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Budget Music Server From Old PC

Hypnotoad

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This is my budget music server for my bedroom, the cost and how I set it up.

First off I had an old HP desktop computer sitting at home that I bought many years ago, rather than throw it out I decided it might work as a music server.

Athlon X2 64 3600+
4 gig ram
160 gig hdd
Onboard graphics and sound

Not the most powerful machine but it "should" do the job, I purchased a Topping D30 Dac, have some Magnavox 6.5" twin cone speakers in boxes, got them off the roadside for free, they have HMV logo's on them. Doing a search I found that they came with a record player that had a whopping 4 watts per channel. I bought a nice Yamaha Stereo Receiver pre BPC (Black Plastic Crap) era that puts out a healthy 70 watts rms per channel from Ebay for $70.00, it had a dodgy selector switch, but a good spray with contact cleaner fixed this.

The PC had Windows XP on it and ran surprisingly fast, so I set it all up, loaded around 100 albums, some Mp3 and some Flac's on it. Connected it to the Sony LCD TV which works great as a monitor and away I went or so I thought. After setting up Foobar2000 and sitting back relaxing to listen to some music I was in for a shock, Flacs would play fine but Mp3's for some reason would seize up at random. Tried different players, still the same thing, hmmm. Looked online and changed a lot of settings but still the same thing, darn.

Then I made the decision to upgrade the OS to Windows 10, this was my biggest mistake, after going through the painstaking process of installing this monster, it ran surprisingly well, I even got a signed driver for the D30, so all is good, or was it? Sat back again to listen to some music, Mp3's and Flac's both suffered the same annoying problem, no freezing at all but pops, crackles and stuttering. I fixed the stuttering by changing the power scheme to performance and the player to high priority, but still had snap, crackle and pop to contend with. I went through nearly a week of messing about with and following pages of guides to get rid of them without success. It was like it was fighting with me, reminded me of the computer in 2001, "Open the pod bay doors Hal", or in my case "Stop the snap, crackles and pops Hal", "I'm afraid I can't do that Dave".

What to do, what to do, if only someone made an easy to install, easy to use OS that doesn't hog resources and spy on you like Windows 10, then I had an epiphany, the little voice in my head was yelling, Ubuntu, Ubuntu, Ubuntu. I then thought to myself why don't I try Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. So I downloaded this less that 2 gigs ISO file, burned to a DVD and wondered if it would molest my PC like Win 10 did. I popped the DVD in the drive and restarted the computer, after lots of working and many messages appearing and disappearing on the screen it loaded up. Wow I thought this looks good, although I noticed it had an icon for installing Ubuntu, didn't I just do that, no it's like this so you can try it out first, with nothing to lose I hit "Install Ubuntu". When it came to the part where it said you have Windows 10 already do you want to run it side by side or get rid of it completely. I quickly chose the "Take it behind the barn and shoot it!" option, or that's what I would call it. I was half expecting the phone to ring at this point and hear "This is Bill, what the hell are you doing?".

So after getting Ubuntu installed and having it download updates and drivers etc while doing so, I copied some Mp3's and Flac files on to the HDD. I see this program called RhythmBox, I wonder if this thing will play music at all, well it did and guess what, not a snap, crackle, pop or stutter with either Mp3's or Flac's, but wait a minute I am only just playing through the TV what about the D30 Dac. I plugged the USB cable into the computer and turned on the D30, immediately the red light went out, it was installed? How can this be, where are all the drivers, the settings, the heartbreak? I turned on the Yamaha and played some more music, this time the room was filled with glorious sound, those side of the road speakers never sounded so good, I do have much better speakers but wanted to try these first.

I wondered why anyone would mess with Windows for a music server when there is Ubuntu, to me putting Windows 10 on your computer is like buying a Ferrari and connecting a trailer load of bricks on the back, maybe they don't know, or just used to all it's nonsense with continual "upgrades" that fix one thing and break another?

Just one question where do I get a virus checker for Ubuntu? ;)
 
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rwortman

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You should probably amend this to "putting Windows 10 on your 11 year old hardware that probably doesn't have a motherboard chipset that supports it is like buying a vintage Ferrari and complaining that it won't run on regular unleaded gas." I have my own complaints about Windows but when I upgraded a Windows 7 computer to Windows 10 on a platform that properly supported it everything ran faster. Linux is a reasonable way to get more life out of ancient hardware but software companies that sell most of their product to OEM's and businesses have no good reason to try to make stuff backwards compatible to 10+ year old hardware. That's a lifetime in the computer world. I would bet a large majority of 10 year old PC's are in a landfill.
 
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bravomail

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U have 4G ram - your computer is not ancient. I've seen ppl still using 1GB ram PCs with WinXP. Any browser except for Opera 12 Classic would crash, run out of memory.
 
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Hypnotoad

Hypnotoad

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"putting Windows 10 on your 11 year old hardware that probably doesn't have a motherboard chipset that supports it is like buying a vintage Ferrari and complaining that it won't run on regular unleaded gas."

Or already owning a vintage Ferrari and finding that they make gas that runs it fine for free? ;)

That's a lifetime in the computer world. I would bet a large majority of 10 year old PC's are in a landfill.

Confining my needs to a music server the beauty of Ubuntu is that it runs well on this old computer and recognized everything first up, you can't just plug a D30 into Win 10 and have it run without installing drivers etc. Look under the hood of Win 10 you will see all the stuff that's forced on you, things you don't need, and it's getting worse. Did you know that it authorizes your camera to run in the background?

Why go out and and buy a new computer so you can install Win 10 to play music files? For anyone that just wants a music server why not try Ubuntu, especailly if you have a low end or old computer, you may be surprised. Think about it, spend a lot on a high spec computer and have to pay for Win 10 with no guarentee it won't be affected by the dreaded snap, crackel or pops, or get a cheap or old computer and get Ubuntu for free. (I am actually going to donate to the developers)

U have 4G ram - your computer is not ancient. I've seen ppl still using 1GB ram PCs with WinXP. Any browser except for Opera 12 Classic would crash, run out of memory.

It originally came with 1 gig but I put in more when it had Windows Vista on it, didn't help much though.
 

LTig

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I plugged the USB cable into the computer and turned on the D30, immediately the red light went out, it was installed? How can this be, where are all the drivers, the settings, the heartbreak?
Obviously the D30 is USB class compliant, meaning the standard Linux USB driver is sufficient. Microsoft needed years to deliver a class compliant USB driver for Win 10.
Just one question where do I get a virus checker for Ubuntu? ;)
Don't need one, Ubuntu already killed the virus (Win 10). ;)
 

bigx5murf

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This doesn't sound right, I have a 14 year old HP PC, Athlon 64 x2, 2GB Ram. I turned it into my bedroom media device by adding a SSD, HDMI gpu, and wireless keyboard/trackpad. Runs windows10 without an issue. Foobar and plex streams FLAC, and Hi-res flac from my NAS without an issue, uses my AVR as a DAC, through spdif. It does struggle with streaming h265 hvec video content. But h264 hvec is perfectly smooth thanks to gpu hardware acceleration. The only issue I have with running win10 on low end hardware is that everything lags badly while it's updating. So I have to remember to make time to let it update when I'm not going to use it. Best thing about win10, most of my low end PCs in storage still have a win7/8 serial sticker on it. and it usually works for a clean win10 install.
 
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Hypnotoad

Hypnotoad

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This doesn't sound right, I have a 14 year old HP PC, Athlon 64 x2, 2GB Ram. I turned it into my bedroom media device by adding a SSD, HDMI gpu, and wireless keyboard/trackpad.

That's what this is but with 4gb ram, maybe the issue is that I have not added a SSD, HDMI gpu and wireless keyboard/trackpad also I have Win 10 64bit build 1809, a lot of people are having sound problems with it (snap, crackle, pop), and like I said it ran fast enough with most things disabled, I had three pages of things that could be turned off to increase performance and reduce issues. It's unbelievable how much is preset and "hidden" from the user.

Not trying to just run down Windows 10 per se ( The Ferrari quote was tongue in cheek) as I have it on the PC I am typing this on, just pointing out that Ubuntu "seems" a great alternative for those who want something basic that performs well. And if your not buying a high end machine (or even if you are) just to play music files, Windows isn't the only option.
 

Fackernarmee

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That's what this is but with 4gb ram, maybe the issue is that I have not added a SSD, HDMI gpu and wireless keyboard/trackpad also I have Win 10 64bit build 1809, a lot of people are having sound problems with it (snap, crackle, pop), and like I said it ran fast enough with most things disabled, I had three pages of things that could be turned off to increase performance and reduce issues. It's unbelievable how much is preset and "hidden" from the user.

Not trying to just run down Windows 10 per se ( The Ferrari quote was tongue in cheek) as I have it on the PC I am typing this on, just pointing out that Ubuntu "seems" a great alternative for those who want something basic that performs well. And if your not buying a high end machine (or even if you are) just to play music files, Windows isn't the only option.

Rather than Ubuntu, have you considered running a dedicated Linux distribution like OpenElec? It's a stripped-down version whose sole purpose is to run Kodi. It's designed to run well on older PCs. Kodi (if you're not familiar with it) will play just about any audio and video format that you throw at it, will display album covers and other artist info, has a "10 foot interface" for using it with a remote control. You can also use it with a remote control app on your phone (Yatse with Android and Sybu with iOS). Perfect for lying back on the couch or in bed listening to your music. And all for free! There are other variations on Linux all designed to run Kodi. You could also install Kodi on Ubuntu but you will still have all the other stuff that comes with Ubuntu. Kodi is also a DLNA player and will function as a basic DLNA Server. If anyone is interested I'm happy to discuss it. For your information all my media player PCs run Windows 7 Pro with Kodi. My primary media player is an Intel Core 2 Quad 3Ghz with 4GB of DDR2 RAM. This has run trouble-free for about 4 years so far.
 
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Hypnotoad

Hypnotoad

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Kodi (if you're not familiar with it) will play just about any audio and video format that you throw at it, will display album covers and other artist info, has a "10 foot interface" for using it with a remote control. You can also use it with a remote control app on your phone (Yatse with Android and Sybu with iOS).

Thanks for the advice on Kodi, reading up on it I see it's an updated version of XBMC which I used to use on my old original Xbox and loved it. great to see it's alive and well, I will certainly be giving it a try.
 
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Hypnotoad

Hypnotoad

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Update on my music server I still haven't downloaded Kodi but did get Audacious and it's a very simple but configurable player, the other thing I did was to remove the old Magnavox 6.5" dual cone speakers, they were for testing only and put in a pair of B & W DM 1400's, these are very resolving speakers and give very resolving sound. Playing a FLAC file of Cat Stephens - Into White you can hear every "squeak" of his guitar strings as clear as a bell, the soundstage is huge and separation is superb. I did pad the tweeters a few db as these speakers have a reputation of being slightly bright, doing this has balanced them beautifully. And to think I got them in original boxes with all packaging and documentation for $175.00.

DM1400.jpg
 

Shadrach

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I've got Ubuntu 11.04 running on a laptop 1.5 GHz processor, 512 RAM. This was the last Ubuntu distro that easily allowed you to get rid of the idiot buttons.;)
I use Deadbeef as a music player. It works very well. I bodged an SSD into the laptop to replace the standard drive. It's not silent but it's a lot quieter.
I also have Puppy Linux Xenial running on the laptop. It runs off a USB stick also with Deadbeef as the music player.
I have a PC with various other Linux distros that I try out and Deadbeef is still my player of choice.
The problem with an old PC is the hard drive and fan noise.
 
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Hypnotoad

Hypnotoad

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The problem with an old PC is the hard drive and fan noise.

Mine sits on the floor and I have a wireless mouse so I can be laying on the bed and use it, can't hear the fan or the HDD at all.
 

restorer-john

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I've got Ubuntu 11.04 running on a laptop 1.5 GHz processor, 512 RAM. This was the last Ubuntu distro that easily allowed you to get rid of the idiot buttons.

I've still got a PC in the cupboard running Lucid Lynx 10.04. Once that unity thing hit, I pulled the plug on Ubuntu.
 
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Hypnotoad

Hypnotoad

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I've still got a PC in the cupboard running Lucid Lynx 10.04. Once that unity thing hit, I pulled the plug on Ubuntu.

Unity desktop is a good thing in a way as it allows people like me to jump right in without having to know a lot of scripting.
 

Sal1950

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I've still got a PC in the cupboard running Lucid Lynx 10.04. Once that unity thing hit, I pulled the plug on Ubuntu.
Unity desktop is a good thing in a way as it allows people like me to jump right in without having to know a lot of scripting.
My personal system is using a PCLinuxOS base with the Mate desktop enviorment and a slightly custom hacked version of Clementine media player. I don't have sophisticated needs in a player, being able to deliver a bitperfect steam of my music library using a attractive, intuitive GUI works for me. Sadly Clementine is not currently being developed along with the fact that we audiophiles ran into problems with the last group of dev's (long story) so will have to move on in the near future. I've never been able to warm to Deadbeef but may have to take a second (3-5th) look. Love the simple traditional style of the Mate desktop, just the right balance of features without being bloated and skechy due to heavy memory loads. Mark Shuttleworth can't seem to make up his mind where he want's to go with Ubuntu as he keeps changing directions of the DE, etc.
YMMV.
Screenshot at 2019-03-09 00-24-07.png
 

Shadrach

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My personal system is using a PCLinuxOS base with the Mate desktop enviorment and a slightly custom hacked version of Clementine media player. I don't have sophisticated needs in a player, being able to deliver a bitperfect steam of my music library using a attractive, intuitive GUI works for me. Sadly Clementine is not currently being developed along with the fact that we audiophiles ran into problems with the last group of dev's (long story) so will have to move on in the near future. I've never been able to warm to Deadbeef but may have to take a second (3-5th) look. Love the simple traditional style of the Mate desktop, just the right balance of features without being bloated and skechy due to heavy memory loads. Mark Shuttleworth can't seem to make up his mind where he want's to go with Ubuntu as he keeps changing directions of the DE, etc.
YMMV.
View attachment 23300
I'm particularly keen on Puppy Linux because it can be run from RAM. It's very lightweight and most of it works well.
I've tried Clemantine and it is a good player. One of the better points for me about DeadBeef is it doesn't want to rush off to the Internet to chat to it's mates every five minutes.
 
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