HardWare: Computer Related..

[roypattonphoto]

so i finally got around to getting new 1TB Hitachi HDD for my old Dual Core w/ a Dead HDD , so im starting to get a little bit closer to the JB put together...

i was curious, how many of u dismantled your Computer for your inclosure to have better air flow? or should i just leave it in the town and give 2 silent fans on cabinet (one 120mm to pull in air one 120mm to push out)? ....


another couple tidbits, it will have a FM Tuner Card, and as well im going throwing in a  Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium 24-bit 96KHz  sound card, and running a decent 2.1 Speaker System Edit: 2.1 unless i can find a Decent Cheap Wireless 5.1 system that wont blow up my wallet, so i was wondering would running off my mp3's @ 320kbps really make a huge difference over 192kbps?

im also still looking for good deals on a 15" TouchScreen, everything ive seen is quite expensive...


-Roy

[Drnick]

If you are building a full sized jukebox then it may be easier for you to leave the PC in the case, It all depends on volume of air you can move and what obstacles are in the way. Generally The smaller the PC the less heat it is likely to generate. I recently installed 4 small form factor PCs into what can only be described as a kitchen cabinet, 2 on the bottom shelf & 2 on the top with some spacers. We drilled 6 Holes at the bottom of the cabinet, & then drilled 6 in the top. We put in 4 80mm fans 2 drawing in air at bottom and 2 extracting at the top, Its a lot quieter and cooler then expected. 

As for personally I Removed mine from the casing, Because it
 
A) Improves airflow, B) Takes up less room, c) Vibrates a lot less now, although the anti vibration washers probably help there

As I  am currently turning a Pressed Steel Touchscreen Kiosk into a jukebox for my Man cave I didn't really have much choice in the matter.  The small form factor PC I am using for the job would just about fit in the kiosk, but its a lot nicer/neater all mounted to a piece of Marine-Ply. (That and the spare HD 4960 (With HDMI) will fit in there now)  I just have to get a good cutting tool to make the holes in the back for the fans & Cabling
(Although for fans may just go with lots of small holes rather then cutting out the entire thing then just a good drill bit and some patience will work).

Once I have completed this I will start on converting a Wooden Kiosk into a Mame unit Thought about going whole hog and building a full size cabinet, but I think I will start with the conversion and see how it goes.
 
Sorry didn't really answer your question, but that depends on the style of Jukebox you are building and the PC you are using.

[roypattonphoto]

i have 2 mid case's that are being converted, one to a JB, other to possibly a MAME or turning into a Photo Server...


the JB , my idea is keep it no higher than a fish Aquarium w/ Stand, Top Part w/ Monitor bottom w/ speakers... i oring had an idea for a table top style Micro PC w/ 10" TouchScreen and 2.0 , but i dont really like the idea,

i listen to alot of Metal, Classic Rock, and stuff with decent bass, so i need atleast min 2.1 .... hell id turn a small night stand into a JB if i could find a cheap 5.1 Wireless :-)

[Nacimroc]

i was curious, how many of u dismantled your Computer for your inclosure to have better air flow? or should i just leave it in the town and give 2 silent fans on cabinet (one 120mm to pull in air one 120mm to push out)? ....

I looked into this quite a bit the last time I built one and spoke to some electronic experts I work with. The main thing is never to have stagnant air above any components. People recommend leaving in a case mainly because in a case the air is constantly moving, so if you were to put fans in and decase it, its the same thing.

another couple tidbits, it will have a FM Tuner Card, and as well im going throwing in a  Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium 24-bit 96KHz  sound card, and running a decent 2.1 Speaker System Edit: 2.1 unless i can find a Decent Cheap Wireless 5.1 system that wont blow up my wallet, so i was wondering would running off my mp3's @ 320kbps really make a huge difference over 192kbps?

I built a jukebox for my father and he was insistant that CD quality is better. After looking it up for ages and testing it on a few people I know, there is no way to tell the difference between 192kbps and 320kbps. (think the best article was on lifehacker somewhere)

You could also use wifi and internet radio instead of FM card if possible! (Just a thought)

Good luck with the build!

[MonMotha]

For a well designed computer, case on is actually better thermally than no case.  As was indicated before, airflow is often better than empty space.  Lots of factors contribute to this, and in a large open space with a fan still on the CPU heatsink, it's probably not appreciably different.

As for audio quality, 192k MP3 is transparent (meaning indistinguishable from the original source, usually a CD) for most listeners on typical PC equipment.  Listeners who know what to listen for or users of higher end equipment may still be able to tell in a side-by-side test, but a quality 192k MP3 encode (e.g. LAME) is usually not objectionable even in such cases.  320k MP3 even with a sub-par encoder (e.g. the old Xing encoder) is usually transparent to most listeners, even those who know what to listen for, on reasonable equipment.  If in doubt, just use FLAC - it's 100% identical to the CD.

Me personally, I find that lame default presets (current version) is transparent around 256k ABR using an M-Audio Revolution 7.1 and Klipsch Promedia 2.1.  Note that this is a better sound card than typical in terms of audio quality, and these are pretty high end speakers for PC speakers.  Music with lots of subtle cymbals or strings may not be transparent to me even at 320k, but most stuff is.  Vorbis (OGG) and AAC (MP4) are usually transparent to me at slightly lower bitrates e.g. 192-224kbps ABR.  Again, it depends on the type of music, and I don't know the artifacts of AAC as well as I do MP3 or Vorbis, so I'm less apt to notice even if it's just as objectively bad. 

Interestingly, typical rock music, despite sounding complicated, is one of the easiest genres to encode lossily as electric guitars lend themselves to it.  Classical is one of the most difficult due to the acoustic strings, concert percussion, and pianos.

Note that if you plan to re-encode things, e.g. for use on a portable player, it's important to have a high quality source as the re-encoding process can emphasize artifacts that you wouldn't have noticed in the higher bitrate version and wouldn't be present if you started with the original.  This isn't particularly relevant to a jukebox application unless you plan on using it as a central repository to populate other devices.

I used to rip CDs to -q 8 Vorbis (~256kbps).  Now that hard drive space is cheap, I use FLAC.  Typical bitrates for FLAC are 500-900kbps (a CD is about 1400kbps), and again, it's identical to the CD so no problems with quality.

(This is probably a whole lot more info than you wanted, but hopefully it's interesting and/or useful)

[roypattonphoto]

well reason i was asking about bit rates, is that i know that i hear the difference in most music ripped @ 192 and re ripped at 320, i pick up the difference in how the Highs and Lows sound... also the mids are more pronounced @320...

[MonMotha]

Some people can tell, others can't.  The whole idea of "lossy" compression like MP3, AAC, Vorbis, WMA, etc. is to make things smaller by making it sound a little different but in a manner that isn't noticed by most listeners.  Usually at 192k, even if someone can tell the difference, it's not objectionable, merely discernible.  Make sure you're using a quality encoder (Fraunhofer, lame).  Poor quality encoders produce considerably inferior output at a given bitrate.

I'd honestly just say rip everything to FLAC unless you have a compelling reason not to.  It's usually not a ton bigger than a 320k MP3 (~1.5-2x bigger), and it's totally lossless and identical to the CD.  You could also look into other codecs (AAC, Vorbis, WMA) which tend to have higher quality at a given bitrate.