addissimo

What exactly is the point of this?

If you're going for a price break or something, you're crazy. Just get a nice core 2 duo, or even a core duo mobile processor and you'll have more than enough computing power to run whatever software you need.

I've got a 2ghz core duo sony sz140 with a gig of ram and Its much faster than my 3ghz pentium 4 desktop. I use it as my primary photoshop/solidworks/battlefield 2 computer. I'd just stick to 1 computer- you'll save money and headaches.

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addissimo

red-

have you soldered your rca plugs on yet? I'm curious how it turned out.


awesome job on all of this everybody! I wish I wasn't so busy with school/work/restoring so I could actually play with a car pc... Driving around without a stereo is getting kind of old though... so I might be jumping on the bandwagon sooner than I think....


-Addis

RedGTiVR6

We've soldered the sockets to the leads, but not to the sound card yet.

You can check my work log thread here: http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/worklogs/92334-new-carpc-one-tuning.html

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turbocad6

the price has nothing to do with what I want to do... even if I do go with a core 2 duo I will still have 2 PC's in this car I think... long story really, but I wasn't trying to do it cheaply

OK, so I've done a bunch of research, I am convinced that a PC system can surpass even an f1 status system, & assuming the software is all in place & the tunning is done, it seems to me the weakest link, & therefore the most important thing, is the actual d/a conversion....

once bit perfect is in place & aiso drivers are used, the digital end is in check... assuming the vst plug ins are used correctly, the digital end can be considered "perfect"... the conversion to analog is the real make it or break it point.... using just a good sound card like the motu could be a good option, but considering the amount of outputs it has, & the price, I'm assuming there could be much room for improvement there...

my research is showing me that the hot ticket is to use a dac, either spdif-dac or a usb dac.... spdif seems to suffer more jitter but it seems few usb dac's use a word clock, so wouldn't jitter still be an issue?

now most high end usb or fire wire dac's are just 2 channel.... I'd need at least a 3 way system, so that's 3 usb dac's... can that be done? is there any significant reason why this would not be a good approach?

now the next thing is, how good is good enough, I mean I'm finding really good stuff out there... the apogee mini-dac is a good example at $800 for 2 channel's, but I'm finding other stuff that makes even that look entry level, like the wavelength brick at $1,750 for 2 channels.... now that's no where near the really high end , there are actually dac's that are 2 channel & 10 times that much, also shown at that link, but there are others too..


so how good is good enough?.... I guess everyone will have to decide for themselves how good is good enough, but these tube dac's from wavelength just seem soooo sweet, but to do 3 of them is just a bit too extreme, so the more research I do the more I confuse myself as to the best way to do this.... the alpine f1 is easy compared to this, just buy it & it's done, & buy comparison can actually be the cheapest option compared to where this could go, this on the PC just has no limits to how high you could go, & the dac seems to be the key... maybe I'm just overthinking this & should just settle for something simple like the motu...

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Abmolech

External Dacs generally suffer from jitter, the exception is if they have on board clocking facilities. Spdif signal rates are compressed transfer, (DTS excepted), I would be more concerned at this loss than any "advantage" an external DAC could offer.

Digitals main advantage is the ability to reject noise, unless this is a problem I would recommend an internal sound card. I suggest the weakest link in a car is not the Dac quality in the vast majority of situations. Have a think about about the limitations of CD recording, and ask yourself what is the minimum DAC resolution before the CD format is exceeded. DVD-A and SACD you may have a some theoretical advantage.

turbocad6

yeah, but theres more to the overall sound quality than the bit rate, I mean that's why burr brown op amps & black caps are used... the power supply is also critical.... I've always loved the warm sound of a tube amp, by using a tube dac I could have a tube preamp that would give many of the advantages of a tube amp.... that sounds like a cool idea too....

& what about upsampling... is there an advantage to have an upsampling to 192?... there seems to be mixed opinions on that...

I do realize the limitations of cd 's, but wouldn't different solutions make different sounding interpitations of the same cd..., even at the same bit rate?...

I can't belive that a $300 soundcard is going to sound the same as a $1,800 dac...

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Abmolech

Probably a bit off topic.



Possibly slightly different, but I am trying to give some context. There are many software programs that use sound cards to measure power amplifier distortion, speaker parameters etc. It would seem ludicrous that such an imprecise device, such as a cheap sound card, could measure with any useful accuracy, however they are able to just that. (Yes i know sound cards use ADC which is often lower specification the the DAC's)

Point.

Those cheap sound cards have much less distortion factors than power amplifiers, drivers and a host of other electronic goodies in the transport. Better DAC's may be desirable feature, but they are not the weak link.

durwood

A VERY VERY good point. The other thing to remember is that what sounds good is purely subjective. Always will be. The gains of upgrading to expensive bragging rights equipment is usually not cost effective. It's liek going with the fastest processor on the market. Sure you could do a gajillion things at once or have the fastest benchmarks, but at what cost and will you notice it? Everyone has to go with what works for them. The cool thing is that there are a couple ways to do all this stuff now. How crazy to do you want to get? (that should be a certain someone(s) quote in their sig)

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RedGTiVR6

I like to push the envelope. I like to go that extra step above and beyond.

To me, it's worth the extra money sometimes....

See, the comment about the F#1 reminds me that I too considered the F#1 for my current system. But at $2,000 I wasn't so sure...at this point, I set forth a limit for myself for $2,000.

Come to find out...I'm WAYYYYYYYYYY under that price. Like a good $1,600 below...

Mind you, that's taking into account that I would have a PC in the car anyways.

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durwood

hehe.

Goes to show you don't need to spend a fortune to get awesome sound. I don't know how many times I heard people say SQ is SO expensive, I just don't have the money to do it. My response is...only if you let it be.

I wish I could convince everyone to do SQ and show them it could be done inexpensively.

I still like your extra attention to detail though RED

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crabbdaddy

turbo..

random thoughts....
you hit the nail on the head....300 vs 1800... ton of variables in each component.... so who knows.. but your ears... if you have been lurking around in the diyaudio.com forum in the digital section .. you can see all the different opinions and hardware kits etc. i too love the tube sound... im a tube head ... i have been researching how to get that tube sound and mate it to the digital world for home and car ... in a cost effective way.... at the moment i am researching on building my own tube preamp to go between my H701 processor and my alpine amps... if that sounds ok ill go from there ... and try to go yours and red's route... but im not there yet... but, the bottom line is your ears... we all can get caught up in the numbers... wether its specs on an op amp or cost... but its your ears that matter. a hard thing for me to do being a tech geek is letting what i hear decide.... not that i just spent 300 bucks on a processor . .and want to hear an improvement.... listen for a week and if it doesnt sound good to me then ... move on... but sometimes its a expensive process..

so after a long rant... i feel for ya.. im trying to figure out the same questions just a different route.

another note... have you looked at some of the threads on modifying the sound card opamp or straight out of the DAC to a tube conversion? some dac's can do it...


long rant .. too much coffee...

fun reading..... http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showt...452&highlight=

and more...

http://www.tubecad.com/2006/08/blog0075.htm

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96 cobra
suspension: MM CC plates, H&R super sport, bilsteins, steeda:bump steer kit, X2's, moly SFC's, triax shifter. MGW handle, cobra knob. Audio:RUX-C701, PXA-H701, MRV-F545, MRD-M1005, SIR-SC-H1, DMHD1000, Polk/Momo MMC6500, MM2104

cougarz

Hello to everybody:
I'm actually building this audiophile oriented project:
roadrunner->winamp->spdif external loop (out->in), ->console (voxengo phase shift and voxengo audio delay, waves parametric EQ) output to RME fireface 400 with ASIO drivers->brax x2400+x2000, 3 way front (triamplified active), 1 subwf.
Computer is a N4L-VM DH mb with T5500 core 2 duo and 512 mb DDR2, M2-atx.
I like streetdeck appereance but maybe is not still good for audio quality and seems not support VST plugin while winamp and foobar do so i will go for RR.
I have a friend of mine that already finished a similar system. He's using 2 mac mini with core solo processor, one is used for source and the other as a processor. They communicate by toslink optical s/pdif connection, he has a MOTU TRAVELER soundcard. I guess a single powerful pc is good enough, less complicated and maybe more performing. RME seems to have better D/A converters than MOTU. This guy had before a F1 status pxa-h990 and stated that now sound quality is far better!!!
I already made soma tests, everything seems working good. RME has an internal loopback feature so i don't need anymore to loop spdif. Im using both winamp and foobar with kernel streaming bit-perfect drivers. i use a contour shuttle to control the music.

durwood

Awesome! Welcome to the club. TurboCad would be jealous of the dual PC setup. That is the route he was planning on taking. BTW, since your buddy had an F1 status setup, how would he compare the computer with the audio processing to the F1? Better? Worse? the same? Just curious.

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turbocad6

not was.... is

still deciding the hardware end.... I fully expect it to be better than the f1, otherwise why even bother....

a tube preamp would just give this the extra edge to just help make this that much better than the f1 to me, but big $$$$

I guess I could just do it with a regular motu or something, & when it's all done & working nicely, I could then switch out to different dac's or whatever so I can actually see the difference (yeah, see with my ears)

I do realize that for the extra ounce of improvement could take a big difference in money, & that most times the extra little improvement isn't woth the extra bucks to many, but I guess the same could be said for beriliums or focals or most other high end equiptment... I mean really how much better is stuff like this than average stuff? it might be 10% better, but cost 500% more... but, to some it's worth it...

I go by, if you try to make it perfect, you'll wind up with something real good, if you shoot for real good you'll wind up with something good, & if you just shoot for good, you'll be lucky to wind up with average

also, cool link crabbdaddy... I'm looking into that too

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MY NEWEST INSTALL:modded infiniti fx with big screen

first windows carpc install........my liquid cooled LVDS screen :D

RedGTiVR6

Because this can be a lot cheaper than the F#1...


That's kind of what I'm planning on.


absolutely!

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