So I need system build advice for an audiophile. *scaled back, looking at NAS now*

[piasabird]

You ever think of using a sound receiver/Amplifier like they use with home theater? They use HDMI Pass-through and take out the HD SOUND from HDMI Video feeds. HDMI can carry 7.1 sound. I think what is really at issue is how well the sound amplifier plays the Digital Sound. HDMI is already fully HD AUDIO. Just dont use compression on the Audio files.

Might try going to the avs forum maybe for recievers. Not all Receivers are created equally they talk about the levels of the quality of the audio processing.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/738511/5-...-an-explaination-of-the-future-proof-receiver

This is the sticky on understanding sound receiver/amplifiers. They say there are differing levels of quality and capability. It is good reading. It might also make a difference in your ability to uderstand specifications on sound cards as well. They talk about the ability to process PCM 7.1 sound and the 3 stages of processing and the ability to process different kinds of sound. Most sound available today is digital.

Good luck with your new computer. Maybe what might be worth looking at is the ability to encode sound of the highest quality via hardware encoders and taking the strain off of the CPU. I also wonder if the same would apply to a HDTV card or DVR Receiver.

 

[DarkRogue]

Unless he's also watching tons of movies, I don't think 7.1/surround sound will matter. Virtually all music is 2-channel/stereo.

Encoding audio is not particularly CPU intensive. FLAC at max compression zipped along briskly on my old E8400. It's definitely not in the same league as video encoding. That stuff is a beast.

 

[88keys]

You undid the performance gain by getting two "green" HDDs. Furthermore, in RAID 0, you'd have 4TB in the computer, with just 2TB external backup. And I don't think that board provides RAID anyway; see the H77 Mfenn linked for that.


In any case, I didn't see mention of any software being used that would require performance over what any single drive can give. Is he doing anything else on this box besides music-related apps?

Edit: Also, IMHO, if he has a "card balance", he doesn't have "$$ to burn". And the quad-core and 16GB RAM just look like wasted money to me. But I won't know that for sure until I know if he's doing anything besides iTunes-like stuff.

We have a 2TB External that will be utilized for backup, having 4TB of storage would allow for alot of headroom say for videos and whatever esle.
when the time comes that 2TB is no longer enough, we can get a 4TB ext HDD.

Just because you got additional funds does NOT mean you should spend it!

Get something that suits his usage and stay there!
It happens very often, and when it's not your own money, it's tempting to just recommend up to the max.

I understand that it's not my money. He just told me that he 's got more money and now wants more performance so I gave it to him.
Sorry I didnt explain that earler, I generally don't like going crazy with other peoples money, I even told him that what we had earlier with the i3 was plenty good enough for what he does.

Green drives are for power saving, and honestly, I'm not sure if WD ever corrected the excessive head parking problem on those drives. I have a couple Green drives, but they are strictly my external backup drives. If you run them 24/7 in a PC, the head parking may pose a problem, depending on how often he accesses the drives.
RAID0 also goes against your "backup" plan, because if either drive fails, everything goes down with it. As said, you'd also have a 4TB partition being backed up onto a 2TB drive. Size mismatch.

The idea is to give lots of headroom with the 4TB striped setup for extra headroom and the day comes that he's exceeded the 2TB HDD we can just get a 4TB ext HDD for back up and be done.

Given that he's still far away from the 2TB cap, I could just select a better single internal 2TB HDD as opposed to the low end WD greens.

As far as the sound card goes - the Xonar Essence is a very good internal card, and supports opamp rolling, I believe. The problem again, is what level of audiophile is he?
ViperGTS broguht up a point I missed - He's using iTunes to rip his CD's?
Is he ripping to ALAC at least? Or just AAC / MP3 / M4A?

The reason is that the Xonar Essence, while being a very good card for an internal soundcard, is still geared toward the more critical listeners. It can bring out flaws on a poor/lossy compression format, and/or actually sound worse than a less forgiving DAC. It's also possible that he simply won't be able to hear the difference, in which case a lower end card will be just fine.

I honestly cannot tell you what kind of audiophile he is because I don't know enough about audio hardware to tell you. But I can say that he has alot of money wrapped up in audio hardware. He's extremely picky on every single component from the stereo receiver down to the wires that he uses.
His receiver is an SX 1980 which is according to him one of the most powerful stereo receivers ever made.

Hers some info about it..

http://elitehifi.com/pioneer-sx-1980-vintage-stereo-amplifier-receiver

The other side is, if he really can discern the differences, I'd stay away from recommending any internal cards unless absolutely necessary. The inside of a computer is extremely noisy, which will impact the ability of audio signals to run through the DAC without interference. This is why you'd usually go with an external DAC and perhaps a separate amp as well.

Personally, my budget didn't allow for a very fancy DAC, so I use an AudioFire4 hooked up to a Matrix M-stage amp, powering either a Sennheiser HD-600, or an Audio-Technica W1000X depending on my mood. I swapped back to my onboard Realtek once and it was garbage, lol.

So should I not get the internal card? I honestly dont know much if anything about sound cards. The best one Ive ever owned was an Audigy 4 lol. I can hold off on the card and install and decide on that later. I'll likely be spending next weekend assembling the rig and transferring and copying back ups so this PC won't be ready til at least next Monday .

 

[DarkRogue]

The problem is that RAID0 actually increases failure rates. If you only wanted 4TB of total storage space, leave them as 2 separate internal drives.
Make one of the 2TB drives reserved for Music, and the other drive for video and related downloads.

This will also greatly simplify any backup you need to do. Simply set one drive to be periodically cloned or kept up to date with another.

What kind of "extra performance" is he looking for?
What does he use his PC for, and what does he plan to use it for?

As for the audio stuff - if he is really picky about it, by all means, do not include it with your order. Let him handle it! But if he has a huge investment into his audio gear already, and even uses different interconnects, then I'd advise even more heavily against any sort of internal sound card. The onboard sound will work fine for booting into Windows and stuff, so he won't be completely without sound. Deal with the build, then let him add his own audio equipment afterward.

I'd also doublecheck with him that he's ripping his music into lossless files. Otherwise the extra fidelity his gear is capable of gets wasted.

 

[88keys]

We have a 2TB External that will be utilized for backup, having 4TB of storage would allow for alot of headroom say for videos and whatever esle.
when the time comes that 2TB is no longer enough, we can get a 4TB ext HDD.

I understand that it's not my money. He just told me that he 's got more money and now wants more performance so I gave it to him.
Sorry I didnt explain that earler, I generally don't like going crazy with other peoples money, I even told him that what we had earlier with the i3 was plenty good enough for what he does.

The idea is to give lots of headroom with the 4TB striped setup for extra headroom and the day comes that he's exceeded the 2TB HDD we can just get a 4TB ext HDD for back up and be done.

Given that he's still far away from the 2TB cap, I could just select a better single internal 2TB HDD as opposed to the low end WD greens.



I honestly cannot tell you what kind of audiophile he is because I don't know enough about audio hardware to tell you. But I can say that he has alot of money wrapped up in audio hardware. He's extremely picky on every single component from the stereo receiver down to the wires that he uses.
His receiver is an SX 1980 which is according to him one of the most powerful stereo receivers ever made.

Hers some info about it..

http://elitehifi.com/pioneer-sx-1980-vintage-stereo-amplifier-receiver



So should I not get the internal card? I honestly dont know much if anything about sound cards. The best one Ive ever owned was an Audigy 4 lol. I can hold off on the card and install and decide on that later. I'll likely be spending next weekend assembling the rig and transferring and copying back ups so this PC won't be ready til at least next Monday .

The problem is that RAID0 actually increases failure rates. If you only wanted 4TB of total storage space, leave them as 2 separate internal drives.
Make one of the 2TB drives reserved for Music, and the other drive for video and related downloads.

We'' just go with a better 2TB HDD then

What kind of "extra performance" is he looking for?
What does he use his PC for, and what does he plan to use it for?

He's expressed some interested in possibly taking his old VHS video collections (family stuff) and backing it up on to DVDs BRs etc. I hope the VHSs arent too old because that can be a task when they get wore out. The other thing that he does is he will manually split audio files. Certain ablums that are very obscure that can only be downloaded via torrents and you'll have to split the audio file manually because it was likely recorded from an LP. Other than that, its just ripping, listening and watching videos.

As for the audio stuff - if he is really picky about it, by all means, do not include it with your order. Let him handle it! But if he has a huge investment into his audio gear already, and even uses different interconnects, then I'd advise even more heavily against any sort of internal sound card. The onboard sound will work fine for booting into Windows and stuff, so he won't be completely without sound. Deal with the build, then let him add his own audio equipment afterward.

I'd also doublecheck with him that he's ripping his music into lossless files. Otherwise the extra fidelity his gear is capable of gets wasted.

Without even checking, I can absolutely asssure you that they are lossless because I'm sure he'd have nothing less.

As for the sound card, I told the guy from Guitar Center what stereo reciever he had and thats the sound card he recommended. I'm mostly at the mercy of other people to tell me what to do about the sound, so I'll probably let my friend talk to some people he knows about what a good solution would be and go from that. Whatever it is, I can install it.
I can try and talk him into scaling back down in performance, in the interest of not knowing what he may have to spend on the proper sound peripheral. I anything I'll look at going to best available dual core as opposed to the quad core...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115093

 

[DarkRogue]

VHS, I have no real idea about. I haven't seen one in years, and our last VCR died years ago as well. I imagine that could get tricky though, and might involve some video encoding.

Splitting an audio file, on the other hand, is nothing. The same basic premise in encoding the file in the first place is at work. It just involves an additional decode phase. Again, no real issue with any modern CPU.
For me, load CUE linked to APE/FLAC/TTA/WAV/whatever into Foobar -> Convert to FLAC. It reads the files, according to the track information in the CUE, decodes them temporarily into WAV, then encodes the WAV to FLAC.

And yeah, if you asked specifically for a sound card, Guitar Center would recommend you a Xonar Essence, because it, and the Auzentech offerings, are the traditional "good" soundcards for a PC. There are a few others, but I'd really just leave this area up to him, if it's his field of expertise. Whatever he gets, you can install it later. It'd consist of either installing a sound card and installing drivers, or hooking up a few cables properly to an external unit.

If you want to do some research for a good DAC/amp, I'd refer you to the people at head-fi. Be careful though, their motto is "Welcome to Head-Fi; Sorry about your wallet."

One more thing to add though, is his audio for headphones only, or would it also power speakers? (Not dinky PC speakers.)

 

[88keys]

Will it power large speakers?


YES YES YES

 

[Zap]

Did you read my suggestions in my previous post?

Antec New Solution Desktop Case

2x WD Caviar Green HDDs

16GB DDR3 GSKill

Core i5 3550 3.3GHz

Samsung 830 128GB SSD

ASROCK B75M

LACiE 2TB Ext HDD

ASUS Xonar Essence Sound Card

I will comment on this new parts list.

Case is "meh." I've owned it. It is huge, without being able to hold much. Does he want his computer to fit in with his receiver? Look into HTPC cases such as the Silverstone Grandia GD04/GD05/GD06 or Silverstone Milo ML03B, or Lian Li PC-C50B or PC-C50A. Most are black, but the PC-C50A is silver. The ML03B is a slim case taking up less space.

If you want faster drives, get a WD Red (higher density platters) or a 7200RPM drive (but avoid WD Black because maybe too noisy). If you want more capacity, go with a bigger drive. Forget RAID. Multiple separate HDDs? Maybe.

16GB for just ripping and listening to music? Srsly? Overkill much? Same thing with the CPU. Nothing a dual core can't do. Biggest difference is cost.

Go back and re-read what I said about SSDs. And motherboard.

If you get more HDD capacity, may as well scale up the external HDD to match capacity. Sometimes doesn't cost much more.

For sound card, if the guy was merely using integrated audio previously, then he probably won't hear the difference that the $200 card makes.

 

[bononos]

Agreed with Zap's post above. The OP has overspec'd on CPU (fast dual core w/hyperthreading is fine) and soundcard. You (OP) mentioned that your friend is running it thru to his receiver so you won't need a $200 soundcard. Just get a basic Xonar for a quarter the price or see if the integrated mb audio does the job.

 

[Ken g6]

VHS to DVD is generally best done with a dedicated device, unless he has very few VHS tapes. So save a couple hundred dollars in the budget for that. You can do it with an analog tuner card as well, but you'd have to have a VCR next to the computer, and I'm not sure the quality would be as good.

 

[88keys]

So anyway discussed this with him this morning and told him that it would be best to discuss the sound card deal with someone else who knows more than I. Ive convinced him to scale back (somewhat) I told him that the quad core is not worth the price for the perforance increase over a dual core. So i its place he wants the fastest available dual core lol....

As for the case selection. Matching the reciever was what i had in mind.


But I really want to get this over and done with soon. You see once I get the ball rolling this guy, hell just want better and better and next thing you know hell have a room added on to his house so that I can build him a Cray supercomputer that will need a friggin sub station in his back yard to power it... In spite of the fact that the $600 system we set on will blow the dust off the heatsink on his old rig.

 

[Zap]

I told him that the quad core is not worth the price for the perforance increase over a dual core.

For what he uses it for, there is NO performance increase. Tell him it is like buying a Ferrari for commuting during rush hour in LA. He won't get to work any faster than with a Toyota Yaris.

As for the case selection. Matching the reciever was what i had in mind.

Okay. Then try to find a Lian Li PC-C50A in stock somewhere. Don't limit yourself to Newegg.

Oh yeah, see this thread on a 4TB NAS for $250. Bit more expensive than a mere 2TB external HDD, but may (or may not) be worth it.

 

[88keys]

So here we go, since he absoultely demands the fastest available dual core since we arent getting the quad core...

Core i3 2130 3.4GHz Sandy

For $150, I don't think its a bad deal.

Gonna use this 3TB Seagate for $150 and throw it in his old system and turn in into a NAS box running either WHS or FreeNAS.
What Im gonna do is set up a 2TB partition for his music back up, and then 1TB partition to store Win7 images for his desktop, laptop and wife's PC which will be good for me because that means I can free up a few hundered gigs on my NAS. And then he'll have his other 1TB HDD on there and use that for whatever else...

For his desktop I'll get this Seagate Barracuda XT

And yeah I'm 1,000% positive that he'll like that Lian Li case and matches the reciever much much better.

Everything else stays the same. Haven't done the math yet, but As soon as I find the case from a vendor I trust I expect that we'll be around the same price we were before in the last configuration. Scaled back the CPU, but we have better HDDs and a 4TB NAS (3TB + 1TB) as oppsoed to a 2TB ext HDD.

 

[mfenn]

So here we go, since he absoultely demands the fastest available dual core since we arent getting the quad core...

Core i3 2130 3.4GHz Sandy

For $150, I don't think its a bad deal.

Tell him that mfenn says he's an absolute moron. 300MHz is in no way shape or form worth the $30 differential to an i3 2100.

Gonna use this 3TB Seagate for $150 and throw it in his old system and turn in into a NAS box running either WHS or FreeNAS.
What Im gonna do is set up a 2TB partition for his music back up, and then 1TB partition to store Win7 images for his desktop, laptop and wife's PC which will be good for me because that means I can free up a few hundered gigs on my NAS. And then he'll have his other 1TB HDD on there and use that for whatever else...

Don't bother hard partitioning the drive, you're just artificially limiting you future flexibility. The wonderful thing about FreeNAS is that you have the full power of ZFS at your disposal and can create ZFS datasets to soft partition your storage space. I say "soft" partition because volumes can be grown and shrunk to your hearts content, just obviously not smaller than the current size of the data on the drive or bigger than the physical capacity of the drive. You can even have set up periodic ZFS snapshots to provide even more protection against file corruption.

For his desktop I'll get this Seagate Barracuda XT

Too expensive for what it is, just get the ST2000DM001. The difference between two HDDs is insignificant next to the

Spoiler

power of the Force

speed of an SSD.

 

[88keys]

^^
Thanks for the input, saved a good bit on that deal...
He's pretty adamant about having the fastest available dual core, $30 isn't alot of money compared to what we're spending at this point. Also sorta compromised on the RAM I told him that he can get an single 8GB stick and if he's not satisfied with the performance, we can get the other 8GB. I seriously, seriously doubt that there will be any form of dissatisfaction in any way shape or form with the new rig so I can say that we saved another $40 there. And the Samsung 128GB 830 is on sale for $99 today so saved another $20
And finally found a new Lian Li C50A on Ebay for $175 from a reputable seller.
This brings us a little closer to earth with an $850 price tag, still overkill, but he's getting powerful system in a damn nice chassis with a 3TB NAS for all of his back ups and then some. It also leaves him $350 to spend on a sound peripheral of his choice which I think will be more than enough.


So for the NAS, I happen to have a WHS 2011 license that I never used and I could let him use that for his NAS. I used it breifly but never activated it because I didn't like it. I find FreeNAS to suit my needs much better. I didn't like the way WHS arranged your server folders and the fact that you have no control over them, and I think the add ons are mostly stupid. However it's ease of use would be good for someone whos not as savvy as I am. Plus, I think you can schedule back ups of install images and folders with WHS. IDK because I didn't use it long enough to get that far.

 

[mfenn]

Well, now I guess I know why Intel makes the i3 2130. :awe: I have seriously never heard of anybody buying one before.

Anyway, as for the NAS it sounds like this is the type of thing that you typically set up for him and he just lets run. In that case, I'd probably use FreeNAS for a few reasons:
- You're familiar with it
- It's really easy to manage remotely (just set up a port forwarding rule in his router)
- It supports every protocol under the sun so you can be flexible in the future.

Acronis (well, at least Workstation edition) can back up to any arbitrary network drive, doesn't matter what the back end is, so you won't need WHS's built-in backups either.

 

[88keys]

FreeNAS it is then, I was leaning toward that anyway. I just wanted to put my copy of WHS 2011 to good use if I could. I however prefer FreeNAS becuase of sheer simplicity. It might be a little more difficult to get it running if you're unfamiliar with *nix, but its nothing a little RTFMing wont solve, and once youve got everything situated, it's as easy as can be while also very functional. I've been running FreeNAS for almost 3 years now and it's serves me very well.
If I'm lucky, everything will be here Friday and I can have it together for the weekend.

Thanks for all the help.

 

[mfenn]

:thumbsup: Let us know how it goes!

 

[88keys]

Everything arrived Friday, and I finished the build last night. Still waiting on approx 400G GB of data to transfer from his old PC.... Thank god I have gigabit ethernet or else this would take a week lol.
If everything goes well, he'll be picking it up tonight.

 

[mfenn]

:thumbsup: Glad it went well! What did you end up doing for backup software, Acronis or something else?

 

[88keys]

Acronis.

Finished everything else last night, and got the NAS finished this morning. I set up his NAS to to be seen as a network drive to make things easier. Just got the NAS finished this morining and I gave him my old 4 port gig switch and set up his NAS in the laundry room. Acronis should finish backing up his music drive late tonight at this rate.
But he's very very happy with his rig. iTune loads MUCH faster, much much faster response time when loading album artwork and stuff.

BTW, that Lian Li case is very very nice, total pleasure to work on. I've always been an Antec fanboy for the cases and PSUs, but I might become a Lian Li fanboy to lol
This makes me wanna upgrade so bad lol. Prolly gonna wait til something dies in my desktop before I upgrade.