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Build High-End Audio System w/ Hard Drive Storage?
nganju asks: "Hard Drives have finally reached the size where I can rip down 1000 CDs directly to WAV files, and skip the compression step (read: headache) altogether, ensuring that the audio playback is what the original CD author intended. Now the question is, how do I get that WAV data off the computer and into the amplifier with minimal distortion? Are there D/A PCI cards comparable to high-end CD players? Or is the best solution some direct digital output card (SPDIF) and a standalone D/A converter component? Specific model names would be greatly appreciated."
Kitbash yourself a computer with an AOPEN AX4B-533 Tube motherboard (picture here).
Ok. MP3's and uncompressed WAVs are "undiscernable". Bullshit.
Compare Grieg's "Song of Petersburg" from lossless wav to 24kbit mono MP3. Can you hear the difference?
Ok, thats not a fair test. Of course you were talking about a high quality MP3, perhaps 256kbit full stereo MP3. ok...
Do you have a home theater setup? Go slot a disc holding that MP3 (the 256 kbit one) and listen to it and compare it to the wav... You can discern the difference. There's things missing from the mp3 when you "magnify" it to the high quality equipment.. Just as you can see artifacts when you watch Dish-Network feeds on a 1024i widescreen. Normally you dont see em, but every so often, you see the blockies..
When I say I can discern the difference, it's because I know many many pieces. I play as lead clarinet in a symphony, so I know what I "miss". When the MP3 encoding clips out the violin's harmonics (or most other instruments) I can tell most of the time. Of course somebody will say "its cause you have crap equipment" or some other audiophile crap.
For the naysayers, I say listen to a symphony by sitting in the center of the orchestra.
Buy an Xbox, an SP/DIF dongle for it, and install XBMC. Plug it into a good outboard converter or your surround reciever, as dictated by taste and equipment. It will play whatever audio format you decide on, either from its own (upgradable) hard drive or across a network.
To my ears, with my system, it sounds indistinguishable from the Carver TL-3300 CD player that I've used as a reference for the past decade. And the organizational features of XBMC are second to none for any system capable of being operated sans mouse/keyboard.
Note, however, that listening to music isn't as much fun once it becomes computer-based and completely intangible, even if it does sound the same. There's nothing tactile or visual about it. It's just a sterile index of music. The disparity is not unlike a flipping through a card catalog instead walking through a gallery.
XBMC's relatively slick handling of cover art and biographical information helps a bit, but it's still very impersonal.
Keep your CDs around.
Kid-proof tablet..