Anyone have their PC connected to their stereo?

[billyboy]

I don't have an iPod, but I'm interested in the effect of having your entire (or almost entire) music collection at your fingertips. People tend to say that they end up listening to more music. But I'm concerned about the sound quality of the iPod through my home system.

I'm particularly interested in the way I listen to box sets. There's a lot of great music sitting in my Mosaic boxes, but they're not always conducive to sampling some tunes, since you have to take the box down, open it, pick one of the cds to play, etc.

So I have started a little experiment. My desktop computer has a 120 GB music drive on it, so I started copying my Mosaics onto it, not making MP3s, but straight copies. Already I can see the benefits of this. Instead of trying to decide which one of the 18 discs of the Nat King Cole box I want to listen to, I just select the whole box and hit the shuffle button. I'm already listening to my boxes more, and I haven't even started making new playlists putting the songs in LP order, etc.

What are my potential issues for hooking my computer up to my home stereo? My stereo is in the next room, so I'll have cable issues, but is there something I'm overlooking? Is it going to sound like crap through my stereo speakers?

[couw]

you'll need a good soundcard. With that, a computer can function as just another component in your stereo setup. Using the tape-out ports of your amp (or pre-amp) and getting some software like Goldwave will also allow you to record off your stereo. LPs, radio, tapes...

Try shn compression (lossless) to be able to put even more music on your harddisk without losing anything in the soundquality department. Playback is with WinAmp (after you installed a patch).

[medjuck]

If you have an air-port card or any other wireless card yo can use teh new Apple device that allows you to conenct almost wirelessly. (At least I think it works on PCs.)

[Jim Alfredson]

So are you taking the CDs and ripping .wav files from them? That will eat up your harddisk very quickly. Try encoding MP3s from the .wav files at very high rates (say about 320kbps). Compare the original .wav to the mp3. I doubt you'll hear a difference and you'll save a lot of harddisk space.

I agree and good quality sound card will make a difference. I suggest getting a prosumer card like the M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 which has RCA analog inputs and outputs and very good sound quality.

[Claude]

Argh !!!!

I had just finished a long post in this thread and was about to hit the Reply button, when the whole country was hit by a 30 minute power outage, the first one since 1964

As couw has said, you'll need a good sound card. Most onboard sound chips that are built into PCs are crap. A decent soujnd card, like the Soundblaster Audigy, will cost $50. But try the built-in card first, mabe it isn't that bad.

Cabling is not an sound quality issue, if the cable length is below 10m and you avoid interference from power cables.

I don't think that compression is that bad. 256kbs MP3 files sound very close to CD. It is important that the CDs are extracted without errors, on a suitable CD/DVD drive and not too fast.

The biggest problem with a PC juke box is the usability. You'll need to go to the PC in the other room to skip a track or change to a different album.

That's where those new "multimedia streaming boxes" come in. They are integrated in a hifi set and play music and videos via LAN or wireless LAN from the PC's hard drive and can be controlled with a remote control just like a CD player. This is ideal for those who prefer to keep and organize their MP3 collection on the PC in another room.

But as this technology is still new, the available products are rather expensive and not necessarily well conceived. There are frequent compatibility issues with certain movie files (Divx and Xvid). Streaming MP3s is no problem.

Another alternative would be a DVD player that plays MP3s from discs, or a DVD recorder with a hard drive. Unfortunately the best sounding players (Sony and Philips DVD players around $200-400) don't play MP3s from DVD-R yet, but only from CD-Rs. So you are limited to 6-8 hours of music per disc, which cannot really be considered a juke box. A DVD-R could hold 36-40 hours. Many cheap no-name DVD players can play MP3-DVDs, but the sound quality is not as good. Navigation on the disc is generally done on the TV screen.

So, first try connecting the existing PC sound output to the amplifier, maybe it will be good enough for your needs.

[billyboy]

Thanks, everyone, for your replies.

It turns out I AM compressing these files. I'm using SonicStage to rip the CDs and organize the files, and using ATRAC3 (128 kbps). I probably should be using some other software, since I don't think I'm able to create MP3s using SonicStage. This is more compressed than MP3s?

Also, another concern I have is the volume. Whatever software I use has a volume control on it, as well as my stereo. Will I be constantly trying to adjust one or the other to get a decent listening level?

[WD45]

If you have a burner, you could burn an entire boxed set on to CDs as mp3 files, and play them back in a mp3 capable CD player [if you have one]. You can fit 10-12 album'ss worth on one data CD-r. You can shuffle on that and listen for hours!

[couw]

Thanks, everyone, for your replies.

It turns out I AM compressing these files. I'm using SonicStage to rip the CDs and organize the files, and using ATRAC3 (128 kbps). I probably should be using some other software, since I don't think I'm able to create MP3s using SonicStage. This is more compressed than MP3s?

Also, another concern I have is the volume. Whatever software I use has a volume control on it, as well as my stereo. Will I be constantly trying to adjust one or the other to get a decent listening level?

If you are compressing your files, I'd opt for mp3 instead. Simply because it is more of a standard nowadays than ATRAC, which can only be played by Sony devices I believe. And you will be able to burn mp3s on a disk to play on many a stand alone player, diskman, whatever. ATRAC is said to perform better than mp3, never heard any to judge though.

There are loads of easy to use mp3 encoding programmes available. I myself use CDEx, freeware that uses a LAME encoder. The latter guarantees good quality mp3s. If you encode at higher bitrates, say 256 or above, you will be more than hard pressed to hear a difference when there is living room noise around. The lossless shn format makes you lose about half of the filesize (which is not much if you want a kazillion titles in your jukebox) and is only interesting if you want to make sure quality remains at the highest level.

As for the volume, just adjust the line out level to perform comparable to your other stereo components.

[billyboy]

All right, all right, I'm kicking myself for using the Sony SonicStage product. Basically, after ripping a couple hundred CDs, I start getting an error:

invalid openmg contents specified

and none of my files will play anymore! A search on the internet shows others have had this problem, with no answer. So here's my new question:

I downloaded CDEx (thanks couw) and I think it will be satisfactory for the conversions. But what does everyone use for a jukebox or file management system? Although the SonicStage software is a bit on the crappy side I did like the file management system it had. I don't really like Windows Media Player, but what are my options?

Thanks again for holding my hand through all this!

[Jim Dye]

You might give iTunes for the PC a try. I like the interface.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

[frank m]

If you don't want to fish cables through walls, try am outfit call C Crane that sells a little rig for about 50 bucks? that plugs into the earphone jack on your computer and puts the stereo signal onto an fm signal with enough strength to reach your hi fii rig's tuner. tune your fm to the signal frequency and your you can do anything you want with it in your hi fi rig. Listen to it, record it on tape or cd. Up to you.

[casanovas347]

If you don't want to fish cables through walls, try am outfit call C Crane that sells a little rig for about 50 bucks? that plugs into the earphone jack on your computer and puts the stereo signal onto an fm signal with enough strength to reach your hi fii rig's tuner. tune your fm to the signal frequency and your you can do anything you want with it in your hi fi rig. Listen to it, record it on tape or cd. Up to you.

just to know:

normal FM-Radio Audio-Bandwith is 15kHz.....and the SN Ratio isn't the same as MP3 or CD-Quality.....

i use my little "old school" G3 Apple iBook together with my Motu 828mk2 AudioInterface for recording or just to listen to music.....together with a pair of good quality active nearfield monitors..... B-)

i don't have a stereo.....but hunderts of CDs.....or shn-Files from the Live-Music-Archive!

greeetz

paco