Getting Started

Computer audio is using a computer as a source just like a turntable or a CD player.
The big advantage is that not only the music is on the computer, the description of the contents (tagging) is incorporated to. This allows you to browse your collection, build play list, organize it, etc.

You can play audio with higher bit depth and sample rates than CD’s (Redbook audio) allows for.

If you store it on a server, you can play the content everywhere in the house over your LAN or even over the Internet.

 

Flexibility and comfort are the big advantages of computer audio.
But you must know how to handle it.
Computer audio is like everything in the ICT, easy, logical and you only need a weekend to find out why it is not working.

Luckily, we have internet. There is all kind of forums you can use for information or post your questions. Tons of information is available. The only thing you have to do is to pick the right one.

A very simple start

You want the convenience of computer audio but you don’t want a PC or anything else computer like in your listening room.
Have a look at music servers.
These boxes have the look and feel of audio equipment. In fact, some manufacturers stresses that it is NOT a computer.
Well, good marketing is not telling a lie. And indeed you can’t e-mail, surf or do anything else but playing audio.
Inside there is invariably a computer with a sound card and an operating system. You can’t do digital audio without.
If you go this in general a bit expensive way:

• check user forums, the software is often proprietary so might be a bit buggy
• check backup facilities, some use a backup strategy making it impossible to transfer your music to another system. They probably do so to avoid problems with copyright but you are lost the moment you want to move to another system.

• Check what is inside. This is a bit hard to do but as it is a computer, how does its price tag compares with a well designed silent PC and a good quality sound card or external DAC.

An alternative is streaming audio.
You use a media player and connect it over the network to a server.
An ideal solution for multi room audio.

A complicated start

Use EAC to rip your CD’s and Foobar as a media player, this is what often is recommended in audiophile style forums.

A posting quite common.
You have done your homework, read tons of postings in all kind of audio forums.
You have established the best practice and when you try to put it in practice, your stuck.
Don’t understand me wrong, this is not about busting these applications.
The guys who developed these apps did an excellent job.
However, if computers and/or digital audio are a bit of mystery to you, this is not the way to go.

I know there are a lot of people struggling with Foobar.
I wonder why because you can do very complicated things with Foobar but a basic setup is not very complicated.
But I must admit, I like computing.

A simple start

You might use a PC for direct playback,

you might go the streaming audio way,

you need a PC to maintain your collection anyway.

 

Simply start by using your current PC.
Don’t worry too much about sound quality.
There are a lot of things to learn, to discover, to master and a lot of  these aspects are not directly related to sound quality.

The world of OS

The 3 major operating systems on the desktop are Windows, OSX and Linux.
Getting familiar with computer audio and learning a new OS at the same time is probably for masochist only. Stick to the OS you are used to.

You will find many hot debates, most of all between Mac and Win (the Linux guys are to busy with hacking to be able to join) but there isn't any hard evidence that one is superior to the other as far as sound quality is concerned.
All are able (if configured right) to deliver bit perfect output.
They all run on more or less the same hardware.
Not to be mistaken for running on all hardware, that’s the stronghold of Windows.

Music collection

Start by creating a collection of moderate volume, 30-40 CD's will do.

If you have downloads in MP3 or FLAC, add a couple of them.

If the collection is too big, everything slows down, no fun when experimenting with different players or taggers. Beside, if you make errors, you can easily correct it.
This allows you to familiarize yourself with the tasks and therefore the software needed.
These tasks are covered in the software section.

 

Rip a couple of CD’s to a lossless format
Check the information supplied by the internet database
Add a sampler to check how your media player copes with multiple artists.
Rip a multi volume set

If you have classical music,

• is there a tag for the composer?
• can you split CD’s into compositions easily?

Media player

You need a media player.

If you go the streaming way, you at least need somthing to rip and to tag the audio.

The major ones, Windows Media Player and iTunes both cover the basic functionality well and offer a straight forward interface.
Simply start with the one which comes with your OS.

 

Once you are familiar with the look and feel, you might try a couple of other ones.
J River, Foobar, Winamp, MediaMonkey to mention a few popular players.
Remember, it is a computer, you can download all kind of software for free and experiment until you find the one who fits your style.

You can find a couple of them in the media player section

 

Do media players have a sound?

This is covered here.

My experiences is that the players them self often matters less than the driver you choose.

Players like J River or Foobar allows you to choose different drivers.

Connecting to the audio

Slowly the gap between computers and audio is closing but you won’t find many amplifiers with USB input or PC's with a SPDIF out. If you do it is often a multi media model.

Sometimes a headphone out doubles as a Toslink out.

USB DAC’s are becoming popular.

Streaming audio players connect to the audio using conventional connections like RCA or SPDIF (digital).

Maybe you are lucky and you have a connection supported by both the PC and the audio.

You can connect the analogue out (headphone) to your amplifier but the quality of the headphone amp on the PC is often of moderate quality.
Sound card lines out to amp line in or sound card digital out (SPDIF over Toslink or coax) to digital in are the most likely ones.
But most of the time you need to convert.
More details on how to connect the PC to the audio can be found here.

Configuring

Today you can get a decent sound right out of the box.
However, changing a couple of settings using the sound panel of your PC can make a difference.
In general any kind of DSP will alter the bits.
This is considered bad, there is a strong purist tendency among audiophiles and bit perfect is one of the holy grails.
However, DSP can have benefits like active crossover, room- and placements corrections, etc.

 

All operating system are capable of sample rate conversion. This in general won’t improve the sound as it is not a trivial job to write a good one.
The K-mixer in XP is an infamous example.

Here you will find couple of tips and links to configure XP, Vista, Win7 and OSX.

If you use a USB DAC there are some simple settings you should check.

Ripping

Transferring the content of a CD to the hard disk.
Often this is combined with tagging as the ripper looks up the CD in a online database.

Not all rippers support tagging of all audio formats. WAV is a well known example.
Most of the time you won’t notice this as what you see on the screen is the content of the library (a database with meta info). The moment you move your audio files to another device you will notice that all information is gone.
A typical case of What You See Is Not What You Get.

In general ripping requires 2 stages

• ripping your entire CD collection
• re-ripping it because now you have found out how to do it

Make your homework first before you embark on ripping a substantial amount.
You have to choose an audio format. As a hundred buys you a terabyte of storage today, I wouldn't settle for anything less than a lossless format.

You have to choose your ripping software. EAC and dbPoweramp are the big names but popular players like WMP or iTunes can do the job too (Set them to secure mode)
The typical audiophile worry “Is my rip bit perfect”?

Audio format

If you start to rip, you have to decide what format you are going to use.
You have done your homework, only the purest format will do: WAV.
You might be in for a nasty surprise one day.

 

I suggest ripping to a lossless format, storage is cheap today.
Choose one

• lossless
• supported by your media player
• supports tagging

Observe: lossless is lossless, there is plenty of software enabling you to convert from one lossless format to another. Choosing a specific lossless format won’t tie your hands.

Streaming

An alternative to a PC is a streaming audio player.
In essence it is a striped down PC connected to the home network.
One of the big advantages is that they don’t contain any moving part, no fan, no HD so quiet by design.
Most of them come with analogue out (RCA) and digital out (Toslink/coax) so connecting them to your audio is not a problem.
Most of them are UPnP/DLNA compliant. This is the industry standard.
A couple of pro and cons can be found here

 

Probably you have already a couple of streaming devices in your home.
Vista/WMP11 is UPnP compliant
Often a NAS has an UPnP compliant server on board
Your new TV is probably networked and UPnP compliant.
They are all able to stream.

 

If you want to try Squeezebox, go to the Logitech website, download Squeezecenter and Softsqueeze and you can try if for free.

Experiments

Once you are familiar with the concept of computer based audio, you can start experimenting a little. This is one of the assets of computer based audio, you can download a lot of stuff for free and try it.

Audio formats

There is a lot of talk about differences in sound quality between audio formats.
Typical claims are:

• WAV is superior to any lossless compression format
• Apple lossless is flawed
• High bit rate MP3 is indistinguishable from CD quality
• AAC is much better then MP3
• Only true high res at 24/176 will do
• Etc.

You can simply try it yourself by ripping a couple of tracks to various formats and do a blind listening test. As lossy codecs are pretty good today, you might have a look at samples putting them really to test.

Mixer

All major operating systems have a mixer.
If you play multiple audio streams, they must be converted to the same sample rate as sound cards are not able to play at different sample rates at the same time.
If you play a single audio stream, its sample rate must match one supported by the hard ware.
Simple sound cards only play at 48 kHz. If you play a CD (44.1 kHz), sample rate conversion must be applied.
Sample rate conversion is complex, the one supplied by your operating system at its best does a fair job but not top.

K-mixer (XP) does a very bad job. Likewise older versions of OSX

A simple way to avoid sample rate conversion is to set the sample rate of the OS to the sample rate of your audio, in general 44.1 (CD).
Of course, your hardware (sound card) must support this.

Another option is to bypass the mixer.
ASIO on Win XP or WASAPI on Vista/Win7 allows for straight communication with the sound card bypassing the audio engine.
See Foobar on how to compare DS en WASAP.

Resolution

Redbook audio (CD) is 16/44.1 (16 bits samples with a 44.1 kHz sample rate).
It is the only format a true CD player can play.
Recording in general is done using 24 bits and sample rates ranging from 88.2, 96, 176.4 to 192 kHz.
As PC audio is becoming popular, you can get music in higher resolutions.

Of course, you can only play high resolution audio if your hardware supports this.
If not, you can often play them but they will be automatically down sampled to a rate supported by your hardware.
If you are looking for new hardware, support of 24/96 is a minimum if you want to go the high res way.