Harddrive based music a start

OK guys I have now purchased a G5 computer. I have a spare drive slot and can obtain a harddrive for it no problems.

So to my task.

For £350 I would like to get the following: DAC, Optical Cable, Long Interconnect and Harddrive.

The harddrive needs to be Serial ATA.
The optical cable needs to be toslink.
The DAC needs to accept toslink
The Interconnect needs to be around 5 metres and din one end and whatever for the dac on the other.
I don't mind second hand for the dac.

Does anyone have any recommendations for me?

The plan would be to create a new user account which deals only with music. hopefully the music will continue to play if I swtich accounts, with the macs fast user switching, this could be sweet.

 

Hard drive - Does it need to be quiet? If so, Seagate I believe are the quietest, Samsung are also pretty quiet. In fact, most are these days. I'd be inclined to avoid IBM/Hitachi if their past records are anything to go by, and Western Digital make the best performing, but probably noisiest drives on the market.

Optical cable - I wouldnt spend too much on this, any £20 job will do fine.

DAC - Well the best low cost DAC I can think of is the M-Audio SuperDAC 2496. £160 base price.

You might have to get an interconnect made for the SuperDAC, unless u plan to mod it and put DIN slots on the end (it uses phone plugs as standard).

HTHs

 

Maxtor are also quiet and pretty fast. I've had no reliablity problems with them and you can often find them on special offers. Like WD, they offer 2MB and 8MB buffer versions. I run both a Maxtor and WD drive in my PC and have noticed that the WD is slightly noisier, although over the fans, there's not much in it.

IBM/Hitachi - I used to swear by their drives, but ended up swearing at them when I had several IBM DeathStars go south on me.

Seagates - I've not used recently, but having had three die on me personally and having replaced several others, I've not used them for a few years.

Most of the drive manufacturers offer a DOS utililty to set the noise/speed combination of the drive. If noise is a big issue for you, then it might be worth installing the drive temporarily in a PC, running the utility and then installing it in your G5. The setting is stored within the drive's firmware area (similar to the BIOS on your motherboard), so should still apply, even if the drive in your G5. The drive doesn't need to be in a formatted state to change the noise/speed setting.

Optical cable - a £30 QED Qunex OT, which is TosLINK to TosLINK does a pretty decent job between my CD/MD decks.

 

Gary,

Look at a Squeezebox I have one of the older ones, It can also use iTunes

 

How does it sound Sargent?

 

IMO Seagate are by far the best drives in every respect and indeed tend to be the choice drive in all things audio/Video/gaming/PC/Server/photocopier/PVR/DVR/etc etc etc etc

he he he //lamboy

 

I strongly recommend the new fluid-dynamic-bearing (FDB) Western Digital 250GB. I have the ATA133 model WD2500PB, it is very, very quiet, really, really quiet! About 120+VAT now.

I have a Zalman ultra quiet power-supply, no case fan, slowed cpu-fan, fanless graphics card and even at startup the circa. 24dB PSU fan is louder than the hard disk.

WD also provide a 3-year warranty, I'm not sure of the model number for the SATA equivalent, as they are still pretty scarce, look for FDB in the description.

regards,
Rob.

 

Gary, my previous advice still stands. You may find that at this budget that a DAC may or may not be a worthwhile upgrade over your internal soundcard. I strongly recommend that you contact a pro-audio (or hifi) dealer and get a DAC on demo; it might save you money. Typically you will have to pay for the unit and then get a refund when you return it. And of course do not rule out hifi DACS - they tend to sound quite different.

If you need a bit of a steer the best person to speak with (in pro-audio world) is Simon at Raper and Wayman 020 8800 8288 and tell him that I said to speak with him (I buy most of my pro-audio gear from him). He understands DACs and will understand what is important to you; most pro-audio dealers do not even know what jitter is, even the most of the really high-end dealers - I've met with them, it is all 0s and 1s to them.

Turnkey in London offer a 7 day refund on all items if you do not like them - great if you know what you want and they are good on prices.

Best of luck

Dominic Trillo

 

Dom, the reason I want to use a dac is to utalise the optical out.

If you guys here are to be believed this is superior to using the standard audio inputs.

The good news is I have those leads already so will have a listen to the out put via the G5. I don't see it being a lot better to the G4 which to be honest was a little dissapointing, hense why I want to try the optical route. Thanks for the advise though.

Regarding Harddrives. The noise is not really an issue. The G5 appears to be whisper quiet which is a nice thing. But I don't think I have ever lisented to music so quiet that I would hear the harddrive.

Would anyone be able to recommend a good website for purchase of a harddrive? Dabs is a rip off by the way.

 

Qunex OT to SuperDAC is much as my computer sound setup is, although the computer side of mine is a PC with a terratec Aureon sound card.

You could try www.komplett.co.uk for the hard disk if you don't like dabs.

 

gary,
i believe there are a number of devices that will stream music off your pc via a network connection or even via wi-fi. this may be a better solution than all the cables etc. all you'd need would be the box, it's power cable and an rca -> din lead (+maybe a cat 5 network cable). don;t know if the g5 does wi-fi.

i think one such device is called squeezebox...http://www.slimdevices.com/

cheers


julian

 

Gary I understand what you are saying but when you questioned the difference a DAC might make in your last thread I thought that I would urge a bit of caution and to get a demo before parting with your money. Personnally I think that it is a no-brainer having tried loads of things in the five years that I have owned a digital recording studio.

Also I think that it is a false economy to just go for the digital out without listening to a USB or firewire DAC as a direct comparison. It is widely accepted (in pro-audio land) that you will get much better quality by by-passing the internal soundcard and using the USB or firewire output to connect your DAC (aka external soundcard). Firewire also gets round your long cable challenge. This option should cost you no more money, you will still have one external box, and you might get a better result, but of course only your ears can tell.

best of luck

Dominic

 

Not too bad, but THB I only encode my mp3's at 192Kbps using LAME and I have one of the older non wi-fi/optical out ones, I mostly use it when I've got a bit of a party going on or when I want to listen to internet radio.

Check out the 3rd party projects http://www.slimdevices.com/dev_overview.html

Best sub £ 250 gadget that I've brought IMHO, BTW the iPod is the best £500 - £ 250 gadget I've brought