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Ok, so I am getting somewhat serious about computer audio. Using a late model Toshiba laptop running Windows 7. I am using cPlay (but left Foobar installed). Right now the output is going through AISO4ALL and out the mini jack of the PC to my headphone amp and then to my phones. Files are all FLAC either from cd's or some 24/96 files.
So two questions. I know I could increase quality by getting an external DAC, better amp and better cans. Might at some point, but should I do anything to optimize the OS to improve playback? I have disabled the screensaver and have put anti virus on hold...that's about it so far...sounds really good with no dropouts. Should I be looking at anything else?
Second question. I can see I will run out of disk space real soon! I'm guessing I want to stay away from an external usb drive in case I buy a usb dac. What is a perfered external firewire or esata drive? Once again...anything special to configure it? Thanks for all of the help I've been getting...its great!
Kevin
Follow Ups:
There is no compelling difference I can think of for eSata vs Firewire for audio. eSata may have a slight speed edge, but audio doesn't require a lot of throughput. I'd get whichever you can get most cheaply.
I think that the best bang for the buck would come from DAC or headphone upgrades. No harm in tweaking the OS a bit, but I'd be surprised if you could get night and day differences out of it, once you are already doing bitperfect playback.
The onboard DAC in the Toshiba is probably pretty good, but the onboard preamps can be hit or miss. If they sound nice, I'd try out a headphone upgrade first. Lots of good headphones out their from AKG, Grado, and Sennheiser. For my smallish/average head, AKG makes the most comfortable ones to wear.
Otherwise, I'd try out the DAC first. I use an EMU 0404 USB, which is a good value. It sounds great (to me), and the built-in headphone amp is good as well. Good enough I unplugged my Earmax after awhile.
Came across this: http://www.focusrite.com/products/audio_interfaces/saffire_6_usb/specifications/
Never used it myself, but looks like it has possibilities.
just kidding....
kind of...
:-)
"I'm not locked in here with you, You're locked in here with ME"
> If you're running Windows 7 on a Toshiba,
> you're not getting serious
What's your point? My Toshiba P4 based laptop from 2003 stills runs fine. It doesn't have enough memory or processor speed to be pleasant to use now but it won't die. My newer CULV Toshiba laptop (low voltage, low power drain) works fine with Win 7. I use it to control music playback from my listening chair.
As far as I am concerned, Toshiba laptops are a reasonable candidate if you are shopping for a Windows laptop.
Bill
> Might at some point, but should I do anything to optimize the OS to
> improve playback? I have disabled the screensaver and have put anti
> virus on hold...that's about it so far...
> sounds really good with no dropouts.
> Should I be looking at anything else?
These things can cause a storm of background CPU and disk I/O activity
ant-virus (the worst offender)
Windows Update
System checkpoints
hard drive indexing (for search)
The BlackViper site has some good material. Read it for understanding before you apply any of the changes that site suggests.
Getting your own understanding of what's happening in your PC is a good idea. Use the task manager to see how CPU and disk I/O resources are being used. Start the task monitor after you start playing a music file and watch what's happening for awhile. Get dpclat.exe (latency checker) and run it for a awhile to see how much other software is affecting latency in servi9cing audio output at the driver level.
> I'm guessing I want to stay away from an external usb drive
> in case I buy a usb dac.
> What is a perfered external firewire or esata drive?
What ports (connectors) does your laptop have? Fewer and fewer Windows laptops have a firewire port. eSata ports aren't that common on laptops.
Does your laptop have a slot for an ExpressCard expansion card? If so, you could buy a card that has eSATA, USB or firewire connectors. (a USB DAC on a separate controller won't have the same conflicts with devices on the laptop's native USB ports.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExpressCard
Unfortunately, the trend to smaller, lighter laptops has reduced the number of new laptops with ExpressCard slots.
USB external drives are very common and pricing is very competitive between vendors. There are fewer choices for firewire drives and prices are usually higher. Same for eSATA drives.
If you don't have eSATA or firewire ports and no slot on an Expresscard, don't despair. You may be able to experiment with connecting a USB drive and a USB DAC to your laptop's USB ports in a way that minimizes conflicts. Presto and others have written about ways to identify and fix such conflicts.
Bill
My experience with two different anti-virus programs is that it was not sufficient to put these "on-hold". Even after disabling all of the features from the user interface they were still screwing up the system in subtle ways (and in some cases not so subtle ways). As a result, it was necessary to completely uninstall both of these products before I had a stable computer audio system.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
> My experience with two different anti-virus programs is that
> it was not sufficient to put these "on-hold".
I've had experience with three A/V programs in recent years. In all cases, turning off active scanning (called "real time protection" in Microsoft Security Essentials) made the A/V much more livable on my personal PC and on my travel laptop. Turning off automatic updates may be necessary on a PC with a slow processor or slow hard drives. In my setup, incoming email is still scanned and I can ask the A/V to scan a file on my hard disk.
I don't have A/V software installed on my dedicated MusicPC. I don't surf the net from that PC, I don't share any hard drives on my LAN and I have a hardware firewall between my PCs and the internet. I have not had any problems with viruses on that dedicated MusicPC.
When it first came out, Microsoft Security Essentials did interact with my Google browser and Adobe s/w in strange ways. I haven't been conscious of any strange interactions for some time.
Bill
OK, so I downloaded the DCP latency Checker and removed the last item that was causing problems...all green across the board now. I have been playing a bunch of CD ripped FLAC files as well as some 24/96 files from HDTracks. Out of curiousity, I downloaded a single track in 24/192. I get an out of memory error trying to play it in Foobar, but cPlay handles it fine. So my question, is it a config issue in Foobar (something I missed) or does Foobar just require more resources to play bigger files then cPlay? I guess a secound question would be is most of the HDTracks stuff in in 24/192 just upsampled or is it truely mastered at that level? Thanks again for all of the great help. I'm really having some fun with this and enjoying the music in ways I have not in years.
Kevin
It's not been my experience that there were memory problems with Foobar2000, unless it was configured for memory playback. cPlay will use an amount of memory that will be adjusted according to system configuration. I would suggest using the Windows Task Manager to look at the various processes and see how memory is being used up. Sometimes it will be another application that has eaten a lot of memory, which can happen if there is a bug. If this happens it is often possible to recover by logging out and logging back in, or at worst by rebooting.
The 24/192 files that I have were sourced in different ways, you have to look on a case by case basis. None that I have were upsampled from Redbook, but many came from analog master tapes and one came from an analog mixdown of multiple tracks which had originally been recorded in 96/24. In any event, what matters is how a recording sounds, not its genesis. My experiences has been that most of the 192 material has better sound than the 96 kHz material and the 88.2 material (which generally came from a DSD conversion). However, whether it is worth a large price premium is debatable and depends on one's personal finances.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Hmmm, don't think its another program getting the memory as I can end Foobar and play the file in cPlay right away. The actual error message Foobar gives me is:
Unrecoverable playback error: Not enough storage is available to complete this operation. (0x8007000E)
Not sure this is it, but here is a link that seems to solve the problem
No one here remembers the bending of our minds
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Dawnrazor:
I got excited because that was exactly my issue. Buffer was set to 1000, which was the default. I tried moving it up yo 1500 but no luck. I has something to do with the WASAPI/Realtek drivers because when I pick ASIO4ALL, it plays fine...weird.
Fixed it! Had to go smaller with the buffer. Set it to 740 and it works just fine.
nt.
No one here remembers the bending of our minds
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I use the headphone out on my Vista laptop and are very pleased. Don't have any experience with USB DACS but sounds like you are getting good advice.
I use Cplay/ASIO4ALL or FOOBAR/WASAPI. They both sound wonderful, but just a little different. The most important setting for any player that doesn't use WASAPI is the default system sample rate.
Hmmm, guess I have to go get the machine to give you an idea of how to do it, I'm typing this on an iPad which by the way sounds terrible, especially in comparison to the laptop.
If you have the speaker icon shown Rt. click it then choose: Playback devices/speakers/Advanced and you will see the 'Default Format' box. You can also get there with the control panel and patience. Set it to match whatever your source is. This is especially important for high res data like 24/96 downloads from HD tracks. Although both Cplay and the OS would be happy to do an SRC for you and they both do a rather good job, neither sound as good as the real McCoy. Unfortunately windows does not support 88.2KS/s so you are stuck doing a sample rate conversion or decimation with that material. They still sound good, but not great.
Beyond that you can play with the power management settings to keep the CPU clock from dynamically changing. However it's unpredictable. It can make WMP sound a lot better, but other stuff may sound worse, I've concluded it's not worth the bother in the big scheme of things.
Good luck, I've found the results, especially with Cplay and good headphones can be mesmerizing.
Rick
Hi Kev,I second Ryelands on his suggestion too first see how much sound quality you can get from your onboard audio chipset. Using my simple Dell Studio 1558 labtop (I-core 3) with an onboard ATI sound chip (which is probably integrated on the onboard HD ATI graphics card), it sounds surprisingly good too me when used with Foobar + WASAPI and being outputted too a pair of high quality Beyerdynamic in-ears.
cPlay is developed with use of real ASIO drivers in mind and being used in a cMP environment.
So, are you really sure that cPlay + asio4all sounds better on your Toshiba/WIN7 than when using Foobar + WASAPI on your Toshiba/WIN7?
Have you compared both these combinations?
Be sure too disable ‘replayGain’ in Foobar as it easily can be heard how it ruins sound quality.
It would come too me as a surprise if cPlay +asio4all would outperform Foobar + WASAPI on a Toshiba/WIN7 labtop.Optimizing WIN7.
Before optimizing WIN7, I suggest you first download DCP latency Checker on www.thesycon.de. And check if your Toshiba/WIN7 combination has any latency problems. If not, don’t bother tuning WIN7 on your labtop.
Although I would recommend too ‘Disable Visual Effects’ and choose ‘Adjust for best performance’
And may be also disable ‘CDROM Autoplay’. regedit > HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > System > CurrentControlSet > Services > Cdrom. Set autorun to 0. This stops WIN7 from frequently polling your DVD drive too check if a new disk is inserted.On choosing an external DAC
The majority of ‘Audiophiles’ chose USB DAC’s. Viewed upon from an ‘audiophile’ perspective, this is somewhat surprising. Although it is very easy too connect an USB DAC too a laptop, other than that, I (still) see no real good reasons too choose an USB DAC anno 2011.
I see some small companies messing around writing there own propriety drivers, implementing different signaling protocols, ect, ect. But it still doesn’t look too me as being a matured technology yet.
In professional audio the widely used standard is: firewire. Over the years firewire technology has matured much more and is used by very respectable professional companies with real research & development budges like: TC Electronic, Prism, Weiss, Focusrite. Also patents have been filed for Dice JetPLL™ jitter reduction technology, ect.
Developments on USB DAC’s may catch up, but because of this sharp contrast in maturity, it is still IN GENERAL a good advice too firmly recommend a firewire DAC from a respectable brand.
Some evidence on this might be that already for many years on a row, firewire DAC’s from TC Electronic and Focusrite are leading the pack on sound quality in the budget segment (200 – 500 euro’s) (see www.soundonsound.com) So don’t dismiss a firewire DAC just because ‘everybody chooses USB’.
When choosing a firewire DAC make sure your labtop has a Texas Instrument firewire chipset (TI chipset). Many computer manufacturers cut corners and cost and install inferior firewire chips.
I expect Toshiba too use TI firewire chips, but check too be sure.
And last but not least: no matter what ‘audiophiles’ tell you, always choose a external DAC which uses real ASIO drivers. For good reasons ASIO is THE professional standard.External drive.
Somewhat strange it might look, but I would advice a NAS as external harddisk. You don’t even need a hub or switch or local area network too connect a NAS too your labtop. A NAS can be directly connected too your labtop. For this your labtop has to have a 1.000 mbps wired LAN Ethernet port and your NAS also has to have a 1.000 mbps wired LAN Ethernet port. If so, you can simply connect both NAS and labtop with a short 1 meter UTP cable. 1.000 mbps ports are auto-sensing by design, so you don’t need too mess around with special UTP path cables or hub or switches, or whatever such.
A NAS combines all quality’s you want from a USB, firewire or eSATA drive.
- It has it’s own power-supply (so it doesn’t lurk of your labtop which reduces sound quality)
- the LAN connection is transformer de-coupled by design, which reduces the flow of electrical noise from the hdd onto your labtop (electrical noise reduces sound quality), etc.
- It doesn’t compete for bandwide on your USB or Firwire connection,
One dis-advantage: you have to know what LAN settings too fill in on the NAS when first setting up the connection between the NAS and your labtop. But you only have too do this once.So too make a long story short:
- carefully compare sound quality of your on board labtop sound chip with an external DAC, before you buy an external DAC. I second Ryelands in that sound quality coming from on board sound chips can be surprisingly good.
- also don’t forget also too audition some firewire DAC’s if you intent too buy an external DAC.
This technology is much more matured, tried and tested. Classic HiFi retailers will probably try too sell you an USB DAC because they sell such DAC’s. But simply walk into the computer music production department of your local music store and you are likely too find a wealth of firewire DAC’s
- and if you are really bravehearted: consider a NAS as your next external HDD. It has potential sound quality benefits over other external HDD’s, that shouldn’t be ignored.Mark
fully optimized cMP2 PC -> ESI Juli@ -> Van den Hul Optocoupler MkII-> Lavry Black DA10 -> XLR Mogami Gold -> Klein & Hummel O300
Edits: 07/08/11
Hey Kev,
My 2 cents is to get a dac that has real asio drivers. Cplay is predicated on asio and asio4all is a limiting factor in this case. I cant think of any examples where someone preferred asio4all to using a real asio driver.
This kind of limits your choice of dacs. Perhaps a firewire is in your future. They ALL support ASIO. Only a few usb ones support asio AFAIK.
In the interim you might see how foobar sounds with the wasapi output. Some say that is better on w7.
Drives should be a different interface than the dac you get. Esata is a good choice.
You could also try cmp. It is the gui for cplay and will help stop some services and help cplay be more of a memory player. It is designed for xp but I THINK it will run on w7. That also improves the control of cplay and you end up only using the scroll wheel mostly.
But a dac with asio is the place to start if you want to get the best out of cplay.
No one here remembers the bending of our minds
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Only a few usb [DACs] support asio AFAIK.
Most USB DACs that don't come with their own drivers work well with the fine (though not cheap) AQVOX/Ploytek ASIO/USB driver.
Should I be looking at anything else?
It's your shout. My suggestion is to start with what you've got and work up from there. There's plenty configuration information on the cMP2 site:
http://www.cicsmemoryplayer.com/
(which can be treated as a canonically strict formula or, as I prefer, as general guidelines to be implemented in whole, in part or a bit at a time) and more on the excellent:
http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/
I'm guessing I want to stay away from an external usb drive in case I buy a usb dac.
I'd suggest that you get the largest "green" (i.e. quiet and plenty fast enough) HDD you can find and afford and pop it into a good USB case. If you later buy a USB DAC and want to move the storage, the USB box will not go to waste. But you can (not always but very often) get excellent results from on-board audio chipsets. Don't let anyone bully you into thinking you have to spend a fortune just to get started. You don't.
The only firm rule that must never be broken is that, unless you really enjoy ripping CDs, you must back up all your data.
Hey Dave,
Thanks for jogging my memory about that usb driver.
That has to be better than asio 4 all.
Your suggestion about a usb enclosure for the hdd is a good one. It gives more flexibility and is often cheaper than an external drive.
No one here remembers the bending of our minds
![]()
Thanks all...lots of great information here. The learning process continues!
Kevin
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