Systemic Development > Hardware
Sound Cards for Music Server PC
RoadRunner:
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.
Carlman:
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
mdconnelly:
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!
richidoo:
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
RME
Lynx
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.
djdube525:
--- Quote from: Carlman on November 30, 2009, 03:00:49 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.
--- End quote ---
The Esi Juli@ is another decent sound card with analog outs
http://www.esi-audio.com/products/julia/
Dave
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