Newbie and confused about using PC as music server

[audiofils]

Hi everyone

 

I am a newbie to music servers and not very techno-savvy when it comes to computers. On the other hand, I have a reasonable good hifi system and want to maximize sound quality while keeping it convenient.

 

I am currently using iTunes running on a PC with Windows XP, use USB 2.0 output into a Trend UD10 SPDIF converter into a Monarchy Audio DIP upsampler 48/96 into a Monarchy Audio M24 DAC..and into my preamp...a long chain.

 

On the media player side, I need to keep iTunes for my kids' music as they have lots of iTunes stores downloads. For me, I like the iTunes GUI but could use any other player if the GUI is relatively friendly.

 

I would like to make sure that the sound quality is not degraded (I ripped all my CDs in 1411 WAV) and based on my readings, it seems that my set up may be prone to 3 problems (at least):

- use of iTunes (instead of a better player)

- unnecessary USB to SPDIF conversion (compared to using an Airport Express or a Mac Mini and use optical out into my DIP)

- use of Windows XP and the Kmixer negative impact on sound instead of Mac OSX

 

 

What would you recommend I do among the following options:

a) change nothing in my system but use a different media player than iTunes (free)

b) keep using iTunes but add an Airport Express to us optical out ($100)

c) keep using iTunes and buy a Mac Mini and use optical out ($600)

 

I have read about ASIO drivers, unmapping audio devices, etc etc but in the end, that appears quite complicated to me and I am not even sure that by doing all this on my PC-XP and long chain of cables-converters-upsamplers, I am not just making things too complex!

 

Also, is there any basic computer set-up tricks that I could sue to maximize the use of a PC as a music server?

 

Thanks for your help.

 

 

 

[Mr.C]

The UD-10 conversion to spdif is the same number of conversions as using the optical out on a Mini. I would just change software to one that can use ASIO or ASIO4ALL. JRiver, XXHE, Foobar come to mind.

 

[sturgl]

I agree with Mr. C. on all counts. In spite of myself, I'll throw out a bit of education/opinion anyway:

 

- FYI, Mac OS is equally horrific to XP with regard to sound quality. Merely upgrading to a Mac will not get you to where you want to be. The Mac Mini has many pluses - but native bit-perfect output isn't among them.

- iTunes is a poor (audiophile) player on Mac, and is just terrible on PC in my experience. Run (don't walk) away from iTunes, quick as you can!

- You're right of course about kmixer. ASIO will get you 'round that mess (ditto for Mac's mess).

- Then you just need a better player: MediaMonkey (popular, pretty, flexible), Foobar2000 (ugly UI, solid plug-ins for WASAPI and ASIO, highly configurable) are both great. I've heard Songbird recommended - but as I understand it, it's not capable of bit-perfect output yet.

- Regardless of what player you choose, leave the player's volume at 100%, and control volume with your preamp.

 

So for now, I'd go with your Option A. ASIO4ALL + an ASIO-capable player, and you're done. That should get you to or very close to the caliber of your CD player. Down the line, maybe the Mac Mini + ASIO drivers + ASIO-capable player. The big advantage I see there is that the kids would have their own music machine (the old XP box), and you'd have yours (the Mini).

 

[Richard Dale]

 

sturgl: "..Mac OS is equally horrific to XP with regard to sound quality. Merely upgrading to a Mac will not get you to where you want to be. The Mac Mini has many pluses - but native bit-perfect output isn't among them.

- iTunes is a poor (audiophile) player on Mac.."

 

 

 

I'm not sure what you mean here. I'm a newbie computer audiophile (not a computer newbie), but I had no trouble at all setting up a MacBook with iTunes to use bit perfect output. The biggest annoyance for me is when you want to change sample rates from 44 KHz to 48 KHz or whatever, you need to use the Audio Midi utility to change DAC sample rate settings and then restart iTunes. YMMV, but I don't find iTunes a 'poor' audio player, although I haven't tried PureMusic, Almarra etc. I certainly couldn't hear any difference between iTunes and Play in my system, driving an HRT Music Streamer II+.

 

 

[Egon]

I'd first go with the free thing. Download MediaMonkey or J. River and see if you like them with ASIO. MediaMonkey is free, J. River will cost ~$50 after a month trial if you like it.

If the free option doesn't make you happy, you can connect the A Ex by ethernet to your computer, use the optical out from that and have bit-perfect output with minimal setup. That leaves you in your familiar zone, requires minimal work, and no learning curve. Plus, you can use the AEx for a second room of music in your house when you're not doing "critical listening".

I'd consider buying a Mac Mini as last-ditch if you're really not happy with the first two options. It's fine if you get more into this hobby, but not the place to start.

 

[Audio_ELF]

With all due respect sturgl, your post is a combination of misinformation (about Mac OS X and Core Audio) and opinions which many others don't share.

 

To begin... "FYI, Mac OS is equally horrific to XP with regard to sound quality. Merely upgrading to a Mac will not get you to where you want to be. The Mac Mini has many pluses - but native bit-perfect output isn't among them."

Mac OS X and Core Audio are completely (and natively) bit perfect. The majority of high end audio editing and mastering packages make use of the inbuilt core audio. Out of the box, the only thing you need to alter to ensure bit-perfect output, is selecting the correct sample rate in the Audio Midi setting application.

 

Next... "iTunes is a poor (audiophile) player on Mac, and is just terrible on PC in my experience. Run (don't walk) away from iTunes, quick as you can!"

This is an opinion only - many people would disagree though you are perfectly within your rights to hold this as an opinion.

 

You follow with... "You're right of course about kmixer. ASIO will get you 'round that mess (ditto for Mac's mess)."

Correct - ASIO will avoid kMixer. But ASIO has nothing to do with Mac OS X. ASIO was a creation by Steinberg which avoids the in build audio layers of Windows operating systems to provide low latency access to audio hardware. In addition it provides a bit-perfect signal.

 

Your next two statements... "Then you just need a better player: MediaMonkey (popular, pretty, flexible), Foobar2000 (ugly UI, solid plug-ins for WASAPI and ASIO, highly configurable) are both great. I've heard Songbird recommended - but as I understand it, it's not capable of bit-perfect output yet." [and] "Regardless of what player you choose, leave the player's volume at 100%, and control volume with your preamp." I have no issue with - though you could add J.River Media Center to the list of possible alternative players for Windows. Note that none of these will play back FairPlay DRM'd music from iTunes Store if you have any of these from the past.

 

In your summary you say... "So for now, I'd go with your Option A. ASIO4ALL + an ASIO-capable player, and you're done. That should get you to or very close to the caliber of your CD player. Down the line, maybe the Mac Mini + ASIO drivers + ASIO-capable player. The big advantage I see there is that the kids would have their own music machine (the old XP box), and you'd have yours (the Mini)."

This re-states your comments linking ASIO to Mac OS X and MacMini which is completely incorrect. If wishing to head the MacMini route I would suggest iTunes coupled with PureMusic or Amarra Mini. Of course both of these options cost money. The alternative on the Mac is to use Play which, while not pretty, in some systems can produce a better audio output.

 

Eloise

 

[sturgl]

It was blatantly incorrect to state that the current Mac OS is not natively capable of bit-perfect output. It most definitely is. By default, however, a user will not experience this capability. A reasonably painless change, et voila. Windows XP, on the other hand, is not natively capable of bit-perfect output, requiring the use of an ASIO driver and an ASIO-capable player. ASIO drivers are certainly available for Mac OS X - but as with Windows Vista and 7, probably overkill if all you require is bit-perfect output. (full disclosure: Microsoft's own Windows Media Player cannot leverage Microsoft's own WASAPI technology and therefore is not itself capable of bit-perfect output; players such as Foobar2000 and JRMC can and do leverage WASAPI quite nicely.)

 

As far as iTunes goes, many audiophiles have a strong distaste for this app. I am one of them; I've found it doesn't offer the flexibility I require and level of information I crave. In the past, I've found its implementation on Windows to be quite poor. Gutting it with the $300 Amarra Mini will arguably turn iTunes into a world-class player (I have no experience here - but those who use Amarra on this forum appear to be quite pleased with it). That's an option only available to Mac users, and only available at a substantial cost. So, on Windows I avoid iTunes like the plague. On Mac, I merely avoid it. Different strokes.

 

[sturgl]

"The biggest annoyance for me is when you want to change sample rates from 44 KHz to 48 KHz or whatever, you need to use the Audio Midi utility to change DAC sample rate settings and then restart iTunes."

 

Having to go through these gyrations, imho, is just lame. It's one of the several reasons I don't like iTunes. My understanding is that on Mac w/iTunes, you must change the sample-rate in MIDI every time you play a file of a different sample-rate - otherwise the OS will up-sample or down-sample to match the selected rate. So if, like me, your collection consists of music encoded at 16/44.1, 24/48, 24/88.2, and 24/96, you're stuck fooling around with MIDI and restarting iTunes rather alot. Play gets you around this by integrating tightly with Core Audio, as I understand it.

 

Now with your HRT, I would think you'd notice a difference playing a 24/96 flac in iTunes vs. Play. Maybe not at 16/44.1. I've gone over to the dark side - so don't quote me on any of this - just my understanding. Speaking of the dark side, iTunes supports bit-perfect output in Vista & 7 via WASAPI, but Microsoft's own WMP doesn't?! WTF! As you said, YMMV! ...and how do you like that Glow? Sweeet.

 

[Richard Dale]

 

sturgl: "..Having to go through these gyrations, imho, is just lame. It's one of the several reasons I don't like iTunes.."

 

 

 

Yes iTunes is annoying if you have a mixture of music recorded at different bit depths/bit rates. However, the original question that started this thread didn't mention anything about that.

 

 

 

I actually want to use a Linux based computer to drive my DAC, and I am a computer programmer with plenty of Objective-C experience (the programming language that iTunes is written in). So what annoys me personally about iTunes is that I don't have access to the source and can't spend a couple of evenings (maybe more I don't know) creating a patch to fix the bug where iTunes doesn't upsample or downsample, but just plays the bit rate 'as is'.

 

You talk about ASIO with respect to the Macintosh, but that is a Windows only thing as far as I know.

 

 

 

sturgl: "..Now with your HRT, I would think you'd notice a difference playing a 24/96 flac in iTunes vs. Play. Maybe not at 16/4.."

 

 

 

I would love to be able to find out, but I haven't actually been able to find a site where I can buy 24/96 music that I want to listen to outside the USA (eg HD Tracks is US only).

 

 

 

sturgl: "...and how do you like that Glow? Sweeet.

 

 

 

Yes the Glow is very nice. With the stock Chinese tubes it got good reviews, but if you replace the EL84s with Genalex Gold Lion reissues, and the 6N3 with Russian NOS Reflectors the sound quality jumps up another level or two. I have also replaced the rubber feet, and situated the amp on a Finite Elemente Pagode Master Reference equipment stand (as used by Michael Fremer). The latter 'tweak' sounds great, but costs 6000 USD sadly, and wouldn't normally be cost effective with a 500 USD amp.

 

 

[audiofils]

Thanks everybody. I decided to go with the simple and free option to use Foobar2000 and ASIO4. The result is impressive compared to iTunes and Kmixer: bass is better defined, treble less aggressive but more dramatically, spatial cues and details are first grade, I am bluffed by the difference, Roger Waters QSound recording (Amused to Death) is now played the way it should with all the artifacts and dimensionality that I have on LP.

 

[Audio_ELF]

sturgl ... ou reitterated the fact that Mac OS X can use AISO - this is incorrect as far as I know. To quote Wikipedia (which in this case soudns correct)...

 

[ASIO] Overview

ASIO bypasses the normal audio path from the user application through layers of intermediary Windows operating system software, so that the application connects directly to the soundcard hardware. Each layer that is bypassed means a reduction in latency, the delay between an application sending audio information and it being reproduced by the soundcard, or input signals from the soundcard being available to the application. In this way ASIO offers a relatively simple way of accessing multiple audio inputs and outputs independently. Its main strength lies in its method of bypassing the inherently high latency of Windows audio mixing kernels (KMixer), allowing direct, high speed communication with audio hardware. Unlike KMixer, an unmixed ASIO output is "bit identical", that is, the bits sent to the soundcard are identical to those of the original source, thus having higher audio fidelity.

 

Operating systems

Interface support is normally restricted to Microsoft Windows, since other operating systems (e.g. Apple's Mac OS X or Linux) do not have such mixer latency problems (see Core Audio and ALSA). In Windows Vista, KMixer has been removed and replaced by a new WaveRT port driver. WaveRT cannot provide synchronized audio to multiple devices and does not support external clocks.[1]

As of 2007 there is also an experimental ASIO driver for Wine, a Windows layer for Linux. This wineasio driver uses the JACK sound server as its audio back-end and allows many ASIO-aware applications to run with low-latency under WINE.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Stream_Input/Output

 

If you have some knowledge of it's use under Mac OS X please can you give some references.

 

Eloise

 

[firedog]

audiofils-

 

Do a web search for custom Foobar interfaces - there are some nice ones out there that turn Foobar into quite a pleasant GUI. Even some mimicking iTunes. Free for download and copy.

 

Basically, you need to install a few plugins and edit UI definitions in Foobar to use them. Well worth the not great investment of time involved, IMHO

 

[sturgl]

If you have some knowledge of it's use under Mac OS X please can you give some references.

 

A quick Google search turns up numerous references:

http://www.brothersoft.com/usb-audio-asio-driver-for-mac-os-x-111591.html

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=293426

http://www.usb-audio.com/download.html

 

My assumption here is that ASIO is being leveraged by legacy professional applications & equipment that require an ASIO driver, that perhaps can't access Core Audio. Perhaps there are engineers out there who simply prefer ASIO to Core - I don't know. Certainly, ASIO isn't as widely used for Mac is it is for Windows XP (though frankly, I rarely ever saw Windows in professional audio. That said, I left music as my profession over a decade ago, so am no longer exposed to or using these tools; allow me to be clear that I'm just taking an educated guess with regard to ASIO's current purpose on Mac). If you wish to do more research on your own, by all means do so. I would not recommend Wikipedia for authoritative research.