Hypnotoad
Active Member
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?
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?