can i improve my laptop for computer based music???

[stpierre76]

I have an older asus laptop laying around unused.I was wondering if i could strip it out completely and reload any hardware/software that would make it a very good dedicated computer for me to rip, store and play all my music.I ll be using j rivers in flac files and music sent to dac via usb or spdif(my dac has both).Could anybody point me in the right direction as where to start, what sound card, hardrive, software....................

sincerely yours froggy

 

[Anonymous]

you have most of teh main improvements already lined up so tahts a great starting point, if you are going to use the pc as storage/transport only then many tweaks associated with sound cards becoem irrelevant as you are outputting straight into the DAC and allowing that to work its magic, imho any prior processing of audio files (by the laptop) shoudl be kept to a minimum.

what you are trying to do here sounds very similar to using a server for content, i store all my content on a WHS without sound card and i only use the on board graphics card so i can see whats on teh screen for pc maintenace/operation purposes, it seems you will be using this laptop to control music too but you wont need fancy graphics cards to do this,

i think your limiting factor w.r.t sound quality is likely to be the interface from laptop to DAC, spdif is usually able to support a higher bitrate than many USB interfaces so id go with that if you can but not many laptops have this feature so you may be limited to USB.

All pc's benefit from a rebuild once in a while, i rebuild mine every 18 months due to the inefficinet ways windows works), the benefits here are around usability. when you rebuild partition the hard drives so you have OS on one logical drive and content on another, this gives you protection should you have a OS problem, you may also consider another partition for back up purposes, this is as fail safe as you can go with 1 physical hard drive (configured in 3 logical partitions)

hopefully that clears some of the fog

 

[stpierre76]

hi mate

thanks for reply and the advoce.ve been googling sound card and heaps of other stuff in regards to this subject.thanks for clearing a few things.

 

[PJPro]

Take a look at my useful threads link (in my signature). There's a thread on optimising windows audio playback which you might be interested in.

 

[SteveR750]

PJPro:Take a look at my useful threads link (in my signature). There's a thread on optimising windows audio playback which you might be interested in.

PJ - still no W7 advice?

 

[stpierre76]

thanks mate, i appreciate your effort and relevant topics..

 

[PJPro]

SteveR750:
PJPro:Take a look at my useful threads link (in my signature). There's a thread on optimising windows audio playback which you might be interested in.

PJ - still no W7 advice?

Err, no. I haven't got W7 yet....still on Vista and likely to be for some time to come.

 

[PJPro]

stpierre76:thanks mate, i appreciate your effort and relevant topics..
No problem. Happy to help.

 

[SteveR750]

PJPro:SteveR750:
PJPro:Take a look at my useful threads link (in my signature). There's a thread on optimising windows audio playback which you might be interested in.

PJ - still no W7 advice?

Err, no. I haven't got W7 yet....still on Vista and likely to be for some time to come.

I think W7 and Vista are similar, more so than XP->Vista?

Do you know what the difference is between WASAPI and WASAPI Event Style? According to J River guys, the latter allows the DAC to pull the data rather than the soundcard to push it. I am using MC15 in this mode, and it appears to work fine.