Hi Tim,
I just built a computer to use a jukebox also. I got a Shuttle mini case
and hooked it up to my TV. Last night I sat down in front of the stereo
and put a cd in. Then I cued up the same song on the computer and started
playing them together. I sat back and started changing sources, after
matching the levels (by ear) on the cd player and the computer output.
After that, I noticed a difference in the sound from the computer and the
cd. The cd was definitely better, but I would never have noticed if not
for doing this test.

A little about my computer juke box (and some day soon video player):
P4 2.6 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 410 GB of hard drive space (250+160).
I run linux use Gnome and XMMS along with Rhythmbox sometimes. I found
last night that XMMS gives better quality playback. Probably due to the
state of gstreamer.
I have ripped my entire CD collection, encoded using FLAC. 6144 sounds
uses up ~167 GB, roughly 19 days of listening time.

It's a great setup, wish I had done it a long time ago.

slate

On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 15:55:33 +0000, Tim in Los Angeles wrote:

You may remember my post from a few weeks ago regarding using a
computer as a high end signal source for a high end stereo system.

I have just built, with a lot of help from a computer guru, a music
computer. It sports a gig of ram, a P4 200 something, a big IDE hard
drive, an HP DVD/CD RW drive and a Digital Audio Labs Card Deluxe
sound card. It's connected to my stereo with a pair As-One
interconnects between the sound card and the pre-amp.

My electronics are by PSE a Minnesota company whose stuff is not real
well known but sure sounds good. My speakers are Nestorovic. I play
cd's with my Rotel RCD-991 AE player.

I am using iTunes to rip cd's on to the hard drive and to play them.
I am using the .wav format for maximum quality.

Songs played from the hard drive using iTunes (to both rip and play)
sound pretty good. But not as good as CD's played on the Rotel
player. Selections played on iTunes sound about 80% as good as those
played on the Rotel. The sound from the computer is harsher and does
not have the fidelity or detail of the CD. This is not to say that
things sound bad from the computer because they really sound pretty
good. They just don't sound as good as the CD player.

Any thoughts? Should I use a different piece of software to rip or
play the selections? Is there something I should know about ripping?
Any other thoughts?

Tim