GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Didital Things
In the Thread: Why I hate computer playback.

Post Subject: The 'Network Audio Adapter' approachPosted by manisandher on: 4/24/2012

Here's a computer playback approach that I though people might be interested in. In many ways, it's pretty much the leading edge of computer playback as far as I know.

The idea here is to isolate the DAC as much as possible from the PC. All the audio processing is performed in the software player which sits in a 'powerful' and potentially mechanically/electromagnetically noisy PC. The output of the software player is streamed asynchronously via LAN to an ultra-low footprint computer running Linux. The DAC is connected directly to the Linux computer. In my setup, I have a noisy PC sitting in my basement, controlled from my desktop PC using Remote Desktop.

There are a number of challenges in using this approach, not least of which are the small number of Linux drivers available. This limits the DAC choice massively. From my own experience, RME and Dice drivers work fine. Oh and not everyone is comfortable with Linux. I'm certainly not and commissioned a developer to put the necessary Linux OS onto a bootable USB stick for me.

The results are interesting. There is a clarity that I hear that I find very hard to replicate with most PC-direct-to-DAC connections. And the hardware isn't expensive - the Linux computer and necessary OS can come in under the $500 mark.

Mani.

PS. Romy, it didn't feel appropriate to reply directly to your Alex Yakovlev thread. Maybe the real lesson here is that life is way too short to waste time and effort on anything that just doesn't matter.

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site