Using A computer for Audio Playback.

Good choice if all your wanting is music playback and basic apps. And much cheaper too.

 

I got a Mac Mini recently. Whined like a banshee running Leopard. The fan seemed to be as noisy as an XBox 360 and almost permanently on. A quick check on line suggested this is a common problem with the new ones sadly. I took it back and got a second MacBook instead - which I must say is really quiet.

 

How noisy is the Eee PC? If it is damn quiet all you need is a USB DAC (or USB to digital interface). The Eee PC is so small it can sit on the arm of your sofa as a big colour screen remote and give you all the info about what you are listening to, let you brows the web, look at porn umm..

 

If your just looking for something to store a bunch of music on then its probably overkill but here's the spec:

Case: mCubed HFX classic with Imon VFD and remote
Motherboard: Gigabyte X38-DS5
CPU: Intel E6850 3Ghz
RAM: 4Gb OcUK DDR2 1066Mhz
HDD: 2x Samsung F1 750Mb 32Mb cache (raid0)
Optical: Pioneer Bluray
PSU: Nesteq 620w ASM Semi fanless
Graphics: 2x ATI 3870xt in crossfire

Total cost was just under £1600 but I suspect since it sounds like you've little interest in gaming that could be substantially reduced. The most expensive part is the case at around £400 including the CPU heatsink and additional heatpipes for the passive cooling. A good and silent power supply will also cost around £100. The rest you can pick and choose as your needs dictate really.

 

Could you please expand oin this? What do you mean by "high resolution files" ? Lossless codecs such as FLAC and APE or something else? Thanks

 

That's not good. I thought they were fanless. What your describing sounds like the noise I heard when one of my old graphics card cooling fans went bad and started making a high pitch whine. Was it faulty or just indicative? If its as loud as the 360 then I wouldn't call that silent at all.

The PC I built isn't silent all the time either. Play games or anything 3D and the video cards start to heat up and the fans ramp up to audible levels. Playing back music, videos and windows desktop etc. all can be done with silence which is where you want that.

 

24 bit WAV files or DSD.

 

I think Mike was talking about the old USB 1.x spec which is very bandwidth limited. I remember talking an external hard drive around to a friends and his computer had no USB2 ports only the old type. It took absolutely ages to transfer a few hundred Mb where it should have taken just a couple of minutes on USB2.

If you've got some 96Khz/192Khz 24bit audio that your trying to pass down there then its just not going to work.

 

It looks to be quiet but probably not silent. There's not much heat being created by the low powered components so I'm betting its about as loud as a PS3 which is what I'd class as quiet.

I noticed Scan had them incoming when I ordered my bits. Pricing is excellent for what your getting IMO.

 

Noise from PCs give you HUM-FI
There is an inexpensive solution though. Store your ripped CDs, movies or any other type of files in a NAS. For back up add one or more external hard drives. Plug the NAS into a wireless router. Keep them all in another room.

In the listening room use an SB with a DAC or better stiil, a notebook with a USB-to-digital converter (or external sound cards) and a DAC feeding you amp. Many USB-to-digital converters on the market. I found that Audigy 2 NX to be better than SB1 and SB2. There is also the all-in-one unit by Trends Audio.

Replacing the wall warts with good quality PSUs is a must.
Ripping CDs with EAC or CDex with 'cdparanoia' incorpoarted and playing them with a quality player such as foobar2000 can give you quality of sound better than that of the original CD through a CDP.

 

What I basically want is a silent pc for internet and my music stored on my external usb drive. The pc is already running through the tv , but I wouldnt mind something that could work without it.
Maybe some form of dual boot system that jumps straight to music server mode if you dont hit a key on bootup or something.

Thanks for the info anyway , your pc is looking good !

 

The mac mini in not fanless....it has a small CPU fan which seems to rev up when the CPU activity increases. However for just playing songs the fan will most likely not kick in so you will have a silent system.

There is no PSU fan of course as the PSU is an external "brick" with passive cooling. The optical drive is also silent in playback mode (although can be noisy when ripping CDs).

 

Wickfut,

The main sources of noise in the PC are the fans followed by the drives (HD and optical)

You can reduce the noise of you exisiting PC and this may be cheaper than building an entirely new PC. SHins is very highly specced (£1600 buys a lot of PC these days):

1) CPU - you can get a water cooler or a fanless heatsink liek the Zalman flower ones

2) PSU - get a passivle cooled one or one with 120mm fans with variable speed controls/that are only activated when needed

3) replace fan on chipset with passive heatsink

4) You can also get passive heatsinks for graphics cars

5) General case fans -replace with larger low noise fans

check out http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/home for some of the low noise components available (note they are not the cheapest so shop around)

For noisy drives there is not much you can do (as damping causes heat build up)

 

Samsung and Seagate are amongst the most quiet 3,5" drives available. If these are still too noisy then consider 2.5" laptops drives or silent solid state disk(VERY expensive).

Another option is hard drive cooler/silencers. Most are junk and make your drive just a different kind of noisy (ie. they change the pitch rather than attenuate it) but the Grow Up Japan ones, whilst expensive, are both excellent at cooling and silencing. I cannot hear my hard drives from about 2m after using these and indeed the hard disks are the loudest things in my system now.

 

Yup! I have a Samsung HD and it is quite. It has a jacket that looks like foam rubber but it is capable of conducting heat and damp vibrations and noise from HD at the same time.

Hard drives fitted in an external case is all that is required to store and stream ripped files. Fanless ones are quite. They are not from plastic but thick extruded aluminium case which is capable of conducting the heat away from HD. You can buy them fitted with a HD or just as an an enclosure to fit your own. Look at places like eBuyer.

Huge processing power and memory is not important for audio and video streaming. So consider low voltage CPUs.
Low voltage > less heat > less cooling > no fan > no noise

 

Don't go for a fanless CPU heatsink and then also a fanless PSU, or the heat builds up in the case. I made that mistake. If you are going for a quiet PC, I would assume you have no case fans other than the one in the PSU anyway.

I went for fanless CPU and graphics card heatsinks then got a PSU with 120mm fan. With the PSU placed at the top of the case it will suck the heat out pretty effectively with a minimum of noise (heat rises remember). The front of the case at the bottom usually has vents too, and that will allow cool air to enter at the bottom, but you shouldn't need a fan down there.

In my case I found that the graphics card got uncomfortably hot in use with only the 120mm fan in the PSU sucking air out so I also hung another 120mm quiet fan half over the graphics card and half over the CPU, and it sucks cool air in through a hole in the side of the case. If I wasn't in to games though I could have got a cooler graphics card and the extra fan probably wouldn't have been needed.

Here is a quick pic, if you can see what is in there! I have two hard disks, one in a silent enclosure thing and one not. Both are Samsung quiet disks but they are still one of the noisiest parts. The one in the enclosure is probably a bit hot and won't last as long but I keep backups and if it brakes I will get it replaced.

 

Actually if you are not into games then the older AMD Athlon CPU has an excellent power to heat ratio.....they can run up to 90degC without cooking. Which means your cooling requirements are reduced - passive heatsink or large, slow fan should suffice

I have one of these babies and I run it at 60degC or thereabouts - no problems and I didn't even bother lapping the base of my heatsink....


http://www.amd.com/gb-uk/assets/con...ssets/K7_Electrical_Specification_Rev_ENG.pdf

 

Yes, 60c is nothing really for a CPU and totally safe.

The newer E6xxx series from Intel(and possibly others) have CPU throttling based on load. If the load is under 50% then the core clock is reduced 1/3rd. In my case that means it runs at 2Ghz 90% of the time and only jumps upto 3Ghz when needed.

With this, CPU temps at idle are in the low 30's and at full load on both cores around 60-65c. That's on completely passive cooling and without case airflow.

 

Thanks again men for the wonderfull info. I auditioned a Mac Book laptop playing through a PS Audio DAC via USB connection.
Then to a PS Audio Pre and Mc Intosh S/S amp and Vandersteen 3A Sing. speakers.
Very impressive sound with weight and authority I usually associate with vinyl. Great tonality and harmonic struture. The top end which I am most concernrned with being digital did not dissapoint. Air, decay clarity but with a weighty character that dosn't quit.
Total investment $2000US. for DAC and Mac. A sound investment IMHO. Next is to compare the Lector CDP7 and Mac in my system. Let you know when it happens.


rollo

 

This afternoon I went to a Naim dealer's HiFi show.

I listened to the SuperNait with a Squeezebox-3 and a Naim CDX2.
First with the SB3 connected with a normal interconnect using a regular analog input of the SuperNait.
The sound was ok, not bad, but nothing spectaculair either.
(for the humble price of only 299,- euro's a pretty fair result)

Then...with the touch of a button we listened to the same music, but now through the (internal) DAC of the Naim SuperNait, using a coaxial digital cable.
Now, this was serious stuff!! The main difference between the CDX2 (costing about 15 times more!!) and the SB3, was that the Naim CDX2 had some more drive/bass, but apart from that, with the music of Patricia Barber I heard during the demo it was very hard to keep the CDX2 and SB3 apart!

Here in Holland a CDX2 costs €4600,-, if memory serves me well, and a SB3 is offered for €299,- To me there's no doubt which one has the best VFM.

This demo opened my eyes and the results were beyond my expectations. So, I'd say something like a Squeezebox can be a serious music maker.

I wouldn't go for a PC/Laptop as it's far less convient, compared to a SB3.
(especially when you have a PC in another room like me )
The remote of the SB3 works a treat