Crystal Clear Music from PC

[jl7av]

Bros,

i am going to configure a new PC used dedicatedly for entertainment.


I need expert advise on how to play distinctively crisp, tight, clear, detail, full of body music for the ear.


I spent $6k last year on my sound system (Receiver/Amp, Sub woofer and good set of speakers.) and get low end sound when i play music from PC as i used the normal analogue sound cable out from PC to plasma, then from plasma(the same type of analogue PC sound cable to my receiver. (as you can see, i seriously needed help!)


My main entertainment application: -
1) View HD movie play direct from my PC
2) Listen to MP3 music (i know its not the best quality) direct thru my Receiver to the speakers.

MISC
3) I am not a gamer
4) Do some basic computer function like Google earth,web browsing, internet streaming movie.

I wanted to ask for inputs what is the best logical connection i should have.

SHOULD I............

i) Connect HDMI (audio/video) from PC direct to Receiver, then HDMI(Video only) from Receiver to Plasma to watch the HD movie and yet can have audio thru my tower speakers.

OR

ii) connect HDMI (Audio/video) direct to plasma, and as for good sound quality, get a good sound card (Creative or X-fi Forte) connect using OPTICAL cable from PC to receiver.

Which will be your option and why?

Kindly help me out, as i wanted to hear from those that had been there done that, to leverage on your experience.

Pls advise the type/ brand of video card with HDMI out (should i used those that come with motherboard, or a dedicated graphics card) type and brands of sound card.

thanks in advance!

 

[sholling]

I can't answer the video part but I can give you my take on the music side.

1. Start with a quiet PC. I built my own using a very quiet case, extra quiet low speed 120mm case fans, passively cooled video, near silent power supply, and ultra quiet CPU fan and hard drive. No matter what else you do a music server that sounds like a jet taking off just isn't pleasant. The result of my efforts has been near silence when listened to from across the room..
2. I've taken the time to rip 300+ CDs to a lossless format. I chose FLAC but if you're a pod person or just an Apple guy then Apple Lossless will be fine.
3. I'm not aware of any video cards that output sound through HDMI but I'm not up to the minute on the technology either. I just use the digital output from a good sound card that was designed for music not games.

I'm actually considering a networked media "tank" (appliance) when I extend my music files into my bedroom. The technology seems like it's still primitive but the wave of the future. Anyway everything will be stored on one music server and backed up to my main PC and a low cost NAS box.

 

[s162216]

I would get an Asus Xonar HDAV1.3 Deluxe as a soundcard (expensive but the best for HD content as it can play all HD sound formats perfectly)

And a Nvidia GTX260 for a graphics card as it gives very good HD image quality for a reasonable price and you don't want to play games, so anything better is overkill.
Check that the card you get supports HDCP though as some older ones don't, the more recent ones do though.

The 260 does not have HDMI, it has DVI and with a suitable adaptor, you can take the DVI output, convert it to HDMI and feed it into the HDMI input port of the Xonar soundcard. You can then connect the HDMI output port on the soundcard to your reciever, so then you can play it over your speakers and plasma.

 

[jl7av]

SHOULD I............

i) Connect HDMI (audio/video) from PC direct to Receiver, then HDMI(Video only) from Receiver to Plasma to watch the HD movie and yet can have audio thru my tower speakers.

OR

ii) connect HDMI (Audio/video) direct to plasma, and as for good sound quality, get a good sound card (Creative or X-fi Forte) connect using OPTICAL cable from PC to receiver.

Which will be your option and why?

 

[Djizasse]

SHOULD I............

i) Connect HDMI (audio/video) from PC direct to Receiver, then HDMI(Video only) from Receiver to Plasma to watch the HD movie and yet can have audio thru my tower speakers.

OR

ii) connect HDMI (Audio/video) direct to plasma, and as for good sound quality, get a good sound card (Creative or X-fi Forte) connect using OPTICAL cable from PC to receiver.

Which will be your option and why?

Unless you're making your HD rips with 7.1 channels, DTS-HD, TrueHD or whatever, you won't need any special stuff. Don't spend your money on a Xonar or a GTX260 as there are a lot of cheaper units that may fulfill your requirements. You may even get by with the coaxial output incorporated in a motherboard.

You should give us more information on your current hardware and what kind of HD material do you have. With that information we can advise you better.

 

[10010011]

I've taken the time to rip 300+ CDs to a lossless format. I chose FLAC but if you're a pod person or just an Apple guy then Apple Lossless will be fine.

IMHO, this is the what you should take the time to do before spending any money on improving your system.

Playing a loss-less file over even a mediocre system will sound better than a 128k mp3 played over the quietest most expensive PC you can build.

 

[Shock]

In all honesty, the speakers and the format your music is ripped in is going to account for 99% of what you hear coming from your computer. It doesn't matter if you're using top of the line parts if your music is ripped at 128 kbps it's going to sound sub-optimal.

However if you're hell bent on making a HTPC you're going to want it nice and quiet. I would however stray from passive cooled anything. Anything a passive cooler can do a low noise fan can do better.

 

[s162216]

However if you're hell bent on making a HTPC you're going to want it nice and quiet. I would however stray from passive cooled anything. Anything a passive cooler can do a low noise fan can do better.

I second that, why do you think they make 'silent' fans and no longer use passive cooling in mainstream computers? - fans do a much better job for only a very small increase in sound.

If you really are that concerned about sound, you can always use acoustic foam as well as ultra quiet 120mm fans which will make it near silent as you can get it.

 

[Warpdrv]

I don't know alot about HTPC's, I haven't gone that way yet, but a couple of guys I know didn't like the N-Vidia cards as an option, they had problems with it, so before you go there, you might want to research a bit on that so you don't waste your time or money...

Quote:
Originally Posted by shawnwalters View Post
Anyone using a HTPC with their Anthem? I bought a HP computer yesterday with a NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GS graphics card.

My problem is I'm setting it up and I tried running the HDMI through my Anthem and it doesn't recognize it as a display and my anthem says no input. However if I go straight to my projector it works fine (video atleast).

Any ideas? It also has a DVI out. Should I try a dvi>hdmi adapter and see if that helps?

I try to debug a NVIDIA setup last year. Spent a lot of time without too much success. Finally swapped the video card for an ATI 4670 and it was basically plug and play. The whole 4xxx serie from ATI works really well.

I get audio through the Anthem at 5.1 96khz/24bits using foobar as the player. Video works really well. I defined 4 video config on the HTPCand the Anthem to run at 1080p24, 1080p25, 1080p50 and 1080p60. This allow me to watch non region A bd from europe without too much issues.

 

[sholling]

I second that, why do you think they make 'silent' fans and no longer use passive cooling in mainstream computers? - fans do a much better job for only a very small increase in sound.

If you really are that concerned about sound, you can always use acoustic foam as well as ultra quiet 120mm fans which will make it near silent as you can get it.

I've been working on computers professionally for 20 plus years. Trust me everything that makes noise adds up.

The case design makes a big difference. Some are much quieter than others. Antec has a couple of offering that work well. Silent fans aren't, but big slow spinning low noise fans will usually be quieter than small high speed fans. Choose a case that will accept 120mm fans and choose the fans carefully. I like Sythe's products. Variable speed is a plus. Watch temps carefully and adjust the fans down to the minimum speed necessary to keep things cool.

Next up is the power supply. Passive power supplies seem to have gone away and I frankly never trusted them. PC Power & Cooling offers their reasonably quiet Silencer series and that would be my 1st choice. You're not building a gaming rig so you don't need a 900w PS. Smaller needs less cooling.

Choose the CPU and CPU cooler carefully. Unless you're gaming the CPU isn't going to be working all that hard. If you have a big enough case you can sometimes get by with one of Sythe's massive passive coolers. Just watch the CPU temperatures carefully for a few days and be prepared to add the optional fan if it starts getting too warm. My case isn't that big so I had to go with an active CPU cooler but I looked for low-low-low noise. If you aren't sure or you aren't technical then stay with a CPU cooler with a low noise fan. Again big slow spinning will usually be quieter than small and high speed.

Again you're not building a gaming rig. It doesn't take all that much horsepower to output 1920x1080@60hz. There are some passive video cards that can handle TV frame rates just fine with passive cooling. These are cards that were designed for HTPCs.

Finding a quiet enough hard drive can be a challenge. I had to try a couple before I found one that I was happy with.

From experience I use a good quality sound card. Even good quality on-board audio can have dropouts. Pick a good card that was designed for a HTPC and that has digital outputs.

 

[jl7av]

Hey folks,
am appreciative of the number of replies. thanks.
All things being constant (Lossless format, ultra quiet power and casing, etc....)

What i really wanted to find out is:

SHOULD I............

i) Connect HDMI (audio/video) from PC direct to Receiver, then HDMI(Video only) from Receiver to Plasma to watch the HD movie and yet can have audio thru my tower speakers.

OR

ii) connect HDMI (Audio/video) direct to plasma, and as for good sound quality, get a good sound card (Creative or X-fi Forte) connect using OPTICAL cable from PC to receiver.


Which will be your option and why? Or rather how would you connect if this is your systems.

These are my setups: -
Plasma (3 HDMI inputs)
Onkyo 705
Whafedale Diamond 9
Velodyne CHT 10R
HTPC (Option 1 or 2 from above)

What's your thoughts, mate?

 

[jl7av]

Hi everyone,
anyone got similar knowledge, experience in these?
which connection mode be better?
thanks for advice in advance!

 

[s162216]

I would use the first option, but also get a sound card with HDMI in and out to connect the graphics video into, before taking the HDMI video/sound out to your reciever. You will get much better sound quality if you have a dedicated card.

 

[Gryfter]

Hi everyone,
anyone got similar knowledge, experience in these?
which connection mode be better?
thanks for advice in advance!

Hi jL7av, I'm not sure if you got an answer yet but it would greatly help to know what hardware your PC consists of and what outputs it has.

I personally am running a DVI to HDMI cable from my PC to my 706 for video then I run a separate optical (toslink) cable from my PC to the receiver for audio. I only have one HDMI running from my receiver to my TV for all inputs.

[strike]Again not knowing what your hardware is I can't say for sure but most modern mid-level and above motherboards have onboard sound with optical out so unless you have an old/low end motherboard or a very slow CPU (CPUs end up doing the sound processing for most onboard sound chips) you most likely won't need a 3rd party sound card. If you do go add-in stay away from Creative products their drivers are a huge pain in the *** for anything more than basic listening. Find your self a moderately priced sound card ($50 or so) with optical out that supports DD/DTS 7.1 and you should be fine.[/strike] *The above paragraph is generally true but in your case see my second edit.

I've been building PCs for almost 20 years but my expertise is more in line with gaming rather than HTPCs so I could be wrong here but I have always found audio from my PC when it comes to movies to be a little sub par compared to using it's hardware specific cousins. Then again I am just getting into the whole quality home theater thing (I don't even have speakers worth mentioning yet) but when I have it all set up properly in a week or so I'll start running tests.

If you have any other PC specific questions feel free to PM me if you want, I'll do what I can to help.


EDIT 1:
It's been a few months since I have looked into any new sound cards so I'll look around to see if there is anything better on the market for HTPCs and get back to you.

*EDIT 2:
Looks like I some how managed to skip over s162216's first post, like he said I think your best option would be to grab the HDAV 1.3 use the included DVI to HDMI cable from your video card this sound card and then a singe HDMI cable to your receiver and you should be good to go. I know for a fact you don't need a GTX260, that is way over kill. If you go nVidia I would grab this 9600GT or this 9800GT if you go the ATI route I would grab this 4830. They are all great cards and you can't lose with any of them.

and that concludes my first novel.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I would connect HDMI from HTPC to Receiver and then from receiver to TV.
I would get bitstream sound via HDMI from HTPC to Receiver.

I would get quiet PC, fast processor, mid- to higher end dedicated Video and Sound cards, 500G HD or more, HDMI & Optical/Coaxial output + BD ROM or writer.

The Asus Xonar HD sound card (for TrueHD/DTS-HD) is great if it's within your budget.