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Simple music streaming system using old netbook

pattox

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I'm just wondering, would it be possible to use an old netbook or laptop to stream, via usb, a music library through a good dac such as a topping to an amplifier and get good results? Or would there be an issue or limitation with the quality of the signal from the netbook usb to the dac.

To put it another way, is there variability in the quality of audio signals via usb between different pcs or laptops?.
 

Jorj

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I recently retired my old Dell Mini 9 from streamer\front end duty. It works just fine but all the newer software were really challenging the poor thing and it was beginning to cut out during playback. Keep in mind that this thing was running with an ancient Atom N270 processor, and I sped it up a good deal with a new Ncore SSD a few years back. I got a new XPS so my old one got downgraded to the audio rack, and the Mini 9 went in a drawer. Given its fanless nature, I thought about using a Linux distro with it to lighten up the CPU load, but remembered the driver issues I had the first time I tried that and thought better of it. Depending on your netbook, that might also be a valid path for you.

All that goes to say that as long as you're not getting audible noise or variations in sound during playback, most USB outputs from laptops, including netbooks, are just fine, IMO.

Now, I will leave it to the experts to chime in on if there is a simple way to test the levels of jitter (or dropped packets) the USB port is outputting, but honestly, a good DAC should be able to sort that out and give you a good analog output.
 

Blumlein 88

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Older netbooks as Jorj explained may choke on some playback software. The USB output itself if the machine is up to it will be fine. Laptops even quite old ones will do fine if your just streaming music. All, but a small number of DACs will not be bothered by any differences in the USB connection.

As an example I have a low end 10 year old Dell laptop. Using Foobar for playback and running Win 8 its just fine as a music sever over USB. It still has a spinning hard drive. An SSD upgrade would give more oomph.
 
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pattox

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Thank you. I just wasn't sure if all usb sources were equal. If they are more or less equal (unlike DACs apparently) then I guess it depends on whether the old machine is fast or quiet enough to do the task fairly easily in a quiet music environment using current streaming software.
 
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pattox

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I've now been able to try this out using my very old MSI (circa 2012) (atom cpu/2gb ram)netbook with a topping D10 using foobar and wasapi drivers.

In short, this combination seems to work extremely well. I haven't done any extended or super critical listening testing but my first impression is very favourable. I'm surprised by how well this old, low powered netbook performs. At one stage I thought I could hear something akin to the "sizzle" you sometimes get on FM radio but, other than that, all seems fine.
 

somebodyelse

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There are some linux based streaming solutions out there that should run on some very old PC hardware, so long as it's got a USB2 port. To put it in context you'll have trouble finding a PC with a USB2 port that's slower than the original Raspberry Pi, and even that makes a decent streamer if you aren't going to run things like room correction.

I've tested Daphile on a 2002(?) vintage HP/Compaq nc4000 booting from a usb stick streaming the highest rate test files I could find to a Chord 2Qute without issues. That's a Pentium M 1.4GHz with 512MB, so significantly more powerful than the original Raspberry Pi. The HDD was removed (dead) and I don't think the fan ever started, so no moving parts. I haven't tried the x86 version of Volumio but that should be fine too.
 
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