by mcow » Sun Jul 18, 2010 1:14 am
I'm not going to put up pictures, but:
Paradigm speaker pair (I forget the model number, these were the low-end Paradigms in 2000) (there is no subwoofer)
Driven by Denon DRA-275 stereo receiver (again, low-end, c. 1998)
Fed by (1) Denon DCM-360 CD changer (again, low-end, c. 1997 - no digital output)
and (2) Adcom GDA-700 HDCD DAC (recently bought 2nd-hand via Audiogon)
Also, I have a cassette deck and a turntable (and tapes, and LPs!) but they aren't hooked up.
Someday the speakers will be upgraded (mine sound good, but I heard the next step up in the Paradigm line and so I know that I could have better sound), and probably the receiver will be upgraded too. For now, I really have no complaints. Chasing after improvements in the quality of the sound is limited by how loudly I can run the stereo in an apartment (luckily, the walls here are thick) and by the loudness of the tinnitus in my ears.
The DAC is not low-end, but it only supports 16-bit at 48/44.1/32KHz. That's the tradeoff for HDCD, and I have a large number of HDCD discs. It gets S/PDIF from (1) Denon DCD 7.5 CD player (old, obscure, 2nd-hand, but it has digital out)
and (2) the computer.
I had the computer built for me at EndPCNoise.com, so it's a fairly quiet model -- not silent, but even sitting at the computer I don't notice the fans when the music is on. (The refrigerator in the next room is more noticeable.) It's an Athlon 4850e (low-power) CPU on an Asus M3A78 mobo. The Asus has integrated RealTek HD/multichannel sound with S/PDIF out, and that's what runs into the DAC. (The computer's beeps, and sound from Flash -- i.e. YouTube -- go into a small pair of USB speakers.)
The music library resides on an external 500GB WD hard disk in an Antec quiet case, but it's not as quiet as it could be. (I recently picked up one of the WD Passport external disks to use as a backup and it's much quieter, so I think I'll probably get a second Passport and move the library onto that.) There is also a fair amount of music, mostly live concert recordings, on the computer that is not part of the library, as I'm still figuring out how I want to organize things. About 80% of the CD rips are in FLAC, the rest as 192kbps MP3; there are also some MP3s from artists's sites or Amazon, but mostly I still buy CDs. I'm thinking of opening an account at eMusic.
The computer is running 64-bit Windows XP, and MediaMonkey, of course, to manage the library. Most of the time, MM is also playing the music, but sometimes I'll use WinAmp. Both MM and WinAmp use an ASIO plugin to run the bitstream thru ASIO4ALL, which bypasses some levels of Windows audio drivers and allows me to get bit-perfect output to the DAC (a necessity for HDCD). I use Exact Audio Copy to rip CDs.
The MP3 player is a Nokia N800 "internet tablet" which is functional but it's no iPod. I'd love to have a MM remote-control app to run on the N800, but developing for it is (a) too difficult and (b) a dead end.
Stereo and computer reside in the living room of my apartment, and can be heard pretty well from the kitchen, not so well in the upstairs bedroom. I'm not really looking for a distributed music solution at this point; the bedroom has a small stereo of its own, which I can use to play CDs, or plug the MP3 player into.
I'm not going to put up pictures, but:
Paradigm speaker pair (I forget the model number, these were the low-end Paradigms in 2000) (there is no subwoofer)
Driven by Denon DRA-275 stereo receiver (again, low-end, c. 1998)
Fed by (1) Denon DCM-360 CD changer (again, low-end, c. 1997 - no digital output)
and (2) Adcom GDA-700 HDCD DAC (recently bought 2nd-hand via Audiogon)
Also, I have a cassette deck and a turntable (and tapes, and LPs!) but they aren't hooked up.
Someday the speakers will be upgraded (mine sound good, but I heard the next step up in the Paradigm line and so I know that I could have better sound), and probably the receiver will be upgraded too. For now, I really have no complaints. Chasing after improvements in the quality of the sound is limited by how loudly I can run the stereo in an apartment (luckily, the walls here are thick) and by the loudness of the tinnitus in my ears.
The DAC is [b]not[/b] low-end, but it only supports 16-bit at 48/44.1/32KHz. That's the tradeoff for HDCD, and I have a large number of HDCD discs. It gets S/PDIF from (1) Denon DCD 7.5 CD player (old, obscure, 2nd-hand, but it has digital out)
and (2) the computer.
I had the computer built for me at EndPCNoise.com, so it's a fairly quiet model -- not silent, but even sitting at the computer I don't notice the fans when the music is on. (The refrigerator in the next room is more noticeable.) It's an Athlon 4850e (low-power) CPU on an Asus M3A78 mobo. The Asus has integrated RealTek HD/multichannel sound with S/PDIF out, and that's what runs into the DAC. (The computer's beeps, and sound from Flash -- i.e. YouTube -- go into a small pair of USB speakers.)
The music library resides on an external 500GB WD hard disk in an Antec quiet case, but it's not as quiet as it could be. (I recently picked up one of the WD Passport external disks to use as a backup and it's much quieter, so I think I'll probably get a second Passport and move the library onto that.) There is also a fair amount of music, mostly live concert recordings, on the computer that is not part of the library, as I'm still figuring out how I want to organize things. About 80% of the CD rips are in FLAC, the rest as 192kbps MP3; there are also some MP3s from artists's sites or Amazon, but mostly I still buy CDs. I'm thinking of opening an account at eMusic.
The computer is running 64-bit Windows XP, and MediaMonkey, of course, to manage the library. Most of the time, MM is also playing the music, but sometimes I'll use WinAmp. Both MM and WinAmp use an ASIO plugin to run the bitstream thru ASIO4ALL, which bypasses some levels of Windows audio drivers and allows me to get bit-perfect output to the DAC (a necessity for HDCD). I use Exact Audio Copy to rip CDs.
The MP3 player is a Nokia N800 "internet tablet" which is functional but it's no iPod. I'd love to have a MM remote-control app to run on the N800, but developing for it is (a) too difficult and (b) a dead end.
Stereo and computer reside in the living room of my apartment, and can be heard pretty well from the kitchen, not so well in the upstairs bedroom. I'm not really looking for a distributed music solution at this point; the bedroom has a small stereo of its own, which I can use to play CDs, or plug the MP3 player into.