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Computer setup

steamboat

Member
Hello all.
I have built up a fanless pc to store and play music from but I understand the windows platform dose bad things to music playback. Can any one point me to a good source of info about the topic and how to sort my system out.
Many thanks
 
Are you asking how to use Linux instead of Windows? How are you playing your music because the OS will be irrelevant in some circumstances?
 
All operating systems can do bad things to music playback. This is a consequence of being general purpose. You have a user interface, it offers a volume control, bad things. You have multiple applications, they all want to play sounds which need to be mixed together and may be at differing sample rates, bad things.

Etc.

Windows and Linux both have ways to avoid this. It depends rather what your intended usage will be.

Paul
 
Hello all.
I have built up a fanless pc to store and play music from but I understand the windows platform dose bad things to music playback. Can any one point me to a good source of info about the topic and how to sort my system out.
Many thanks

Windows can *potentially* do bad things, which is why WASAPI and ASIO exist, to ensure bit-perfect transmission of files. You'll want to be using one of these if using USB...

Assume you are using a USB DAC with it? Or a USB to SPDIF interface?

Don't read into the rubbish about how different operating systems or software sound different, it's all about proper configuration.
 
Hello all.
I have built up a fanless pc to store and play music from but I understand the windows platform dose bad things to music playback. Can any one point me to a good source of info about the topic and how to sort my system out.
Many thanks

So the first question is: Is what you have built working? As in does it play the music you want?

If so, is there anything obviously wrong with the playback?

Si if it does play, it is question of what you may want to try to optimise playback further. The next question then - what are using for playback? Something like foobar already comes with options to 'improve' playback.
 
to the O/P what is wrong with Windows?

two NUCs here, one Windows, one Linux, both using the same USB DAC, no difference in music reproduction. Just let Win10 do its thing and enjoy your music.
 
Windows is fine ;)
Just use JRivermedia with WASAPI or ASIO audio output and it disables the WMP features. I also use asynchronous USB with a driver for my M2tech DAC this USB output sounds better than Coax or optical in my system and gives me 32bit/ 384
I tried linux on this when I fist built it but coudnt get away with it and it sound poor, changing to windows was a breath of fresh air and sounds superb.

Alan
 
Thanks everyone. I have a windows7 based computer running through a DDDAC which for anyone that doesn't know is asynchronous usb. The software is foobar 2000. I tried linux but realised after installing it the wave io to i2s so t support linux.
 
Thanks everyone. I have a windows7 based computer running through a DDDAC which for anyone that doesn't know is asynchronous usb. The software is foobar 2000. I tried linux but realised after installing it the wave io to i2s so t support linux.

Get this component & you are set: http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_out_wasapi

Bit perfect, and your WaveIO handles the clocking.

"WASAPI is a new audio output method introduced in Windows Vista; among other things, it provides an exclusive mode that allows applications to take full control over soundcard's resources (muting any sounds played by other applications) and play unaltered bitstream without passing it through the Windows mixer."
 
I understand the windows platform dose bad things to music playback.

Those bad things were done by Windows XP. Vista onwards are fine. They are both dead now anyway.

The way to get round it in those XP days was to use Foobar2000, which made a very noticeable improvement.
 
I'm using Foobar2000 on the PC downstairs (Windows 10) and the laptop too (Windows 7)and both sound fine to me.
 
I've used XBMC or Kodi as its now called. I thought it sounded and looked great. It has so many different skins too!
 


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