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Need a New DAW / Streamer PC

DonH56

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I keep thinking about using a Raspberry Pi board connected to a USB drive to stream to my pre/pro. Haven't had time to research enough, but I know there have been threads here and elsewhere about that approach. On the high end, considering a Salk streamer, just because time is precious these days and a plug-and-play solution is appealing.
 

amirm

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I keep thinking about using a Raspberry Pi board connected to a USB drive to stream to my pre/pro. Haven't had time to research enough, but I know there have been threads here and elsewhere about that approach. On the high end, considering a Salk streamer, just because time is precious these days and a plug-and-play solution is appealing.
I will be reviewing the Allo streamer soon. This comes turnkey with an SD card image that does everything. I agree hand configuring the Pi is a nightmare, at least it was for me trying to get it work with Roon.
 

amirm

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D

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Sure are... And it's an Intel product :)

Been using the J3455 (Celeron version) of these with SSD's and 8GB RAM and Windows 10 Pro. They just fly for general usage.

The J3455 is $129. Add 120GB SSD for $50, 8GB for $75, Win10Pro for $68.

For for $320 use JRemote with Jriver or Roon and their remote.

Depending on your budget just get 4 or 8 tb of network attached storage. For $299 you can get Western Digitals 8TB Cloud NAS.

For $100 you could get a killer WAP and just do away with any physical connection.

I would put up this setup against any multi-thousand $$ streamer any day of the week. With the money saved you can just get that much better of a DAC.

Investigated Intel NUC as a SilentPC option before my build, could not find any fanless NUC. They all seem to have a CPU fan, at least the variants I investigated. See this teardown of a Celeron based NUC, FF to ~5.45 min.

 

amirm

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Indeed. Here is the money shot showing the laptop style blower:

upload_2017-12-10_9-28-43.png
 

amirm

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There are industrial, small form factor fanless PCs though. I have been researching them for one to go into my woodshop to control my CNC. Here is a search of them on Amazon: https://smile.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_s...ywords=fanless+PC+i5&rh=i:aps,k:fanless+PC+i5

When I get one, I can test it first for audio and see how it does. Above I searched for i5 variants. There are even i5 but there are also many using older CPUs or Atom which you want to avoid, and too little RAM.
 
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watchnerd

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The NUCs are good endpoints, but I'm not sure they have enough horsepower and IO to run ProTools well.
 
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watchnerd

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I keep thinking about using a Raspberry Pi board connected to a USB drive to stream to my pre/pro. Haven't had time to research enough, but I know there have been threads here and elsewhere about that approach. On the high end, considering a Salk streamer, just because time is precious these days and a plug-and-play solution is appealing.

I use a Rasp Pi with a HiFiBerry Digi+ Pro HAT as a Roon endpoint, works great.
 

jhaider

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With all this talk about DIY PC's, I have to ask one question: does Windows have a way to easily replace a boot drive or a whole computer without having to manually redo all your software, bookmarks, preferences, etc?

When you replace a boot drive in a Mac or upgrade to a new one, you just point it to import everything from your encrypted Time Machine backup during initial setup, and everything is installed and set up just like your old machine.

That makes a big difference in terms of time commitment for an upgrade, even if we're talking about a dedicated audio box.
 

amirm

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With all this talk about DIY PC's, I have to ask one question: does Windows have a way to easily replace a boot drive or a whole computer without having to manually redo all your software, bookmarks, preferences, etc?
Not built-in. But there are third-party tools that clone the drive and let you resize it. Some SSDs like Samsung come with it. For others, you purchase it. It is not expensive. There are also free ones. Search for "drive cloning."

You need to also get some hardware to allow the new drive to connect to the system prior to removing the current one, say, over USB. Again, this is very inexpensive. If cloning a desktop and you have free sata connections left, then you don't need it.

Using this, I occasionally get request for revalidation. That happened to me with Adobe software since they way they create a unique ID of the computer often relies on size of the hard disk. Revalidation was quick and easy though and this should not be a problem with software that is not locked to each PC.
 

amirm

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Oh, I did not address whole computer. That can go smoothly or not. You can clone the drive for the new system but since the rest of the hardware is different, you may run into stability problems. I have usually struggled out of this by installing new drivers. With the last upgrade though, I was having crashing problems that would not let me get far enough to update things. Eventually I got there, only to have Windows claim my system was no longer licensed. :( Tried every activation code I had and it still complains.

So this is uglier than just upgrading the boot drive.
 
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watchnerd

watchnerd

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With all this talk about DIY PC's, I have to ask one question: does Windows have a way to easily replace a boot drive or a whole computer without having to manually redo all your software, bookmarks, preferences, etc?

When you replace a boot drive in a Mac or upgrade to a new one, you just point it to import everything from your encrypted Time Machine backup during initial setup, and everything is installed and set up just like your old machine.
That makes a big difference in terms of time commitment for an upgrade, even if we're talking about a dedicated audio box.

In that scenario, all Time Machine is doing is copying over the contents of the /Applications and /User directories.

I don't see why the same conceptual operation couldn't happen on Windows.
 

amirm

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The problem with Windows is the registry and shared libraries. Apps are not self-enclosed in a directory you can move as is the case on Unix systems. Crap is spread everywhere for reasons dating back nearly three decades. So you can move the files but the app will not work without these other dependencies also being replicated which is outside the scope of backup programs. Hence the reason I mentioned drive cloning. That replicates everything so it works.
 

Soniclife

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I'd rather go with a clean install of windows in that instance, I backup personal files (I would recommend backing up a minimum of C:\Users\*), plus I make specific efforts for things like lightroom and Roon so they could be fully recovered, but so much stuff is synced to the cloud and needs needs no real backup or recovery.
When I built a new Win10 Pro partition and moved everything across to it I was surprised how quickly I got up and running with minimal effort porting things across.
 

amirm

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The video doesn't show the CPU which is on the other side. Reading reviews on Amazon it says it has a fan: https://www.amazon.com/Intel-NUC-mini-NUC7i7BNH-Core/dp/B01N0RL8Q4

"I'm a huge fan of the Intel NUC line since the first generation. This particular one (7I7BNH) is a real disappointment, though. It has a blower or fan that is intolerably loud. Even at idle (0-1% CPU utilization) in Windows 10, it's screaming along at nearly 4000 RPM and sounds like a small hair dryer. "

Would have been a great option if it was fanless.

Fanless machines I have seen have hefty heatsinks on each side of the integrated case. This one has 25 watts of power dissipation so it is hard to do with just a thin case.

Keep the options coming though.
 
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