Home Theater PC's ??

[broberts]

I was just wondering about the sound quality and feasibility of building a home theater/audio specific PC. I have quite a few red book CD's that I currently have housed in an old Sony CDP-CX70ES. I have been happy with the sound quality, but lack of organization tools has really begun to bug me. I've begun to lose track of my collection and have been looking for solutions. After spending some time looking around at audio specific products such as the Yamaha CDR-HD1300, I began to wonder, "why not an audio specific PC?" If I built a PC with a high quality audio card and a large hard drive for storing .wav files, would I see a significant reduction in redbook playback quality? Any other organization solutions for on-demand access to redbook cd's without audio degradation? Thanks for your help.

 

[HookedOnSound]

How many CDs do you have in your collection?

This is a big factor since it will determine your storage needs. If you want a solution that stores your music with almost no quality loss, you'll have to stick with lossless compression or no compression format.

The real beauty of Home Theater PC (multimedia) is it's flexibility. IMO, some of its strengths are definitely indexing and data entry (ie. labeling, categorizing)

If you choose to go the MP3 route, Alot of ppl will tell you that even high sample rate/low compression MP3's still suffer from 'noticeable' quality loss therefore I recommend you experiment with recording familiar tunes first and listen to them to see what is acceptable to you.

I believe Audioholics has done some pro reviews on diff. types of solutions that fall in line with your needs.

If you are looking for a good sound card, the Creative Audigy series is pretty decent. After reading some reviews, you could buy more expensive cards and do a whole lot worst than the Audidy series...

I have about 100 CD's myself with a similar dilemna so I am quite interested to see what ppl might respond.

If I had my perfect product this would be it:

Build a Cd changer that allows to interface directly with a PC (ethernet, wireless, etc) running a sofware agent/client on the desktop that allows to identify cd via online internet databases.

That way, users with extensive CD collections can do all management tasks directly from a pc console to do all their custom playlists, categories, etc...whatever, the sky is the limit. This could all be done without having to convert any cds to another storage format. Your CD changer would also connect just like a regular changer to your receiver thereby eliminating any compatibility/upgrade issues down the road. You could even get the software to perform all the conversion tasks for your library into whatever storage format you desire (portability).

My point is: leave the mechanics in the player and put the smarts in the pc.

Any chance this exists? Instead of reinventing the wheel, sometimes you just need to improve it.

Good Luck

 

[broberts]

I have about 100 CD's. I was planning on storing the files uncompressed, which means a little less than 800 Mb per CD. I figured if I got a 160 GB hard drive that would leave room to expand. If they had the product your describing, I'd buy one.

 

[Thwarter]

Yup, just copy the CD files over and you should be able to get over 200 CDs on a 160GB drive. But why stop at 160GB? There are 300 GB drives available now.

And you can save more space by deleting the tracks that you don't like and just leaving the good stuff.

You'll need a good sound card and speakers too. I have the SoundBlaster Audigy ZS Platinum which is a very good consumer-level card. I have 4 year old Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 speakers (THX rated) which kick butt and sound better than a lot of people's home theatre setups. I watch almost as many DVD's on my PC as I do on my HT.

The Audigy will play DVD-Audio as well, but not SACD (not that you asked, but FWIW)

 

[Xargos]

But why stop at 160GB? There are 300 GB drives available now.

Actually, there is a lovely LaCie external 1 TB (approximately 1000 GB) drive out now.

As far as using a computer for audio goes, I can't help but comment on some little issues I've noticed.

At least with the older Creative sound cards (SB Live series in particular, based on an earlier version of the chipset in the Audigy), it seems that Microsoft Windows itself actually decreases sound quality somehow. It has a higher noise floor than Linux. That was a shocker to me, actually, since Creative Labs doesn't really support Linux last I knew. The difference was night and day when I saw it... but that was in 2000 or 2001.

Also, regardless of OS choice, I'd say that is doesn't hurt to look into FLAC to reduce file size by around 50% at times, supposedly without reducing audio quality.

Finally, if you have any albums that are continuous track-to-track (such as classical, concept albums, etc...) be careful what you choose for a program to play them. Many programs introduce audio gaps between tracks even when told not to. This has been my biggest nit-pick with Nullsoft's Winamp, Apple's iTunes (both Windows and Mac versions), and others. Some CD's just need to be played from the CD...

-Xargos

 

[HookedOnSound]

YupAnd you can save more space by deleting the tracks that you don't like and just leaving the good stuff.

With a collection of over 200 CDs that would very impractical, I know I wouldn't have the time!

 

[Rob Babcock]

800 MB represents the maximum amount of data a CD will hold. If your CDs are all store boughten they probably average closer to 500 MB. Should be no problem to fit them onto any reasonable drive. I keep a lot of music on my PC, but it's not an HT PC, per se. I would like to build such a music server down the road, though.