Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Building your own Audio Server

I'm seriously thinking about building my own Audio Server. Hard disks are so cheap that you can store as native WAV.

Anyone got any experience of building / buying?

What audio cards are good, I guess if all your doing is passing PCM you need a really good electrical connection and let the processor (Meridian) do what it does best.

Martin.

Hey Mate,

Just done exactly that - raid 5 server for the media server then a separate htpc to deliver the sound into the 861. Sound card is RME digipad ~250 quid but it seems like any old card will do - the 861 will sort it out.

Use Media Center for music library and the dvdlobby / musiclobby suite for a very nice front end. I ripped all my albums in lossless APE format (roughly half WAV size). Supports better tagging too.


Chris

Hi Martin - does the digi pad have co-ax out, or just optical?

IIRC Stacey (Spears) said that Meridian recommend the Digital Audio CardDeluxe as being a good soundcard. Who knows, they might even have written an MHR driver for it (wishful thinking)?

Mark

Hey fishma,

It has both and coax in to boot.

Chris

Greetings,

I build a PC for both my Audio and DVD's very inexpensivly...

Any P4 with a few 120Gig HD's works great. I used M-Audio's card, as it has Coax Dig out and works perfectly with the 568.2. I use Windows Media Player so I get CoverArt on the Screen. For the DVD's I rip them with DVD Decrypter and have a ATI 9000 Card that send 540p to my display....

Scott

I've seen martins DVD collection - if he wants to rip those, this filled with 250 gig drives
http://www.rackmountmart.com/rm5u/rm5004.htm

would be more useful!

Chris

[This message has been edited by phcjpp (edited 12-18-2003).]

An alternative to a PC directly connected through a sound card might be a network box like this one .

It can send files encoded in MP3, WAV, aac, ogg vorbis, FLAC, etc. from a server through a digital (coax or TOS) or analog feed to a processor.
And it's not much more expensive than a top quality sound card.

Regards,
Mark

I have been interested in the idea of a Sound Server for a couple years now. I started with a turtle beach device that hooked up to my network and streamed audio out a digital coax. The specs were great, it did what was advertised but it did not work in an everyday setting. The interface was very slow; it slowed down network traffic so that while playing music you really noticed the delay and the web interface was very slow.

I then bought an IMerge S1000 for ~$2,000. This could store .WAV files and solved the network traffic problem. I did not like the interface again and I quickly filled the 80G drive. This solution might have been workable if all of my CD`s would fit on in the unit. This unit did not support lossless compression. I then bought the IMerge S2000. This had 160G but was so loud that I sent it back to the manufacturer. They said that the load humming was normal. I guess it has two disk drives and a fan. If I had the music turned up load enough I could not hear the humming. But I would always turn the unit off when not in use so that I would not be distracted by the load humming. Then I would have to boot the unit up every time I wanted to listen to music. I gave up and sold it.

I am now interested in a Window XP Media Center PC. Gateway has a unit that looks like an audio component (I don`t like the color). I am interested in buying one of these and adding or changing the audio card to support the three digital outs that are needed for the G68 to support DVD-A surround. That way I could use this device and watch DVD`s using the DVI out, I would get a digital signal directly off the disk and out the DVI that would be the same as any other player. For movies the current digital out would just pass the Dolby or DTS signal to the G68. If I could get a better sound card that would pass 5.1 channel 48k/24bit audio to the G68 using 3 digital coax outputs the job would be finished. I would get the same picture as a G91 (DVI) and the same sound bits. I would also get a Sound Server that is hooked up to the internet for streaming audio.

I will add that I am a firm believer that as long as we have non-defective devices that one digital signal is the same as another. I don`t want to start a separate discussion, but that is my belief until otherwise shown.

sedluk,
There's a lot of theory (and some practical results) that show that different digital sources (where transmission is in realtime) have different behaviours. At the end of the day though, if you can't hear/see it, it's a moot point. That and people don't know what to listen for, and I'm firmly opposed to sending people off to listen for flaws in their kit - it's supposed to bring entertainment!

Mark

I have had a number of digital sources hooked up to my DSP8000`s, I was never able to tell the difference with CD playback. This is a credit to the upsampling and the smoothing that happens inside a Meridian speaker. I have ordered a G68, and then I will have one more Meridian device to smooth out the bits. I think I could hear the difference between a DVD-A disk played on my Meridian 598 at 96k/24bit in stereo and a high end Sony device that had to down sample to 48k/24bit because of the lack of encryption. The difference was very small and the music sounded very good at 48k/24bit. This would be the only down side with a Media Center design, and one that I could live with given how often I listen to DVD-A. I think people trust their eyes more than their ears, have your local high end video store demo your favorite TV with two very differently priced DVD players with DVI out. Try a blind test to see if you can tell the difference, most people will believe there eyes.

Now just because I have not been able to hear the difference between different digital sources does not mean that I will buy the cheapest. It may be that the reason that I have not heard the difference is that I do try to buy very good equipment. I am still looking for a high quality audio card for my next attempt at a Sound Server / Media Center. If anyone has any idea`s let me know. I am willing to spend $1,000 or more, but I want something that is configurable so that once it is installed I get to take full advantage of the digital output without any hassles. I would like an audio card that has three digital coax outputs that will feed into a G68: L/R, SURR, C/LFE.

Chris,

Your right my DVD collection has grown somewhat more, I try to be selective, but it still grows and grows.

I'm not looking to replace my 596 and would be very surprised if a HTPC could!

Martin