[Bernard]

Hi to Everyone,

Most people practice this as a control step, using the default speakers
provided with their PC. But, as for real playing, they most often use CD
to feed their HiFi equipment. Is there anyone here who feed high quality
music - not speaking of mp3 - straight from their computer to their HiFi
speakers, with or without an amplifier in between ?

Maybe I should have tried it first, but there are a number of questions
that remain unanswered at this stage.

At first, my HiFi is downstairs and
my PC upstairs. Maybe I could link both with a cable... What quality of a
cable would be required for a length of about 20 meters (70 feet)? Would
the quality of sound be downgraded due to such a long cable ?

Supposing that I get around that cable problem, or that I run a laptop
downstairs, would there be a real gain in sound playback quality ? audio
CD can be only 44100 Hz and 16 bits, while the music I got from digitizing
vinyl records is 96000 Hz and 32 bits float. But then my audio card is
only capable of 24 bits, so I imagine that there would still be a sort of
resampling in real time playing. My PC processor runs at 1870 MHz with 1
GB of RAM. If a real gain in quality could be expected, I might decide not
to burn audio CD from downsampled data, saving all original files to an
USB hard disk instead.

Thanks in advance for relevant advices.

Bernard

[Don Pearce[_3_]]

On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 19:09:20 +0200, Bernard wrote:

Hi to Everyone,

Most people practice this as a control step, using the default speakers
provided with their PC. But, as for real playing, they most often use CD
to feed their HiFi equipment. Is there anyone here who feed high quality
music - not speaking of mp3 - straight from their computer to their HiFi
speakers, with or without an amplifier in between ?

Maybe I should have tried it first, but there are a number of questions
that remain unanswered at this stage.

At first, my HiFi is downstairs and
my PC upstairs. Maybe I could link both with a cable... What quality of a
cable would be required for a length of about 20 meters (70 feet)? Would
the quality of sound be downgraded due to such a long cable ?

Supposing that I get around that cable problem, or that I run a laptop
downstairs, would there be a real gain in sound playback quality ? audio
CD can be only 44100 Hz and 16 bits, while the music I got from digitizing
vinyl records is 96000 Hz and 32 bits float. But then my audio card is
only capable of 24 bits, so I imagine that there would still be a sort of
resampling in real time playing. My PC processor runs at 1870 MHz with 1
GB of RAM. If a real gain in quality could be expected, I might decide not
to burn audio CD from downsampled data, saving all original files to an
USB hard disk instead.

Thanks in advance for relevant advices.

Bernard

I think you will find that most users of this group send audio from a
pc to proper hi fi speakers, rather than using nasty little "pc
speakers".

As for the length of cable that will not degrade sound - 20 metres is
easy. You could go a few hundred metres without any problem.

Unfortunately most laptops do not have adequate sound quality - they
are noisy and prone to random aliased outputs. You can get usb or
firewire cards that will do a very decent job, though.

As for improvements in quality - that doesn't happen (the old second
law of thermodynamics is against you there). QUality can be no better
than the original source although there are ways to make the sound
"preferable". If you are digitizing vinyl, go straight to 16/44.1, and
forget the higher resolution intermediates. They achieve nothing as
the final CD format is already several orders of magnitude better than
it needs to be.

d

[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

Bernard wrote:

Hi to Everyone,

Most people practice this as a control step, using the default
speakers provided with their PC. But, as for real playing, they most
often use CD to feed their HiFi equipment. Is there anyone here who
feed high quality music - not speaking of mp3 - straight from their
computer to their HiFi speakers, with or without an amplifier in
between ?

There is the issue of controlling playback, you may be very well off with a
Squezeebox Duet, otherwise you're gonna need a small laptop with radmin or a
rdp-client, in this context radmin is my preferred choice. The Squeezebox is
able to access audio files on a NAS with samba-equivalent interface.

I use a 12 dB attenuator between my Audiophile 2496 card(s) and a poweramp
with a 1 volt input sensitivity.

Maybe I should have tried it first, but there are a number of
questions that remain unanswered at this stage.

At first, my HiFi is downstairs and
my PC upstairs. Maybe I could link both with a cable... What quality
of a cable would be required for a length of about 20 meters (70
feet)?

My choice has been to use the same cable-type that I use to make my
microphone cables with and solder phonoplugs on each end, screen to "edge"
and both connectors in parallel to "center".

Would the quality of sound be downgraded due to such a long
cable ?

No. I have some 15 meter extension cables made with stereo jacks on each end
and just using standard microphone cable, in the real world they work well
enough for GP listening purposes, I intentionally never measured channel
separation on them ....

Supposing that I get around that cable problem, or that I run a laptop
downstairs, would there be a real gain in sound playback quality ?

Generally speaking the less equipment the better sound.

audio CD can be only 44100 Hz and 16 bits, while the music I got from
digitizing vinyl records is 96000 Hz and 32 bits float.

I digitize vinyl at 96-16, but I sure downsample it after or during
processing, often with an intermediary stage at 44-32 and store it as 44-16
on standard audio CD's, also to have a backup.

But then my
audio card is only capable of 24 bits, so I imagine that there would
still be a sort of resampling in real time playing.

Resampling is about sample rate, not about wordlenght, but there IS a word
lenght issue you want to be aware of, you need to dither suitably when you
convert from 32 bit to 16 rather than simply truncate.

My PC processor runs at 1870 MHz with 1 GB of RAM.

Ram is cheap, up it to 2 gigabyte, in my experience it is well worth it,
windows does things faster when it doesn't have to care too much about how
ram to use.

If a real gain in quality could be
expected, I might decide not to burn audio CD from downsampled data,
saving all original files to an USB hard disk instead.

There is a lot more merit to using the highest possible sample rate when
digitizing than there is in using it for playback and even with modern
disk-sizes the amount of diskspace used matters. Use 44-16 as final format
and DO make the CD's so that you have at least that backup. Remember to
store CDR's protected from light, they remain light sensitive for their
entire life, it is not as with a photographic film that you stop from being
light sensitive when you develop and fixate it.

Bernard

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

Don Pearce wrote:

Unfortunately most laptops do not have adequate sound quality - they
are noisy and prone to random aliased outputs. You can get usb or
firewire cards that will do a very decent job, though.

This is the guy with the Midiman Audiophile card. It will do it.

d

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[ChrisCoaster]

On Jul 18, 1:09*pm, Bernard wrote:
Hi to Everyone,

Most people practice this as a control step, using the default speakers
provided with their PC. But, as for real playing, they most often use CD
to feed their HiFi equipment. Is there anyone here who feed high quality
music - not speaking of mp3 - straight from their computer to their HiFi
speakers, with or without an amplifier in between ?

Maybe I should have tried it first, but there are a number of questions
that remain unanswered at this stage.

At first, my HiFi is downstairs and
my PC upstairs. Maybe I could link both with a cable... What quality of a
cable would be required for a length of about 20 meters (70 feet)? Would
the quality of sound be downgraded due to such a long cable ?

Supposing that I get around that cable problem, or that I run a laptop
downstairs, would there be a real gain in sound playback quality ? *audio
CD can be only 44100 Hz and 16 bits, while the music I got from digitizing
vinyl records is 96000 Hz and 32 bits float. But then my audio card is
only capable of 24 bits, so I imagine that there would still be a sort of
resampling in real time playing. My PC processor runs at 1870 MHz with 1
GB of RAM. If a real gain in quality could be expected, I might decide not
to burn audio CD from downsampled data, saving all original files to an
USB hard disk instead.

Thanks in advance for relevant advices.

Bernard
______________________
I think you're confusing 44,100HZ with the actual Bitrate of a CD,
which is 1,411kbps - over 4x the quality of the best mp3s(320kbps).
44,100HZ is the total frequency response of the CD, not its bitrate.
I would try to record that vinyl to mp3 at minimum 128kbps if you want
acceptable quality. Recording applications also have anti-pop/click
filters to remove the scratchiness from vinyl.

The title of your thread is misleading: to do what is indicated you
simply run a mini(1/8") jack from the PC out to RCA left&right males
to your receiver. Pretty simple in my estimation. I have just such a
jack handy for entertaining - I just plug in either my PC or Sansa mp3
player and the party's on!

-CC

[Steven Sullivan]

ChrisCoaster wrote:
I think you're confusing 44,100HZ with the actual Bitrate of a CD,
which is 1,411kbps - over 4x the quality of the best mp3s(320kbps).
44,100HZ is the total frequency response of the CD, not its bitrate.

Actually Redbook CD's frequency response is ~0-22,000 Hz -- a bandwidth of slightly less
than half the 44,100Hz sample rate.



--
-S
We have it in our power to begin the world over again - Thomas Paine

[Richard Crowley]

"Steven Sullivan" wrote ...
ChrisCoaster wrote:
I think you're confusing 44,100HZ with the actual Bitrate of a CD,
which is 1,411kbps - over 4x the quality of the best mp3s(320kbps).
44,100HZ is the total frequency response of the CD, not its bitrate.

Actually Redbook CD's frequency response is ~0-22,000 Hz --
a bandwidth of slightly less than half the 44,100Hz sample rate.

And not by accident. See: Nyquist frequency...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_frequency