Question about using PC as audio source (quality) and lots of other questions???

[mikey7182]

I have perused here for a few weeks, and this is my very first post! Couldn't find what I was looking for through a search, although I did find a lot of very useful information here, which is why I decided to register.

I am new to the home audio community/obsession, but have been heavily involved in car audio for about 10 years. I'm starting to see that there are SO many more options with home audio than with car... different methods of connectivity, i.e. wires, etc, different technologies, and way more brands to choose from. So I am a bit lost and looking for suggestions.

I have about 250 CDs, and have ripped them all onto my PC in iTunes, most of them at 192kbs. A few of them are at 320 and WMA lossless. I like it loud, and I like it extremely detailed and clear (within my budget). I just bought a Pioneer Elite VSX45TX used for $300. I am not super interested in doing a 5.1 or 7.1 although I may do that later on, but right now am mainly interested in a 2 channel setup, with maybe a sub along the way. I have my eyes on a set of B&W 604 Series II... have always wanted to own a set and listened to them again the other day, reminding myself why I want them! After reading a bit on here, I'm finding there are so many other options for power besides a receiver that I might have gone with instead had I known, i.e. Rotel 1080, etc. I will stick with the Elite for now and see from there.

One of my big questions is, What is the best format for audio in terms of clarity? I've been finding out about DVD-A and SACD technology among others. Is there a huge discrepancy between equipment brands for these? Also, if I decide to use my computer instead of my CDs, what is the best quality I can get out of using a PC/Apple as a music database and somehow connecting that to my receiver/amp? What wires would I need and what hardware/software on the computer?

What are the best connections for audio to use between a DVD/CD player/Cable box and the receiver or amp? I have a lot of different types on the receiver, like digital audio, regular RCAs, etc? There seem to be so many different types of connectivity and advantages/disadvantages to each and even equipment requirements to even take full advantage of them.

Sorry for all the questions... replies are welcome!

Mike

 

[jagxtype]

Buying a soundcard for your computer with a coaxial digital or optical digital cable is going to offer you the best connectivity to your computer. The sound quality heavily relies on the soundcard output. I think that i have a soundcard that does 44.1K hz, 44k hz, 96k hz (pcm), and 128k hz. It sounds just like a cd, dvd, and so on so forth. Hopefully someone can further help you out. I am still new to all this stuff.

 

[adwilk]

This all hinges on what you're trying to accomplish here... computers are great for casual listening and convenience and easy easy to setup... As long as you get a card with spdif out, you should be just fine on the quality there.. You could stop here if you're happy with the sound at that point. or keep reading.

A windows machine will play music with a media runtime environment that will color sound, it adds its own minor eq adjustments... there are tutorials available to disable this... also, the quality of the cd rom drive can play a part.. if you are ripping music to the hard drive from your cd's, use a program that can rip and play FLAC file types... AFAIC these are most accurate digital files. Winamp can play them... Things like HDD speeds can also make differences.

I'll see if i can find the link i used to setup my media pc. good stuff...

 

[evilkat]

I've hooked up my PC to my receiver via SPDIF. As far as music is concerned, you're only limited by what format you encode it in. If you've got some lossy format like MP3, then the higher the bit-rate, usually the better it sounds. 192K is okay for casual listening, but the minimum I prefer is 256vbr. Anyway, if u can get something in .ogg or some other lossless format, it will naturally sound better. Itunes is annoying in that sense, since it insists on converting everything to mp3. Maybe there's some setting that allows you to play other formats, but I haven't searched or found it yet

As far as gaming is concerned, it's a whole different story if you want to get it to play on ur receiver.

 

[Runamuck]

http://www.rme-audio.de/