XBox as audio source...

[Stormy]

Bear with me on this...

I haven't had a CD player for 2 1/2 years, as I received an iPod for my 21st birthday, and had been using iTunes before that as it was easier for listening to hour upon hour of background music while working at university without having to muck about with changing CDs. I've experimented with various bitrates and encoding methods since then, and have recently settled on Apple Lossless. The problem is that a 60 minute album takes up around 400MB of HDD space and I've only got a 15GB iPod. I'd use my computer as a source (I have a very nice M-Audio Firewire 410 audio interface with 192kHz output, optical and co-ax S/PDIF), but it's just too damned noisy for use with open-backed headphones (despite quieter fans and insulating foam).

I was looking into a bigger iPod, but ideally I'd like something with a digital output so I could connect it to a DAC later. There are one or two HDD-based portables with optical out, but I started to think of alternatives for home use. Cambridge Audio make a media server called the Azur 640H, but it's £500-600 in the UK, and only has 160GB of storage. You could build/buy a PC for less than that.

Then I thought of the XBox. It's fairly quiet (relative to a PC), MUCH cheaper than £600 and can be fitted with a big hard drive and digital sound output (more DIY lunacy). If it's reading WAV or AIFF files from its hard drive and passing them through the digital output as PCM data to a DAC, surely not much can go wrong? Don't start on about the quality of the transport used to rip the music in the first place, please (I don't have the time to record everything from the digital output of a good CD player then divide it up into tracks again...).
And it'll play videos. And it can read music and video over a network if I want to have a centralised media server at some point (noisy PC, but shut in a cupboard somewhere!).

X-Box > X-DAC > X-Can V3?

It could be good!

*Throws arms wide and awaits the onslaught.*

[Stormy]

I got my official XBox Advanced AV Cable from eBay today. It has gold-plated RCAs for analogue audio, and an optical ouput for digital.

Best of all, I somehow managed to win the auction for £0.01 +£1 P&P! Bargain!

I'm going to borrow my brother's XBox to see if it will play music through the digital output as stereo LPCM.

[xerxes]

Don't start on about the quality of the transport used to rip the music in the first place, please (I don't have the time to record everything from the digital output of a good CD player then divide it up into tracks again...).

I don't think it makes any difference, I have a pretty good Hi-Fi system and I can't hear the difference between an original CD and a copy made on a PC with a standard £30.00 CD-RW drive with ordinary data CD-R's. I've asked a few other people as well and so far I haven't found anyone who claims to be able hear the difference.

When you make a copy, the whole process is digital, no analogue circuits are involved and timing isn't critical, if the drive can't read a bit of data first time it can try again and I believe problems with jitter that can effect audio playback don't come into play. I've even heard that you can sometimes use a PC to make a copy of scratched CD that won't play properly in a CD player to make a copy that works fine.

[rickcr42]

my suggestion is to go for it man !

You can use the X-Box as a pure data storge device so that takes any noisy power supply or comprimised analog stages out of the equation and can potentially lead to a nice mid cost sound system at the minimum rivaling a med-high end mass market dedicated player.

you can start small with a so-so DAC then as time/money/skills allow work your way up to a serious hi-res external DAC MONSTER with dedicated power and re-clocking plus if you have the balls later go to a full on multi-format digital interface allowing USB/I2S/Coaxial and toslink spdif/AES3 digital inputs so this "super DAC" can be used with everyhing from your computer to your DVD player to you X-box

even if in the end it costs a bundle it will be in bite sized pices so not as painful plus think of all the fun you will have !!!!!!

.......or frustration ;D


j/k

[Stormy]

Out of interest, I priced up a trio of completely silent PCs to run iTunes on. The first was based on a VIA Eden processor/ITX board, but apparently they are very difficult to get Windows running properly on and won't play DVDs smoothly.

I thought it was a waste to build a computer which could potentially double as a home cinema machine but can't play DVDs, so I tried one with a Pentium M processor instead. Pentium Ms and their associated motherboards are incredibly expensive, so the machine was nearing £800 with a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS for DVD-Audio playback and a semi-decent onbaord DAC. I then discovered an mCubed case which has the ability to passively dissipate the heat from a 120W processor, meaning you could use a much cheaper Pentium 4 and motherboard, and spend the difference on this incredibly expensive (but fantastic looking) case instead. I think it worked out at about £850 for a 3.0GHz P4 in the gorgeous mCubed HFX case. It even has its own RCA connectors and a SCART socket on the back, so you can use good quality cables a bit more easily! Looks rather in keeping with the X-Can too with its big black heatsinks.

All in all, the XBox is certainly the cheaper option...

[rickcr42]

I thought it was a waste to build a computer which could potentially double as a home cinema machine but can't play DVDs, so I tried one with a Pentium M processor instead.

Trying to build a true dedicated full-house multimedia is no cheap or easy process.Way too much involved if you want to shoot for true hi-res A/V but the truth is all computers are eventually headed in that direction.It is THE logical next step for the home computer and is only a matter of working out a standard that all vendors must follow.

At that time you will see all those mainstream companies that are presently on the sidelines waiting for this to shake out jump in and then prices will drop dramatically.

Right now if I were to do a "from scratch" build I think I would shoot for all USB based hardware so while the "core" could be a One-Size-Fits-All i can optimise and swap in or out whatever drives or improvements I can either afford or build.

The main limitation of the PC for audio is noise and power supply so once youi take everything A/V related "out of the box" you can leave the switching supplies to do what they do best,powering proccessors and RAM,then concentrate on having true audio relevant power supplies for everything outside the box.

At least that is how i would do it