PC for Multichannel Music Playback - What's your Setup?

[JanBakker]

I was just reading (cause I don't understand) about SSD vs HDD. SSD is faster, but much more expensive. I Guess......

Yes but prices are dropping and for your operating system 128GB is enough and can be bought for under $100,-. It's certainly worth considering. My laptop's hd almost died on me so I installed an ssd drive before I lost everything and it cost me €150,- including a cleaning, just saying...and the improvement in speed was incredible.

 

[GOS]

Yes but prices are dropping and for your operating system 128GB is enough and can be bought for under $100,-. It's certainly worth considering. My laptop's hd almost died on me so I installed an ssd drive before I lost everything and it cost me €150,- including a cleaning, just saying...and the improvement in speed was incredible.

OH! I see, you are talking about buying a SSD and upgrading what you have....got it. I don't think my current laptop can be upgraded....so for sure, I'd be looking at buying something new. But even then, maybe you are suggesting to buy something, then buy a new SSD and install myself??

 

[JanBakker]

OH! I see, you are talking about buying a SSD and upgrading what you have....got it. I don't think my current laptop can be upgraded....so for sure, I'd be looking at buying something new. But even then, maybe you are suggesting to buy something, then buy a new SSD and install myself??

I had it done by my computer store (had to clone my C-drive and wasn't confident enough to do that myself) but in your case I'd buy new with ssd and bluray drive if your laptop can't be upgraded (sorry for the confusion), my case was just to say that ssd doesn't have to be that expensive and the improvement in speed is impressive.

 

[seilerbird]

I was just reading (cause I don't understand) about SSD vs HDD. SSD is faster, but much more expensive. I Guess......

An SSD is simply a solid state hard drive instead of a mechanical one. The advantage is that mechanical hard drives take a long time to move anything from the drive to memory and everything must go into memory before it can be used. An SSD is almost instantaneous and therefore it is like having your entire hard drive in memory.

 

[GOS]

Cool, OK. Still seems I might prefer a tower with good specs, then upgrade SSD....yes, this is on topic because it's all about having my music available and it will be a dedicated system. I could still keep my laptop just in case I like to have something portable.

So, I could get a decent tower ($500). Spend a couple hundred to upgrade to a good SSD. Is that foolish? Is there a better route to take?

 

[DuncanS]

SSDs use higher 'grade' NAND (i.e. fewer internal defects) than that used in USB sticks, and are much faster than HHDs. But they do fail. NAND tends to have a million+ write cycles to a location before they fail, all use error correction to get round this and the inherent read errors, as do HHDs to improve data reliability. I would use SSDs to store programs/applications and get the really fast boot-ups and loads, and HHD for data, backed up elsewhere.

There is a new generation of non-volatile memory (i.e. SSD/NAND like) called 3D XPoint from Intel/Micron which will offer longer lifetimes & even higher speeds, you'll see them in servers first as it is currently too expensive for the domestic market. See https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-and-micron-produce-breakthrough-memory-technology/

 

[GOS]

So, you can have both HDD and SSD in the same computer?

 

[seilerbird]

So, you can have both HDD and SSD in the same computer?

yes you can. And as Duncan says HDDs are better for data like music files. There is no advantage to using an SSD for music files because the only speed you will see is how fast the song loads. The difference is milliseconds and really not noticeable. But the big problem is that SSDs fail too often. I use a Chromebook for most of my computing and it uses an SSD. The system boots up in 8 seconds. The speed is amazing for most tasks but not for playing music.

 

[GOS]

OK, that's good to know. So, since this computer is not only a music storage device....but of course, surfing the net and probably streaming music and or videos....what do I need to get the best performance that way? (let's assume my wifi is rock solid and internet speed excellent)

 

[DuncanS]

I've an Intel i5-650 3.2GHz based PC with 8GB of DDR and HHD, and a dual 1TB Raid NAS. I don't use Wi-Fi for anything other than my work laptop and internet radio as I wired up my entire house with dual Gigabit Ethernet into every room. So I get good fast performance for file streaming etc. I usually use the NAS to listen to the 5.1 FLACs via Ethernet onto my latest Panasonic Blu-ray player which will stream the 5.1 FLACs from the NAS (or PC), £$%%&* amp won't!

The best performance improvement is usually to add as much DDR memory to your PC as you can. If you want fast boot-up and loading then get a dual SSD/HDD PC, storing data on the HDD. But, we all got SSD based laptops about 2 years ago when our company was taken over, I think around 5 SSDs out of 28 laptops have failed in that time - SSDs will improve, but being an early adopter is often frustrating!

OK, that's good to know. So, since this computer is not only a music storage device....but of course, surfing the net and probably streaming music and or videos....what do I need to get the best performance that way? (let's assume my wifi is rock solid and internet speed excellent)

 

[milt]

The key thing to understand about SSDs is that they will all "wear out" at some point.
Write operations wear out SSDs. All of the manufacturers have specs for how many writes the flash memory can handle before dying.
The latest tests I have read where they did constant brute force writes showed the low end at 200TB to a high of 1.1PB.

Music streaming doesn't require SSD level performance but music streaming itself is an entirely read-based operation.
The key to all of this is to have a solid backup strategy. All digital storage has the potential for failure and you need to account for that.

 

[seilerbird]

OK, that's good to know. So, since this computer is not only a music storage device....but of course, surfing the net and probably streaming music and or videos....what do I need to get the best performance that way? (let's assume my wifi is rock solid and internet speed excellent)

My choice would be a one TB HDD for the music and video files and a 128 SSD for the OS and all the programs. But you gotta remember the main bottleneck is Windows. It slows everything down to a crawl.

 

[ssully]

Laptop is not "old". But I would say it's performance is probably lacking.

If it is not old, why would you say that? Really, streaming audio data from an HD not that difficult for a 'new' laptop. (or even many'old' ones either). Buying a new tower to 'fix' this issue is almost surely overkill.


If it's not your hardware: what is the buffer setting in your Foobar setup? (Preferences-->Playback-->Output).

 

[ssully]

My choice would be a one TB HDD for the music and video files and a 128 SSD for the OS and all the programs. But you gotta remember the main bottleneck is Windows. It slows everything down to a crawl.

Says who? Even if you think that is the case, you can (and probably should) be bypassing Windows audio in F2k by using WASAPI

 

[seilerbird]

Says who? Even if you think that is the case, you can (and probably should) be bypassing Windows audio in F2k by using WASAPI

Says me. I have been using and building computers since 1980 and I have been using Windows since 2.1 in 1987. If you don't think Windows is the main bottleneck then what is?

 

[GOS]

If it is not old, why would you say that? Really, streaming audio data from an HD not that difficult for a 'new' laptop. (or even many'old' ones either). Buying a new tower to 'fix' this issue is almost surely overkill.


If it's not your hardware: what is the buffer setting in your Foobar setup? (Preferences-->Playback-->Output).

Because I didn't buy a performance laptop, I went for cheap and probably I'm paying the price now that I'm demanding of it. I have every single USB & HDMI currently in use, hard drive is nearly full (of flac files).

Of course, it's all speculation as I'm no computer wiz, which is frustrating to say the least.

Eh - I'll check the foobar settings.

 

[GOS]

Another comment just as an FYI - yesterday I was looking at the bottom of my PC and noticed some of the heat vents were somewhat plugged with dust. :yikes
I cleaned them out and of course, it could be my imagination, but I felt like I didn't notice any more skipping in Foobar.

Is it possible that the laptop was sort of overheating and working too hard and resulting in skips? Ha, probably not.

 

[JanBakker]

Another comment just as an FYI - yesterday I was looking at the bottom of my PC and noticed some of the heat vents were somewhat plugged with dust. :yikes
I cleaned them out and of course, it could be my imagination, but I felt like I didn't notice any more skipping in Foobar.

Is it possible that the laptop was sort of overheating and working too hard and resulting in skips? Ha, probably not.

It is possible that overheating causes problems, I have my laptop cleaned at least twice a year.

 

[Spock]

I use a stationary pc for music and most other functions. The current one is a HP from 99. But it is only the cabinet that have not been replaced. For the last two years I do not have a video card - just use the one included in the cpu (that is more powerful than the one originally was included in -99). I do not use the pc for video games.

Upgrade from time to time with different parts if I wish for more performance or if things break down - only the original PSU has given up so far.

And I use a SSD for OS - so it is fast

 

[GOS]

Yeah - I have several reasons why I might want a PC tower....I could get a good Cd/DVD drive (right now I only have an external one...) likely better performance all around. Plus, I guess I like new stuff.