Hi Bob, about the power supply I think it is still a pending issue although some people here have worked on it. If you have ideas about it go ahead, you might find something new and interesting to share. If I can make a suggestion I would go first to a simpler construction, perhaps like mine if you like it, and then I would work on it implementing other solutions.

Best,
Juan

Thanks Peter. Those are gratifying words

Juan

Hey Bob, it could seems complicated but it is not. I´m going to let you know how I have the hdd set up right now. To operate this setup later is easy because XXHighEnd is doing it for you, the only thing you have to do is to configure XX correctly, which although it is not a minor thing you are going to find the necessary help here in the forum.

These are my hard drives:

1- The hdd with the OS and XXHighEnd (WD VelociRaptor 300GB. Looking at the pictures this is the only one horizontally placed))

2- One hdd with music that I always want have at hand. This hdd have all the albums that for one reason or another I want to have all the time at hand. I have a lot of albums here and are classified by genres. This is a personal classification but for me is ok (WD Green, 2Tb):

- Classic Piano
- Classic Piano concertos
- Classic Symphonies
- Classic Violin and Strings
- Classic Violin and Strings concertos
- Classic Voices and Opera
- Classic others
- Downloads (HDTracks, HDTT, Blue Coast, etc.)
- Folk
- Jazz (classic)
- Jazz (slow, all kinds of jazz)
- Jazz (modern)
- Rhythm and Blues
- Voices (men)
- Voices (women)
- Voices (mix)
- Other ones of interest
- Special selection
- Pop (groups)
- Rock (groups)
- Burning and test albums

3- One hdd that is hot swap connected/disconnected with a specific kind of music, e.g. Classical, or Jazz, etc. You can have as many hdd as you need and you can just take out one and put another with the music you want to listen at a certain moment and that you don´t have in the hdd nº2. Well, this is going to be the logical configuration that I´d like to have for this hdd in the future, depending of the amount of music I´ll have but in reality I only have so far one hdd full of music of all kinds alphabetically ordered. (WD20EFRX, 2Tb)

Let me tell you that as a general rule I use WAV files mostly for the albums that I use more frequently or that I like more, although of course I have a lot of music in flac files.

4- One hdd that I use as Playback Drive. This hdd is externally connected to the USB 3.0 PCIe card (WD RE4 WD5003ABYX, 500Gb). I used several different storage units as Playback Drive like an Usb 3.0 pen drive or different hdd but I ended up using the WD RE4 and I´m very pleased with the sound I get with it. The Playback Drive is important for two reasons, first because it eliminates the differences in SQ (if any) that the Flac or wav files could have and second the Playback Drive conditioned the SQ, I mean the sound is different if you use a pen drive or a ssd or a hdd and even the kind of hdd and more even depending the kind of connection. As could you imagine the number of combinations is infinite but as I tell you I´m very satisfied with the SQ of my WD RE4 connected via USB 3.0 to the USB 3.0 PCIe card.

5- An SSD for the Galleries. It makes a fast access to your albums but at this moment I don´t use it.


As you can see I don´t use a remote to control the Music PC but instead a keyboard, a mouse and a VGA monitor. To get better sound, once the music is playing, I turn off the monitor and also disconnect the USB 2.0 (keyboard and mouse) from the hub (see pictures).

About fans, I only use two of the three fans that I have at the bottom of the case (the middle one and the right one), no fans in the cpu cooler even when I use Ultimate Tweaks that are very demanding. My temperature oscillates between 29ºC and 40ºC (Room temperature 23ºC). That means less noise and less interference.


Here you have some pictures where you can see my Music PC with the hdd inside and outside. I also have a CD Rom but I have it disconnected and I don´t use it. When I want to rip a cd I use other computer and later I copy the file to the Music Pc.

Please ask whatever you need to know, I´ll be glad to help as much as I can.

Best regards

Juan

Hi Paul, I have made the test, it was funny and interesting.

I don´t know how to copy the other results:

Match the beat: out of 18 pieces 14 were right and 4 wrong

Tap to the beat: out of 9 pieces 5 were high and four were medium

Melody memory: out of 12 pieces 11 were right and 1 wrong

It looks like I'm pretty antisocial...well, I really don´t like to sing "Happy Birthday" at parties 

Juan

 

Yes, you are right.
Thanks Alain

Juan

This is another place, a little cheaper, shipment is just $4,60. There are better pictures of both cards the normal one and the PRO, maybe someone can see differences:

http://www.buychina.com/items/asif-skittles-axf-104-diy-computer-chassis-noise-reduction-filter-card-hardware-optimized-power-purification-tpquvusmplm

Juan

Peter- I ordered the card through the link Nick provided, not yours, when I bought it yesterday it was still at least one for sale.

Now that I see that Nick is going to test two cards at the same time I´ll wait to order the Pro card in case of a favorable conclusion. Maybe at the end I´ll be lucky combining two cards with some different capacitors and resistors.

Juan

Sh%t!!, I ordered the normal one, in the ebay store they say nothing about other different pro version. The link provided by Nick drove me to the normal card not to the Pro one, probably they were sold out on the Pro version and were selling just the normal one. Price doesn´t seem very different though. I´ll can´t compare it anyway...

Juan

If you guys, Paul and Nick, think that this is worthwhile to try this power filter card  I´m going to order one. 35€ is not too much money if the improvement in SQ is as you said, as soon as I get it I´ll let you know my opinion.

Thanks to both of you,

Juan

Might be a good opportunity to make a general cleaning in the music room, sure someone will appreciate it, lol

Juan

Hey GerardA, why you don´t put some pictures of your cables? Would be nice to know something more on the way you guys build your cables.

Juan

Solved, I had both flac and wav files, now I eliminated the flac file and it works.

Juan

Peter- When trying to play an album (Mahler Symph. No. 4, wav files) I get a message that reads "Unrecognized Header Data". This happens with the first two tracks of a total of four, but not with the third and the last one.

Juan

These pangea cable have good reviews in Audiogon. Enter Pangea in the Keywords (http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/srch_fr.pl?&1&procsrch&3&4&):

http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=PGAC9SE

Juan