in DAC in my Parasound P5 (Burr-Brown PCM1798) and it would seem logical to just use an Audioquest Jitterbug (to get rid of any jitter) and feed the USB stream to the P5. ( I know not the best DAC in the world, but that's what it has)  :(

OR

Would it be better to use the Asus soundcard and RCA it to the P5?  :shock:

ALSO: What is a good program to manage the music? I am looking for a program that manages and allows ripping of the CD onto the computer in full cd audio quality? I want to stay away from MP3, kind of  defeats the purpose

Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: HAL on June 28, 2016, 10:16:32 AM
If it has a USB2 port, the Meridian Audio Explorer2 DAC is a very good sounding external unit for $299.  It has an asynchronous USB2 interface with ASIO USB driver.

All minimum phase filtering and the capability to decode MQA files for sites like Tidal streaming High Fi channel.

Good luck with your choice.
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: richidoo on June 28, 2016, 12:28:27 PM
Anyone have any sound card recommendations now for a Music Server PC? I'm thinking about building a music server from an old PC build. Thanks in advance.

Dean, Asus Xonar Essence STR and Creative ZXR are among the best consumer PCI audio cards. ($300) Whether these are good enough for audiophile use I don't know, they are targeted to high end video gamers. But there have been audiophile reviews of them. They probably sound better than most so called "pro audio" hobby musician interfaces in the same price range.

Moving up to true professional quality you have Lynx E22 (600,) or anything from RME ($$$ - german - the best.) Lynx is good build quality, good sound quality, but probably not as good as an audiophile bred DAC and not a good value unless you need the pro audio features like signal routing, hardware dsp, ultra reliability, etc.

The PCI format is less popular now, USB is taking over. Make sure your old PC can handle the PCI formats used in the new cards.

If your old PC has USB 2.0 ports, you're probably better off choosing a $400-600 USB DAC since that is the rage now and there are a million of them with modern DAC chips and low jitter clocks. This would be the best resale value too.  If you buy it used then it's "free disposal" when you're done. ;)

I think you would get similar or better sound quality as the PCI cards or $500 commercial USB DAC by using a Raspberry Pi 3 (RPi3) and HifiBerry DAC+ Pro. (https://www.hifiberry.com/dacplus) Low jitter, nice DAC chip, simple output stage for $100, includes the server (RPi,) the DAC (Hifiberry) and free linux audio OS and software player (Rune, Volumio, Raspbian, etc.)

The only reason to need the processing power of a PC for audio playback nowadays is if you want to do convolution dsp like low frequency FIR crossover, EQ and room correction. But to just spin the tunes from web or local files, you just need a little Raspberry Pi.

The nice thing about the HifiBerry audio accessories for RPi is it is all extremely minimalistic, so the price is kept down and simple to assemble and use. There are also other brands of RPi DACs and such.

If I get my DAC mods working I'm getting a RPi for silent USB source.
Title: Re: Sound Cards for Music Server PC
Post by: richidoo on June 28, 2016, 12:54:33 PM
Now you guys have me all curious.  :shock:

I have been toying with the idea of building a music server.

From what I have read, I will need a high quality MB like an Asus, MSI etc. in addition to memory (8 GB) and good processing power. (not overkill, as I am not playing World of Warcraft, but speedy)

My question is: I have a built in DAC in my Parasound P5 (Burr-Brown PCM1798) and it would seem logical to just use an Audioquest Jitterbug (to get rid of any jitter) and feed the USB stream to the P5. ( I know not the best DAC in the world, but that's what it has)  :(

OR

Would it be better to use the Asus soundcard and RCA it to the P5?  :shock:

ALSO: What is a good program to manage the music? I am looking for a program that manages and allows ripping of the CD onto the computer in full cd audio quality? I want to stay away from MP3, kind of  defeats the purpose



You don't need a powerful PC to stream music from web or to play tunes from local or network drive. Even high res PCM will play easily from today's smallest appliance computer or cell phone.

Any ripper program can rip to PCM (*.wav) What you want to look for in a ripper app is that it produces "bit-perfect" rips. This requires the app analyze the bitstream coming from the CD-R and construct the file correctly, filtering out errors, scratches, whatever problems. A simple ripper like iTunes or Windows Media Player does not prevent errors being written into the ripped files.

I use dBpoweramp ($) software for ripping CDs to flac. It does all that analysis and even compares the ripped file's CRC result to a database of previously ripped songs to verify your rip is exactly the same as other people's rips, which assumes it is bit perfect. But it also does hard way verification and error correction, etc.  It can reconstruct a bitperfect file from a scratched or error filled CD of you give it enough time. This kind of ripping of scratched or error filled CDs is very intensive on the optical drive, so it might shorten the lifespan of that periferal if you rip a lot of bad CDs. Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is a good free bitperfect ripper.
mo info: http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Secure_ripping

The flac file format is a lossless compression format (similar to alac on apple) that sounds just as good as uncompressed wav format, but takes up only about half the space. mp3 is only 5-20% of the original file on the CD, but SQ suffers to varying degrees.

Many of us ripped our music library to flac over the last 10 years, but nowadays hard drive space is so cheap, it is probably just as valid to rip to wav and avoid the decode file conversion during playback. I used to imagine that wav file sounded slightly (barely) better than flac when the decode was being done inside a Squeezebox 3 streamer. I'm sure I could not succeed at a blind comparison, as it was too close. And if decode was done on a more powerful host I might not be able to tell. Could be just a little more jitter was added through the flac signal path. Also I'm 10 years older now so I don't care anymore. ;) ymmv