Playing Music Stored on the PC

[GlocksRock]

You could get an xbox 360 which can stream .mp3/.wma and .wmv files from your pc. Of course to do it wirelessly you would need a wireless router and the wireless xbox 360 adapter, but if you are into gaming then this is the best route, although somewhat costly, but it is another option.

 

[tbewick]

2. I know of no DAC in use that degrades sound quality. Modern DACs are transparent.

3. I find the best way to transmit music from a computer is to use a digital signal the whole way (be it optical or coaxial). This is NOT because of the supposed 'deterioration' with A/D or D/A conversions, but rather because it eliminates the issues with noise that are common in analog outputs on computers. My Dell laptop has noise in the output stage that is unbearable with good headphones, so much so that I was forced to buy a PCMCIA sound card to rectify the issue.

I'm sure that good quality sound cards do offer high performance, but there still are some cards, ADC's, and DAC's that will have lower sound quality. A recent AES convention paper gives some examples of sound cards which would audibly deteriorate sound quality:

http://www.optimalsound.net/documents/Testing_Challenges_in_Personal_Computer_Audio_Devices.pdf
Jones, W. et al (2003). 'Testing Challenges in Personal Computer Audio Devices'. AES Convention Paper 5814.

I would be particularly cautious about the A/D conversion performance of some cheaper sound cards.

 

[zhimbo]

I Any time you take an analog signal and digitize it, damage is done.
[...]
I find that mp3 gets grating and gritty after a while, even above 256K. No matter how much I try to think otherwise, when it comes to a comparison of any mp3 to SACD or vinyl on a turntable, I keep the mp3 files mainly for convenience, not sound quality.

With current gear, 320K pretty much sounds like the original to me, possibly a VERY slight difference. But I won't vouch for any of my current gear as being a worthy test.

Does anyone know of AB tests (or any reasonable 'blind' protocol) for high bit-rate MP3s? Seems like an obvious and easy test to do. The best I've seen is this:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1560783,00.asp

and it only goes up to 192K, and strangely enough the listeners tended to rate 192K *higher* than lossless formats, which says something is wrong with either the source material or the listeners.

I hope this isn't thread hijacking, now that I think of it...

 

[MDS]

Does anyone know of AB tests (or any reasonable 'blind' protocol) for high bit-rate MP3s? Seems like an obvious and easy test to do. The best I've seen is this:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1560783,00.asp

and it only goes up to 192K, and strangely enough the listeners tended to rate 192K *higher* than lossless formats, which says something is wrong with either the source material or the listeners.

What it says is that in the vast majority of cases 192 kbps MP3 is indistinguishable from the original. If you ASSUME that everyone will be able to tell the lossless from the MP3 and then dismiss the result when they don't then you fall prey to the very bias that is meant to be eliminated by double blind tests.

MP3 is a general purpose audio codec and by definition cannot be 'perfect' for every single type of music. Artificats are noticeable in music that has a lot of high frequencies or very fast transients. Everything in engineering is a trade-off and with mp3 encoders you get to choose between time resolution and frequency resolution. That is why encoders like LAME have a million different settings you can choose.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.com has audio forums where members have done extensive blind tests and their conclusions mirror those of many other such tests - in most cases, with a sufficiently high bitrate, MP3 is indistinguishable from the original uncompressed version.

 

[zhimbo]

What it says is that in the vast majority of cases 192 kbps MP3 is indistinguishable from the original.

Well, the raters actually rated the 192K samples as consistently *better* than lossless, which is what I considered to be suspicious. But looking again, the difference may not be statistically reliable, as we're dealing with small-ish numbers and ratings between raters was highly variable...so you're probably right, this probably goes into the "indistinguishable" category, at least under these conditions.

The link sends me to spam central, nothing useful, I'm afraid...

Ah - you mean http://www.hydrogenaudio.org !

 

[corey]

An alternate method to get music from your PC to HT is to burn it to DVDs. My DVD player will play mp3s from DVD media. I use DVD-RAM so I can change the mix from time to time.

I've had a LinkSys Wireless B Media Adapter for years, but don't use it much anymore - the DVDs are easier.

 

[Warpdrv]

sorry to chime in a little late in the game here.... but
My most favorite solution which I run at every tv/stereo is a modded xbox...

I run Xbox Media Center.... XBMC

I have modded 3 xbox's (original xbox), chipped or softmod...
which allows you to setup streaming across the network....

I have a Dual Terabyte (2 computers terabyte each) system which I stream all my Lossless music at least 100GB and the rest of all my DVD's Ripped to IMG or ISO which XBMC will read and display in 1080i on any of my Plasma's.

XBMC will play any file format that you can possibly think of, as well as access the internet and even stream youtube or internet music servers and more then I could possibly ever think of suggest... the possiblities are endless and continualy advancing.

You can get an Xbox and mod it for cheap and run music easily wireless or if you hardwire (LAN) you can stream movies with ease...

I just bought a new house and wired 2 cat6e to each setup to futureproof my setup so I could access my servers from anywhere...

Im really not sure how much better it could be, with no restrictions from RIAA rules or MPAA complications...

Search the web for XBMC and see what turns up...

Good luck...

Warp

 

[kingdaddy]

What it says is that in the vast majority of cases 192 kbps MP3 is indistinguishable from the original. If you ASSUME that everyone will be able to tell the lossless from the MP3 and then dismiss the result when they don't then you fall prey to the very bias that is meant to be eliminated by double blind tests.

The way you can really tell a difference in SQ concerning any question of resolution is to turn up your HT to concert levels and listen to the bass quality, it will be apparent to even the most casual observer at nearly any compression level.
I’ve proven this test in more then one way and they agree so there is something to this. I first noticed this when I was listening to SACD’s, much better bass resolution, then I tried a DTS music disc at high volumes and again the bass was superior to the redbook version of the same recording, then I proved it on some high bit rate MP3’s, they sound terrible when you get to pants flapping volume levels, much of this was the same songs in different formats. To say a particular bit rate MP3 is indistinguishable from the redbook is to suggest that higher resolution recordings are not audibly different and this I must disagree with, but as I said, its much more obvious at really high volume levels.

 

[MDS]

Everyone has an opinion and I respect those individual options - but that is all they are...volume has nothing to do with it.

An MP3 encoder attempts to remove parts of the signal that its conceptual model deems irrelevant - either because it will be masked by other nearby sounds or is too high or too low in frequency to be heard.

Bass is never affected. It is the high frequnencies where one can often notice a subtle difference.

One must realize that there is a trade-off between time resolution and frequency resolution. If you choose freqnecy resolution you will capture more of the subtle difference in frequencies whereras if you choose time resolution you will capture more of the subtle differences in rapidly varying frequencies. The default settings of a typical encoder attempt to compromise between the two.

Everyone must choose what they deem acceptable and for me with over 5K MP3s created by myself using Sound Forge from CDs that I own, it is very difficult to tell the difference except in a few cases.

 

[moaudio]

Someone mentioned Sonos in this thread. I own a few Sonos zone controllers and I am very happy with this system. You can play flac and wav files if you like to retain all the detail.
The wireless controllers are also very nice. It's easy to control the differnt zones and its pretty easy to browse your music (even though as of now it does not have a search function on the handheld controller). The system just works very well.

 

[superstar]

@Warp,

Do you know if the xbox 360 can do the same as the old xbox? do you know where I can get a good working old xbox? I know I can search on ebay and such but since it will be used, I don't want to take a chance of it arriving broken. Thanks!

 

[rumble]

@Warp,

Do you know if the xbox 360 can do the same as the old xbox? do you know where I can get a good working old xbox? I know I can search on ebay and such but since it will be used, I don't want to take a chance of it arriving broken. Thanks!

You cannot run xbmc on the xbox 360. You must "hack" the original xbox in order to get it running as it is not officially Microsoft "signed" code. The protection mechanisms on the xbox 360 have not to this day been broken. Plus the architecture of the xbox 360 is completely different from the old xbox and the xmbc code would need to be ported.

You may be able to buy a refurbed/used xbox from gamestop. I know they were selling them around the end of last year. I got lucky, a friend upgraded to the 360 and gave me his old xbox.

 

[rumble]

sorry to chime in a little late in the game here.... but
My most favorite solution which I run at every tv/stereo is a modded xbox...

I run Xbox Media Center.... XBMC

I have modded 3 xbox's (original xbox), chipped or softmod...
which allows you to setup streaming across the network....

I have a Dual Terabyte (2 computers terabyte each) system which I stream all my Lossless music at least 100GB and the rest of all my DVD's Ripped to IMG or ISO which XBMC will read and display in 1080i on any of my Plasma's.

XBMC will play any file format that you can possibly think of, as well as access the internet and even stream youtube or internet music servers and more then I could possibly ever think of suggest... the possiblities are endless and continualy advancing.

You can get an Xbox and mod it for cheap and run music easily wireless or if you hardwire (LAN) you can stream movies with ease...

I just bought a new house and wired 2 cat6e to each setup to futureproof my setup so I could access my servers from anywhere...

Im really not sure how much better it could be, with no restrictions from RIAA rules or MPAA complications...

Search the web for XBMC and see what turns up...

Good luck...

Warp

Second vote for xmbc. Nothing on the market comes close at any price.

I have one streaming movies, music and pictures from a nas server. All music is stored in high quality ogg files. Everything stays completely digital until it hits my receiver. I'm continually amazed at what a bunch of volunteer coders is able to produce. They are not concerned with pushing corporate agendas and just make the software to satisfy consumers.