James Cuthbert

To be honest, the Revo was cheap, came with reasonable performance and in fact the fan's so quiet you can barely hear it. I could put a CAPS board in later if this set up doesn't sound good, but if it does sound good I'll be happy with it as I really want the ability to play DVDs and Internet TV which I don't think you can with CAPS.

Sorry pics are messed up!

I was fed up with an old laptop that kept crashing and loads of wires and boxes so I spent a fair bit of time building this new little box of tricks. Apart from fitting a DVD drive the hardware is finished and it's time for me to install software. The box houses the motherboard from a new Acer Revo with windows 8, a MF V-DAC, V-Link & V-PSU. Currently the Revo has it's standard PSU, but I'll be looking to upgrade this sometime. I went for the Revo because I wanted a media centre that would play movies as well as high res music. I have a 500gig SSD for the OS and High Res music and am planning to fit a 750gig HDD for movies and low res music. I'm planning to install J River, but have a couple of questions before I spend time and money installing software... I cloned the original clean copy of Win 8 from the original HDD to the SSD. I used Macrium to do this and made a straight copy. They state on their website that if you use Vista or newer you don't need to set up the fancy partition alignment, as newer versions of Windows "aligns data in 1 MB boundaries". I took them to their word and did a straight clone, it all seems to work ok but thought I'd get a second or third opinion. I want to put BBC I-Player on, but have heard that live tv streaming can be bad for a SSD because it continually writes to it. My HDD is likely to be connected via USB3, is it possible to configure this as the buffer for TV viewing? Does You Tube buffer in such a way and can this be s et to buffer on a different drive? Does it matter? Hopefully I'll be listening to it by the end of the weekend and report back. I'll try and get some better pics too. Cheers, James.

Hi, I love the transparent sound of Media Center but sometimes want to play in the Windows environment with MC in Mini view. With VLC I used to right click a whole album in Windows and select Play in VLC. It would then play the whole album. I can play a track at a time in this way with MC but haven't worked out how to play an album at a time this way. Can I configure it for this type of playback? I'm likely to be getting a new PC with Win 8, will I need to set it up differently then? Thanks, James.

Well all, thanks for your help. I actually did an experiment last night that I should have done ages ago. With my computer logged off, I selected my DAC as source on my amp and turned it to full volume. I could only hear the tiniest audible noise with my ear right up to the speaker. I then put the V-PSU right next to, on, under and all around the DAC and V-Link and at no point did the noise change and at no point did I hear any mains hum. Maybe the V-series boxes are already screened or the magnetism produced by the PSU is too small to affect the circuitry? Anyway, I may well still use some of that TI shielding... It can't do any harm, but altogether I can't see that it's anything much to worry about. I'm still very grateful for your comments, I've learnt a lot about shielding that may be useful in the future

Thanks all, some great information to work on. TI shielding or a combination of Copper and Steel seem like a great starting point. A little information makes me ponder more questions and also to make some assumptions that may or may not be correct... I wonder whether surrounding a toroidal transformer with a magnetic shielding material could compromise it's performance? It might be best to surround the computer and DAC in TI shielding. I guess that the DAC is likely to be more severely compromised by interference than the computer as it has analogue circuitry inside, so I will mount the PSU and DAC at opposite ends of the enclosure. I assume also that the Toroidal Transformer mostly emits EMI whereas the computer PSU will mostly be RFI? Thanks for your help, I'm finding this very interesting and helpful.

I'm designing a one-box case to house all my main separate components: Music server & PSU, MF V-link, V-DAC & V-PSU. My aim is to have one box with one mains lead going in, 2 RCA leads and a VGA lead going out (My Amp and it's rather hefty PSU will be kept outside!). Initially I intend to use aluminium (or copper) screening to separate the PSUs (and fan)from the rest of the electronics. I also plan to have a physical gap of a few inches. As the V-PSU has a toroidal transformer is will produce magnetic as well as RF interference and I'm wondering whether straight forward RF screening would be sufficient. I understand that Mu-metal is used for magnetic screening... does anyone know if it just need fitting as a partition or is it's use more scientific?

Absolutely fantastic! Saw your pictures on FB of the speakers you made too... They are simply the best home-made speakers I've ever seen. And such skillful application of veneer. I'm planning a similar server box project and I'll post the results too, but I doubt it'll be close to yours... You really have set the standards!

Cheers all... tried Foobar, it seems slightly more stable but still far from perfect - on a good day it's fine and on a bad one it cuts out all the time. As far as the OS is concerned I've tried XP and Vista already, I might see if I can get Win 7 or 8 on it. I have 250ms of buffer; if I try and select 500ms it appears to play but no sound comes out. My HD files are mostly flacs but bought from different vendors, HD tracks, Linn, Naim etc. I am beginning to think there's a hardware fault with the computer as thinking about it the fan goes crazy after about 20 mins of playback... I'm beginning to think I should start looking on e-bay for a replacement - they're not that expensive these days. I've still been very pleased to hear your feedback. Knowing it's not under specified has saved me wasting my money needlessly on RAM and possibly a SSD!

Thanks everyone for being so helpful... Some great advice. I'm going to try foobar to see if that helps and then maybe upgrade to Windows 7. If there's still no luck I'll replace it assuming there's a hardware problem with the laptop. There's no point in spending any real money on such an old laptop. It seems clear that my laptop should run the files ok if it we're working correctly but Just going back to the original title of the thread, has anyone ever heard any officially quoted figures for system requirements?

Thanks for your response blueman. I'm currently streaming from the laptop's own hard drive (I used to use my NAS in the past but I wondered if this was the problem - I don't think it is in retrospect). My CD quality recordings are a mixture of WAV and FLAC files and work fine. My HD files are mostly FLACs and none are more than 96Mhz. I use J River Music Center in WASPI exclusive mode and 250ms of buffering (when I select 500ms it just doesn't work at all - I wonder whether if the 500ms worked it might fix my drop outs and I wonder if more RAM might enable a larger buffer). Then I use the USB port straight to my asynchronous DAC. Mostly I wonder if the laptop is just too slow 1.6Ghz Dual core with 2.5 GB RAM? Might the laptop have a hardware fault? It does get quite hot sometimes, but sometimes I get drop outs when I first switch it on... I think the software should be OK because I recently formatted the hard drive and re-installed everything with a different OS. Maybe I've set up J River wrongly - but I have followed the advice found in these threads... I'm toying with getting more RAM with the hope it'll buffer up more and play better. If I knew the Computer would work OK and I thought it would help I'd be tempted to get a 250GB SSD for faster, cooler and quieter operation - but I don't want to invest that into it if I'm going to end out throwing it away. I have not found any links on this website that discuss minimum system requirements of the host computer or the issue of drop outs. Cheers once again for your help.

Sound wise I've got my system pretty much how I want it, I think it'll suit me perfectly when I bring my Rogers speakers over. I used to run XP (with ASIO4all) but it crashed quite often and occasionally had drop-outs when playing HD music. Recently I did a fresh re-install with Vista running in WASPI exclusive mode. I gave it a re-format and only installed essential programs and as a result it crashes slightly less but it does suffer drop-outs more, sometimes in silence and sometimes with a buzzing noise. Nowhere have I ever seen system requirements for playing 24/96 music, this Toshiba is only 1.6 Ghz dual core with 2.5 GB of RAM but I always thought it would be sufficient for just playing music. Sometimes it seems to get quite hot, but I'm not sure this is my problem. Since changing to Vista I haven't been able to select more than 250ms of buffer and I suspect this might be the reason. I like this laptop and am on the verge of buying 2 more MB of RAM hoping that this will allow me to buffer for 500ms (as I had in XP)... am I barking up the right tree here or should I just get a faster laptop? What speed processor do I need to play 24/96 music easily? I've plugged my everyday laptop (much faster) into my audio system and it is more stable but really sounds inferior... (I'm assuming it's all the other programs and accessories running in the background). I'm reluctant to change the laptop as It sounds beautiful as it is, I just want more stability. Is there any software that sounds as good but is less demanding?

Thanks Julf for the technical data that's now been entered. It'll be really interesting to see sound quality assessments of your albums to see if they match up with the technical merits. I've entered more recently too. Surely some of you out there have downloaded some music over the Christmas time that they can review. Also, if you're interested download the spreadsheet to see comments left by reviewers. Julf - about moving to a new website, I'm sure there's better than Shutterfly, but I'm reluctant to move the Data. If anyone wants to take the spreadsheet as it stands and make a better website, feel free to take over whether you just want to do a better job or become the next e-millionaire. I'm an absolute amateur web designer and started this to get the ball rolling.

Thanks for your help!

Hi all, Not much activity on my website in the last couple of weeks except that I've added a couple of new albums. Please you lot, download my blank form and send me some more reviews to share! Have a great new year P.S. Julf, have you got the site to work on your computer yet? Anyone else had problems with excessive pop-ups? Shutterfly is the only website that I know how to use and it's free! If anyone knows a better or more professional solution, feel free to take over.