whatever you choose, you may find that 3x 3.5" drives are going to be annoying, so I would suggest thinking about changing your drive set up. 3x 1TB in Raid5 gives you 2TB. So why not change those 3 drives for a single 2TB drive to store everything on, and use the 1TB drives as offline backups. Then...

Hi there, Has anyone had any experience yet of the new Samsung MP4 2.5" 7200 drives -- http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/internal/internal.html The specs look really interesting. Probably not a Velociraptor killer in terms of speed, but seems to be an improvement on the rest of the pack. An...

I think what also needs to be mentioned here is that when soft mounting, always make sure the HDD is grounded to the chassis. My guess is that many warnings about soft mounting and lifespan are related to the fact that in many cases the HDDs end up being ungrounded. I recall reading a white paper on...

Each song is ripped to an individual file. I never got along too well with cue sheets. In the software I use (J River Media Center - 'JRMC'), there is gapless pleyback and more than adequate buffering, so there is no issue when playing songs on an album that run into the next one. For ripping, I exc...

Pictures: here you go, nothing exciting as I said, just components screwed or blu-tacked to a piece of wood. Damn ugly in fact, but invisble once in a cabinet. http://www.chopin-smith.com/images/pc1.JPG and http://www.chopin-smith.com/images/pc2.JPG and finally: http://www.chopin-smith.com/images/pc...

For me, on my main system, there is a difference between lossy and lossless, blind tested and otherwise. Others will say its placebo, invented or whatever. Fair enough. Indeed, most people can't hear the difference on their systems. But some can on their other systems. Doesn't mean that everyone sho...

Sorry, been busy with work so just caught up with questions... What sound card are you using, and what's the rest of the audio system? This is the signal chain: 1. Music on hard drive: I have 1,967 CDs encoded and stored on the 500GB HDD and it's full. About 75% of the audio files are FLAC or APE (b...

amjedm: No, I have the FM121, which could be (?) a white version of the FN121. In any case, I wouldn't touch a silverstone fan given there are quieter and tried and tests ones available. ronrem: I will probably change the silverstone fan eventually, most likely for a Nexus. However I put the PC in a...

As the title said, I just put together a new PC for audio playback in the living room. Having referred extensively to SPCR for component choices, thought I'd put it all here with details. 1. Case: None. I mounted the motherboard and the components on a piece of plywood with pcb spacers screwed in, w...

I use J River Media Center -- currently v11 (and beta testing v12). It can scan any number of discs -- I have 3 external drives -- a 400GB and 2x 120gb, full of losslessly encoded audio. (Flac/Ape, and some lossy MP3, MPC..) I've been using it for several years -- about the only piece of software I ...

Hi! And thank you to all the contributors. I do not live in Paris but at the other end of the hexagon, Toulouse. I will call Dell to see if they can give me information about the noise levels of their computers. I've been looking around our office -- we have some recent Dell Dimension PCs and some ...

Hi again Ted, Are you near Paris? If yes, take a trip to the 12eme arrondisement (not far from Gare de Lyon), where there are a load of computer shops, including the big one Surcouf which has a large showroom. In shops in this area, you could put select the components yourself and the shop would put...

First, thank you sas, NeilBlanchard, Tim H for your interest and advice. I appreciate. The problem with me is that I am not much of a handyman and do not know the first thing about hardware. Do you think there is a company selling silent and reliable PCs? In Europe? Cheers No problem. I used to be ...

A word of caution: laptops can be hit and miss affairs when it comes to noise. The specs may suggest it will be quiet, yet it may not be. I recently used a Toshiba Pentium 4 laptop that was touted as 'silent' but which happens to make a high pitched whirrrr noise and occasionally the fan kicks in an...

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for audiophile grade gear, but as my understanding goes jitter is something that occurs in the actual conversion process and not at the SPDIF source. And whats that thing with galvanic isolation??? from what I've read jitter can be introduced anywhere in the spdif ch...

is that seagate drive is SATA it will be noisy, I asked seagate if they will offer a utility to put take them off performance mode like the ide drives and had a dissapointing answer DiscSupport@seagate.com said: If the drive is running in NCQ mode (Native Command Queuing) the drive will automatical...

If you are strictly passing digital (e.g. using S/P-DIF or Optical output) to an external D/A converter, then there is no reason to install an expensive sound card. It'll just be a really pricy pass-through. Just my $0.02. -Derek Derek, I agree, though some will argue that some Spdif's are superior...

I really think you should go with one of those VIA EPIA boards/cpus. Not much processing power, but they are VERY VERY cheap, and consume very little power. ~10 watts if i recall. They have graphics and network inttegrated. They also have a PCI slot, so you can add a high quality soundcard. You can...

matt & sthayashi thanks for the good advice -- will check out the Nexus fans and keep checking here in the meantime. The only thing I've added to the list in the meantime is a passive Chaintech AGP card with DVI/D-sub/S-video out -- this as DirectX9 compatibility and would leave the door open to an ...

Thanks everyone for all your advice. I've been doing tonnes more searching, and have to conclude that for the cost of an Athlon 64+full ATX mobo+Matrox+Scythe+full ATX HTPC case+full ATX quiet power supply, there is not really a huge price difference between going for a Pentium M + integrated Aopen ...

thanks again for the help everyone! Matt - I will research the turions, but as you said, Pentium M would be ideal and I'll check for prices. Vertigo - You're right about the drive. In fact at the moment my solution involves a mapped network drive with all the audio files on. I may stick with that se...

matt thanks for the very quick reply. - for the CPU/Mobo, I kind of ruled out Pentium M because of the price, although that may change in the coming months. The prices on the Athlon 64's seem good, and I'm curious to know if undervolting them is really possibel to get them passively cooled. What I r...

Hi everyone, I'm putting together a quiet audio pc/htpc. It will be for the living room, not inside a cabinet, so noise is a big issue. It will be 90% used for music playback linked to a hi-fi system, a bit of living room internet surfing, and maybe occasionally for DVD playback, but that's not a pr...

No reply: have moved thread with more general question to newcomer systems.

Hello everyone, I'm a long-time lurker, having bought a shuttle PC before for my music server PC and was disappointed by the noise. I intend to get a new PC at the end of the year, when I will travel to the US and can get better prices. The PC will have to be small, powerful enough to handle FLAC/AP...