|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
88.108.93.47
In Reply to: fmak, could you list what hardware is in your box? (nt) posted by Tuckers on August 21, 2006 at 12:30:07:
Nothing muchCommell LV675 MB with Pentium M740
Win XP SP3
Lynx AES16 sound card
DVDRW
320GB HD
1GB memoryThat's all with one computer
Asus AV7VT Board, XP2200 CPU,Floppy,DVDRW,512GB memory in another with AC97 Codec and AD chip
HD, Floppy
Follow Ups:
Have you tried turning virtual memory off so there is no paging file?With 1 gig of memory you should be able to do this without problems if you are using standard ripping and playback programs.
WinXP SP3?
No, if you look at the latest update details, they are all listed as SP3. Use Balarc
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=22947
I don't know much about using the mobile processors with desktops. I think it has enough power to handle the loaded programs and DLLs without impacting sound, but I am not sure.The XP 2200 should be good enough as well.
The more processing power a system has, the better it handles the resident programs, DLLs etc, and at a certain point it makes no impact in sound in my experiece.
My minimum configuration I would use for a music computer would be an Athlon 64 or a medium powerful Pentium 4 and a gig of memory. Less than this and things like resident programs and DDLs begin to impact the sound. I don't know why more power sounds better per se, but I do know that our tests confirmed it every time.
I know some people are using low-powered computers with the theory that less should sound better (and of course be quieter), but that is not my experience when doing comparative listening.
You are using Foobar right? Are you using upsampling?
The rationale for using M740 is power combined with fanless heat dissipation. Even a Thorton XP2000 cannot be used fanless!I am upsampling but at 88.2k CPU usage is 10 to 20%. At 44.1k it is less than 4%.
I shall turn virtual memory off, but this will be a while as my other pc is now in a shiphold!
> I don't know much about using the mobile processors with desktops. I think it has enough power to handle the loaded programs and DLLs without impacting sound, but I am not sure.Playing audio is not very processor intensive at all, especially with modern (meaning post-1992) programmable I/O architectures, where the CPU merely tells the sound card to read a chunk of memory and forgets about it for a few thousand clock cycles. Remember, people did multitrack, CD-bitrate audio editing on machines with 1/10th the CPU speed and bandwidth of modern machines.
Besides, the Pentium M series chips are phenomeonally efficient, as they are based on the more streamlined Pentium 3 core. A 1.6GHz M is much faster than an equivalent P4, usually about as fast as a mid 2GHz chip. An M is a great chip for an audio PC. The 4 has a later rev of SSE, which gives you a marginal speed boost with some very floating-point intensive apps, but not enough to compete with the relatively efficient pipelines of the P3.
> My minimum configuration I would use for a music computer would be an Athlon 64 or a medium powerful Pentium 4 and a gig of memory. Less than this and things like resident programs and DDLs begin to impact the sound. I don't know why more power sounds better per se, but I do know that our tests confirmed it every time.
Now that is WAY overkill. If you need that much horsepower to play a 44.1KHz 16-bit WAV without problems, something is REALLY screwed up with your configuration. My 500MHz P3 laptop plays beautifully through a USB DAC.
Ever try playing CD audio from an old PII running DOS? No resident apps running there. It would be an interesting experiment if carried out right.
Just to clarify. Of course you don't need the power I list to play Wav files 'without problems'. Almost any PC will do that when built properly. But in order to build a system that will remain sonically insensitive to loaded DLLs and resident programs, a more powerful system is needed. That's my perspective and what our testing has found.I have not had the pleasure of listening to audio from an old PII running DOS, primarily because I don't know a quality sound card that has drivers for the DOS platform anymore.
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: