Leopold Dilg
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BoomBoxzilla
Windzilla
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whatever you do don't go analogue out from an audigy to the crown. the environment in computers is full of nasty electronic interference. you'll be better off using something to take a digital signal from the audigy (if thats what you use) and doing the Digital Audio Conversion in a dedicated separate component, then feed that to the amp. I would look into the many offerings by M-audio. they offer some USB stuff that would eliminate the need for an audigy (I have one from years ago, at dosn't get much use.)

another option, since you have free bays, is to get a unit like the berhinger DEQ2496. this would allow you to do some on the fly room calibrations, as well as serve as an external DAC.

anyway, good luck, and if your building a PC, why not pick up a 500gig HD and have everything compressed in a lossless format like FLAC? mp3's are great, but if you don't need to compress that much, why would you?

cheers!

Leopold Dilg
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Wow, thanks for the quick, comprehensive reply WZ! It just so happens, (really, I'm not making this up) that I clicked back over here from looking at M-audio stuff at Newegg. I'm thinking that since this whole "new" thing of building a dedicated machine (computer) for this boombox from hell, I'll get something else other than a "creative" product. This is what I like about doing the dedicated CPU, it opens up so many options.

Keep it coming folks, I may just get this thing put together right!
Leo

Leopold Dilg
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Another chapter to this saga is that Music Match is the player/ripper I've been using for years and it was sold to Yahoo! hoo proceeded to to change it to the point that I'm also in the market for another player and also another source for downloading $.99 cuts. In investigating FLAC I noticed that WinAmp is about the only program that has no problem with either playing or ripping to FLAC.

Leo

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for your amp, if your really looking for a party blaster, and not intent on anything resembling critical listening, how about going for the crown XTI series, they are digital chip-based amps, weigh less, run cooler and require less power. the Xti1000 is around the same price as the solid state you mentioned but puts out a whopping 1400w. The digital amps often offer a special soft clipping function (similar to NAD perhaps?) so as not to blow out a speaker. combine that with a UPS backup battery and you'd have an hour+ of seriously loud sound, with about as pure a power source that you can find.

as for music players, Winamp is actually pretty good. The good folks over at slimdevices offer up there great slimserver software free. it is open source and you don't need there squeezebox to use it. this allows for great plugins/extensions and some first class organizational tools for a big library.

speaking of libraries, give Exact audio copy a try if your ripping from CD's.

thats lots of crazy stuff, but you defiantly could put together a unique system that way. Audiophile in its own way

Leopold Dilg
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Anymore thoughts, ideas, anyone?

Help create The Monster!

Leo

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Yea, I would never trust having a computer driving an amp directly. Maybe not an issue, but I would insist on having a good old fashion analog volume control somewhere in between the two. Computers do too many wierd things.

Leopold Dilg
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Quote:
Computers do too many wierd things.

Yep, true this. Might not be an issue with a $50 2.1 set up but with beau coup power no telling what might happen.

Thanks for your response, you guys have been very helpful and I appreciate it.

Now if I can just decide whether to go 1U or 2U on the computer. I'll need at least 2 PCI slots, one for the vid card, one for the sound card. The mobo I already have doesn't have onboard vid. So I guess 2U it is...this 8U rack is filling up fast. I wanted to add at least one of those locking drawers for accessories and I'm still up in the air about whether or not to try to have the keyboard and monitor somewhere in this rack. I could get another for that, a 4U maybe...I dunno....

Leo

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