In Reply to: help with components for music server... posted by Ron on September 29, 2006 at 05:24:12:
OK, so here's my 2cents.
I have been running an epia SP13000 in a fanless case from TranquilPC (T2)- The case is quite nice looking, and totally silent. I have a 200GB Samsung spinpoint drive in it that is the only noise generated, and it is barely audible. (unless the optical drive is active...)The Epia is a little low on horsepower, but it can handle everything I've wanted to do. It wasn't very good at recording TV over USB while watching at the same time, so I gave that up as I mostly wanted it for music. Meedio, sage, and Xlobby have all run fine on it in XP. Myth was OK too, but didn't have what I wanted.
It works great for audio. I've never tried upsampling,but that shouldn't require as much horsepower as video processing. I just play FLAC out via an M-Audio Firewire interface, to a Lavry DA-10. It sounds very good. If I connect the digital to my Pre/Pro, the HDCD decoding even works on the FLAC that were ripped from encoded CD's. (so it would appear all the bits are getting out in good shape ;-)
The on-board audio is crap, but that's fixable. Otherwise the Epia boards are pretty darn good.
Ah, one thing to note was that using a USB audio device ate up noticable CPU bandwidth, so stick with Firewire or PCI if you go the epia route...
BTW, I might sell it soon to upgade to a video capable machine. email me if you're interested, or if you just have any questions...
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Follow Ups
- Re: help with components for music server... - eclectic2k 22:18:25 09/29/06 (0)