TelstarBoy

I'm just getting to grips with ripping LPs to FLAC using an Asus Xonar Essence ST (with the latest beta version ASIO compliant driver 5.12.8.17731) and Audacity 1.3.12 (beta). I have a few comments and questions: 1) Looking at the recording VU meters in Audacity, it seems the noise floor of my analogue set up is around -78 dB with occasional "blips" well above that level. The maximum output of my phono / pre-amp set up is around -6 dB which would suggest I'm getting a dynamic range of about 72 dB or, put another way, just 12 bits. This makes me wonder whether it's worth ripping / storing to 24 bits if the last 12 bits are just noise. However, would the least significant 12 bits provide some (presumably Gaussian) dither which subjectively improves the sound produced by the most significant 12 bits? Or would saving to 16 bits / 96 kHz sound just as good, in reality, with just 4 bits of dither (and taking two/thirds of the disk space)? 2) With Audacity set to work with the DirectSound interface and to use 32 bit / 96 kHz processing internally, I believe I'm getting 24 bits / sample from the Asus but I'm not sure what sample rate the Asus is truly using. Is it 96 kHz? My playback set up (Linn Akurate DS :-D) tells me it's playing 24 / 96 FLAC files but is that because Audacity is processing the samples to this standard (irrespective of the actual sampling rate used by the Asus) or is Audacity genuinely setting the sampling rate of the Asus? The Asus driver interface doesn't seem to have the option of setting the ADC sampling rate but it does appear to allow the user to choose the DAC rate. Looking forward to hearing your views - thanks! Peter

Thanks for your feedback, Eloise - will look into what resolution / sample rate my MF DAC supports - it may not be the youngest DAC out there but it does sound so sweet :-) so I'd like to keep it going. Will also try to dig up more info on that mystery SqueezeBox you mentioned. Will report back here if I find anything... If I do go down do the PC client route, the ASUS card looks a much better bet that the Lynx card - supports S/PDIF and is much cheaper! Does anyone have any suggestions for server / client software which also iPhone remote support? Thanks Peter

Hi I've been running a relatively home-spun wireless media server / client setup for a couple of years now using FireFly media server to stream FLAC files to 3 Roku units around the house. Apart from the occasional (and rather annoying) "rebuffering" episode, it all seems to work quite nicely. At the moment I'm using a Roku M2000 unit to feed an MF Tri Vista 21 DAC using the S/PDIF link but I believe the Roku unit can only pump out 16bit/44.1kHz data. I'd like to make use of the 24/96 and even the 24/192 capability of the DAC so have been looking for a simple and relatively cheap piece of client hardware / software which will do this. No such luck :-(. I've looked into the Logitech Transporter and Linn DS Sneaky but don't want to pay big money for the on-board DAC which I'm not going to use. So it looks as though I may have to build a PC based client which will do what I need. I'm quite comfortable with the idea of building a PC (probably Shuttle or similar because of their small form factor) but am not sure about what additional hardware / software I might need to come up with an audiophile spec client. From this site and others it looks as though the S/PDIF (or rather AES/EBU) board of choice is the Lynx AES16 which doesn't appear to come in cheap! Are there any other options or should I just take the hit? Also, what do people recommend for server / client software? I'm quite happy to change from FireFly server but whatever new server I install, it should be capable of supporting the other Roku units in the house. Also quite (well, probably, very) important is to have an iPhone / iPod touch app which allows me to dial up music from my armchair :-). Thanks for any help you guys out there can come up with. Peter

Thanks, Idolse. Yes, after further research, I also discovered that WAV files don't support tags but FLAC files do so started looking into this option. Apparently, the Roku units don't support FLAC directly so need something like SlimServer on the music server - I guess this transcodes FLAC to WAV. Am I right in thinking that SlimServer will replace the Windows Media Connect component which, as I understand it, does all the UPnP trickery for WMP? If so, are there any pitfalls to look out for when trying to install SlimServer? Does WMP let you do this without a fuss or even at all, knowing how proprietary / bundled up Microsoft can be about its apps? The other thing is, is it fairly easy to import the FLAC codec into EAC? I can't see this in the list of codecs supported by the default version of EAC or am I missing something? Thanks, guys. TelstarBoy

Hi, like several other posters I've read on this site, I'm a complete forum newbie so bear with me, please! I've been running a network of 3 Roku media streamers (wirelessly) from my home built server (amazing what you can do for £100 and a few bits and bobs from previous builds!) running XP Home SP3 and WMP 11 for about 6 months. Apart from a few occasional problems with signal strength, the whole setup seems to run pretty well. One of the Roku units is connected to my living-room hi-fi through a Musical Fidelity DAC so I tend to listen more critically to this set up than the others. I've recently come across EAC and used this successfully to rip CDs to WAV files - so far so good. The problem starts when I try to import these EAC derived files into the WMP library. WMP finds the files easily enough but records the artist / album name / track name info as "unknown". This is how the tracks appear on the Roku screen - not very useful! Where does EAC store the metadata / library info about these files and how do I get this into WMP? I thought I could be "clever" by backing up the WMP sourced files for a particular album, and then manually copying the EAC sourced files to the original directory created by WMP. Not as "clever" as WMP, it seems :-(. WMP tracked down the original files in their new back-up location (without me asking it to rebuild the library :-~) and still didn't recognise any of the EAC filenames in the original directory. Since the network infrastructure seems to work well, I don't really want to change the server software, just replace old files originally ripped with WMP with new files ripped with EAC. Does anyone out there have any clues? Thanks - looking forward to hearing from you!