I went to a friend's house a few months ago and he had a big commercial CD Jukebox in his basement. It was set to free play, so all night we punched in some great tunes. I noticed that I had many of the same discs, but never played them as I was too lazy to pull out a disc for one or two good songs.
Upon arriving home and looking at my 2000+ CD collection, I knew I had to build an Audiophile CD Touchscreen Jukebox.
I wanted the Jukebox to have a touch screen with full album art, not have a lot of fan noise, and be truly Audiophile quality.
Components:
Screen: 22" Planar Touchscreen ($250 CompUSA)
Processor: Intel i3-2100 ($99 Micro Center)
Motherboard: MSI H61M-P23 B3 ($65 CompUSA)
Ram: Corsair CMX4GX3M1A1333C9 XMS3 4GB DDR3 ($35 after rebate CompUSA)
Case: Rack Mount server case and power supply ($69 NewEgg)
Hard Drive : Western Digital 2TB "Green" ($59 Micro Center)
Software: AlbumPlayer 5.3 ($46 albumplayer.com)
Bit Perfect Driver Software: ASIO4ALL ($FREE asio4all.com)
============================================================
Total cost: $625 (or about $800 less than I paid for my CD player)
Reasons for components chosen:
Planar PX2230MW 22" monitor was chosen because it was very large, had touch screen input and high resolution (1920 x 1080) for album graphics . The mounting screws on the back are standard VISA100 so it can be mounted to an adjustable arm, and thus folded out of the way when not in use.
Intel i3-2100 was chosen because it runs very cool (100 watts), and has onboard video (no need for a video card and the accompanying fan noise) .
MSI H61M-P23 B3 Motherboard was chosen because it has onboard S/PDIF (digital audio out), so I had no need to buy a sound card. It also has no fans of its own.
Rack Mount case "looks" like a piece of pro audio gear, rather than a standard computer case.
AlbumPlayer software was chosen because after trying six different software packages, it looked and worked the best. Testing all of the "Jukebox" software took longer than any other part of the project. AP worked flawlessly with the ASIO4ALL software so that CD, DVD-A, DTS and SACD files output without any modification (yes, you can back up your SACDs nowadays - Google it).
ASIO4ALL is a free driver software that bypasses all of Windows' mixer and volume controls. It forces Windows to pass the digital audio stream unaltered to your D/A converter. You need ASIO drivers or your system will not be bit accurate.
The system is very quiet and you would be hard pressed to hear it running unless there were no tracks playing and you were within 6" of the rack. I certainly can not hear it from my listening chair.
If you needed an absolutely silent system you would want to swap out the following components:
FSP Group ZEN 400w Fanless Power Supply ($125 NewEgg)
Thermalright HR-02 Fanless CPU Heatsink ($68 Mwave)
SSD Hard Drive ($1/GB after rebates)
The above modifications would give you a system with no moving parts at all. It would be quieter than any CD player in the world!
I can post pictures if there is any interest.
I went to a friend's house a few months ago and he had a big commercial CD Jukebox in his basement. It was set to free play, so all night we punched in some great tunes. I noticed that I had many of the same discs, but never played them as I was too lazy to pull out a disc for one or two good songs.
Upon arriving home and looking at my 2000+ CD collection, I knew I had to build an Audiophile CD Touchscreen Jukebox.
I wanted the Jukebox to have a touch screen with full album art, not have a lot of fan noise, and be truly Audiophile quality.
Components:
Screen: 22" Planar Touchscreen ($250 CompUSA)
Processor: Intel i3-2100 ($99 Micro Center)
Motherboard: MSI H61M-P23 B3 ($65 CompUSA)
Ram: Corsair CMX4GX3M1A1333C9 XMS3 4GB DDR3 ($35 after rebate CompUSA)
Case: Rack Mount server case and power supply ($69 NewEgg)
Hard Drive : Western Digital 2TB "Green" ($59 Micro Center)
Software: AlbumPlayer 5.3 ($46 albumplayer.com)
Bit Perfect Driver Software: ASIO4ALL ($FREE asio4all.com)
============================================================
Total cost: $625 (or about $800 less than I paid for my CD player)
Reasons for components chosen:
Planar PX2230MW 22" monitor was chosen because it was very large, had touch screen input and high resolution (1920 x 1080) for album graphics . The mounting screws on the back are standard VISA100 so it can be mounted to an adjustable arm, and thus folded out of the way when not in use.
Intel i3-2100 was chosen because it runs very cool (100 watts), and has onboard video (no need for a video card and the accompanying fan noise) .
MSI H61M-P23 B3 Motherboard was chosen because it has onboard S/PDIF (digital audio out), so I had no need to buy a sound card. It also has no fans of its own.
Rack Mount case "looks" like a piece of pro audio gear, rather than a standard computer case.
AlbumPlayer software was chosen because after trying six different software packages, it looked and worked the best. Testing all of the "Jukebox" software took longer than any other part of the project. AP worked flawlessly with the ASIO4ALL software so that CD, DVD-A, DTS and SACD files output without any modification (yes, you can back up your SACDs nowadays - Google it).
ASIO4ALL is a free driver software that bypasses all of Windows' mixer and volume controls. It forces Windows to pass the digital audio stream unaltered to your D/A converter. You need ASIO drivers or your system will not be bit accurate.
The system is very quiet and you would be hard pressed to hear it running unless there were no tracks playing and you were within 6" of the rack. I certainly can not hear it from my listening chair.
If you needed an absolutely silent system you would want to swap out the following components:
FSP Group ZEN 400w Fanless Power Supply ($125 NewEgg)
Thermalright HR-02 Fanless CPU Heatsink ($68 Mwave)
SSD Hard Drive ($1/GB after rebates)
The above modifications would give you a system with no moving parts at all. It would be quieter than any CD player in the world!
I can post pictures if there is any interest.