there is nothing wrong with 128kb mp3 quality on Klipsch speakers.

[kaiser SET say]

I see, once again your youth has shot right past the whole point and I still say your comment to Anarchist was rude and uncalled for as with your little snippet of "Grab the popcorn here we go again"!

Never said you were not accepted but that you have been prone to attack replies in the past and that is no way to be accepted by anyone.

I'm glad you have planned your course well and I truly hope it all works out for you but life has it's way of throwing curve balls just when you think you got down pat. Not that I'm looking for or wanting any kind of sympathy from anyone but I was orphaned at 12 and I am and have been a working class citizen for my 50 years now and I know a smart mouthed kid when I see and hear what they say!

You should consider mapping out your replies as well as you say you have your life mapped out and maybe you won't get replies from the likes of me[]

As I sit here with my big finger on my chest I do realize just how lucky I am that I'm here today and that regardless of all my trials and tribulations I have come out stronger and happier than you could imagine so take a swipe again and pump yourself up because your ship may be drifting if you don't[]

[Clarence]

Mallette. Your post has relevence.

Earsplittenloudenboomerkaisersetsay. Sorry you feel as life dealt you a bad hand.

Regards,

C (young punk)

[colterphoto1]

I import my CD's into my iMac which is used for virtually nothing else these days. So 80 GB for music alone. I generally use 190 unless I know that I'll be remixing the songs for playback on the main system, car or an audiophile friend. Then I go AAC (zero compression) and use whatever space is necessary for 'pure music' (well as pure as I can be with CD)

My main office playback is iMac-> HK730-> Dahlquist M904 (sorry nothing Klispch sounds as good in this room). I'm generally very happy with the 190 setting.

Michael

[colterphoto1]

Beautifully spoken Dave. I was in NYC recently and found that in the midst of the bustle of Times Square on a Friday evening- that I was totally alone. And I cried.

M

[Mallette]

Clarence:

I've no idea as to whether you are a young punk or an ol fahrt and have no horse in that race. My little story was just passing on a great moment in a life I would trade with no one.

Hope you feel the same way.

Kind regards,

Dave

[NOSValves]

... lucky that I was not born to a small south african tribe of bush people...

A few years ago I stopped on a long, empty stretch of highway at a shed where some Navajo were selling beads and trinkets. It was miles of flat ground rising up shear cliff walls with no sign of a McDonalds or Texaco or even a power line as far as the eye could see. I wondered why anyone would live in such desolation. As my wife sorted through the trinkets, I struck up conversation with a young man to pass the time. I asked him how much time he'd spent outside the reservation and he responded "I went to Chicago and recieved a degree from the Chicago Conservatory of Art." A bit stunned, I asked why he did not stay. He responded with no hint of emotion "There wasn't anything there."

I looked around me again through different eyes.

That bush person considered himself the luckiest man on earth.

Dave

Dave,

That really is a great story. It reminds me of my trips to Northern Ontario every year. While yes it is much more pleasant to the eye up in the north woods then in the desert but in reality its the laid back friendly nature of the people that really gets me. I mean they go through winters up there that are incredibly harsh try 70 below zero some time!! Winter lasts 8 months of the year. At those temps frost bite happens in seconds on exposed skin. But every year the same smiling faces are at the counters of every store, restaurant and bait shop. What really chokes me up is they know me by name..... Those people have huge hearts.

Craig

[Parrot]

Yes, Dave, excellent story.

[Gilbert]

Excellent story Clarence, and I'd have to agree with the indians, and bushmen. There is nothing in the city for me, except work. Out in the country is the best place to be, and I love it all, Desert Plains, Heavy Woods or the Mountains. I can't get enough country.

But on the subject of ripping and compression. I say screw compression. Get yourself a 400gig hard drive and forget about it. The is little beauty runs 3- 74gig raptors on a raid zero, and (the kicker), I added a 400gig HD just for storage. Just built the bugger and couldn't be happier. Check out the huge heatsink for the processors, pure copper baby.

[NOSValves]

I love it Gilbert! I have my music server currently running with MP3's and my next step is going to be the same as your. Slap in a raid card and pile in a bunch of storage to get rid of all forms compression. What sound card are you running?

By the way what benefit to music reproduction did that wonderful copper heatsink provide? Wouldn't silver be sonically superior[]

Craig

[Gilbert]

Hey buddy, I'll have your know that's a Monster heat sink [], guaranteed to wart off bad recordings and all forms of hip-hop ©rap. Nawh, unfortunately it doesn't do a damn thing for the music, but it does keep my processor 5 deg.C cooler than the OEM garbage.

Sound card is OEM for the MB, but it's better than decent. The PC is mainly for video editing and recording. I've been promising the wife I'd learn, so I bought myself a copy of Pinnacle software and.......there you have it. Got to burn to DVD those ole horror pictures from our honeymoon. Nah, just kidding, you know that.[]

[Mallette]

So how loud are the fans? I went fanless on my last two designs and have finally gotten over feeling the need to put my ear on the case to make sure the drives have spun up.

Dead silent PeeCee is a very nice thing in the music room.

Dave

[Gilbert]

Remarkably quite actually. But I can tell your one of those annal geeks like my buddy Win. He's a real basket case, that crazy "you know what" installed a water cooled system for his PC. He's not a gamer, just a serious geek when it comes to building PC's. His system is scary quite, and blistering fast. Dude does some serious clock tweaking, and spends mucho bucko's just farting around with that kind of stuff. I freak out everytime I see those damn 3/4" water lines running out the back of his PC.

My main goal was in fact quite, but I had to realistic considering the power I wanted to harness. It is impossible to build a dead quite power house unless you go watercooled. But I do believe I've hit the nail on the head with this system. I like low temps, and silence, and that is getting harder and harder to do with these newer cpu's.

The main fan is a 180mm High Volume, low rpm jobber. While the processor sports a 120mm variable speed, (currently on low) that is completely inaudible from 2ft away. The best fan is the aftermarket job I installed for the video card, another variable speed, high vol., low rpm fan.

Dual 120's in front set at low keep a steady stream blowing, and they keep the electronic components happy. She really is quite, but not dead silent. Not with 3 raptors and 6 fans. She's a little bit louder (1.5x) than a raptor drive, so if your familiar with that HD, you know that's a pretty quite PC.She will most definitely impress, and I am very happy with it.

[Clarence]

Gilbert,

SWEET SETUP. I had to make a decision about 6 months ago on which hobby to persue, as I was seriously considering building PC's instead of venturing into what I consider "high end" audio. Due to the federal budget constraints, I could'nt do both. She is just starting to warm up the the 2 channel system, and I think it was the right choice, seeing that she would have me "see a professional" if I started building PC's.

That all being said, I pose this question, and this is a great place for it. I am planning on making the switch to Apple. The computer systems I sell run on Linux, and I know that it is a very stable OS. I am sold on it. I will probably try a notebook of some type at first, and if I like it I will changeover the home system. This will be no easy.. or cheap.. task. I am the kind of person where everything has to match, or I wont be happy with it. I'm talking monitors, printers, backup drives, etc. If I bought Dell, I want it all to be Dell. Sony, everthing must be Sony. I was "that kid" that spent waayyyy too much time with legos, and would only use the same colors for similar componets. I guess I am a little weird that way.

So here is my question. How will I transfer all of my media to the Apple? I use a backup drive, but it is set up for windows XP, I wont be able to just plug it into the Apple equipment, will I?? It is a Maxtor One Touch drive. I am confident that it has all of my WinXP info backed up, but it uses a strange file structure that I dont think the Apple will recognize. Anybody else do this kind of conversion?

C.

[ranjith]

Dave,

That really is a great story. It reminds me of my trips to Northern Ontario every year. While yes it is much more pleasant to the eye up in the north woods then in the desert but in reality its the laid back friendly nature of the people that really gets me. I mean they go through winters up there that are incredibly harsh try 70 below zero some time!! Winter lasts 8 months of the year. At those temps frost bite happens in seconds on exposed skin. But every year the same smiling faces are at the counters of every store, restaurant and bait shop. What really chokes me up is they know me by name..... Those people have huge hearts.

Craig

Craig, my parents live in Northern Ontario and I totally know what you are talking about. My parents moved up there when I finished my gr.12 and moved out to univ. I spend my christmas holidays and parts of my summers up there with them, and its a small town of 1800 or less. But I've met more nice, social people up there than I have down here near toronto. Something about their way of live, so much more laid back. Everyone pretty much knows me by my name, be it at a store or the bait shop. But then again we are the only non-Canadian family up by that neck of the woods. I absolutely love N.Ontario, and the fishing is to die for. Which town do you visit every year?

[Mallette]

But I can tell your one of those annal geeks like my buddy Win.

It is impossible to build a dead quite power house unless you go watercooled.

One right and one wrong. As to the first, I resemble that remark. As to the second, there is no acceptable level of noise either studio recording or in an audiophile listening environment. The Zalman TNN 300 case is capable of handling the fastest CPU's available and as many drives as you want to cram in and has neither water nor fans. At 700.00 it isn't cheap, but that is down from 1100 a couple of years ago and certainly within the range of what an audiophile will spend for noise reduction. I use 10,000 RPM SATA drives and they are not quiet...until you stick them in a Zalman.

Cheaper and smaller alternatives are available in the micro ATX form factor. My MBS-5 is now 4 years old, can be run off 12v DC, and is dead silent. I've modified it now to use 2.5" laptop drives which are very quiet and have the advantage of plug and play USB. External cases are only about 15.00 and 100GB drives about 115.00.

Dave

[NOSValves]

DP

[Gilbert]

Oh my, your in trouble..... Dave, your a super geek. I've not heard of the Zalman cases, but that is very interesting concept. I just did a quicky search and found some literature. Not sure what kind of operating temperatures the components are experiencing, but I'm very curious for a comparison. I will read up on them for sure.

At my current ignorant state, I don't see how it could possibly keep things quite and low temps, but I won't knock it until I've tried it. I will definitely look into this, thanks for the education. I can't believe our IT guys at the office haven't heard of this (or maybe they have?). They are most definitely the scary geek types. They've spent thousands experimenting with raid cards, and hard drives. The company doesn't do anything half-asss either. We have 8 huge servers, locked up tight in a heavily insulated cool room that has it's own air handeling unit and back up power supply/generators. It is very noisy in that room, and I hate it.

Do you monitor your PC temps? If so, what kind of temps are you running, on which components (CPU, Memory, Chipset)? Do they make a full size tower?

What size power supply comes with the case, and how is the power supply cooled? I've never seen a PC power supply w/o a fan? But then again, I'm not super geek[]. Zalman TNN series, very very interesting. I'm going to check them out right now.

Clarence, I will talk to my buddy Win about your PC file storage with Mac question. He's been running Mac's for more than 20 years, and they are his favorite machine for reasons similar to yours....i.e. OS stability being the biggy. Come to think of it, our office use to be an all Mac setup, but when I was hired in 1998, they were in the process of changing over to PC's. So with that in mind, I'm positive it can be done.

As for file structure, your software address compatability issues, but the HD format is what I think the obstacle will be when it comes to the Mac OS's ability to recognize the drive? Is you Maxtor external HD mac compatible?

Anyway, Win is familiar with various Operating Systems, Linux included. What type of files are you talking about storing or moving? And what are your specific concerns?

[Mallette]

Do you monitor your temps? If so, what kind of temps are you running, on which components (CPU, Memory, Chipset)

Not really. I just overengineer all to hell. I've used the MBS-5 at the beach from the back of a van in 100 degree temps doing environmental recording at 4 X 24/88.2 without a hiccup.

Do they make a full size tower? YES

What size power supply comes with the case, and how is the power supply cooled?

I don't recall right off hand, but I believe it to be 300w or more, and they may have a 500w by now. Whatever it is, it is more than adequate.

I've never seen a PC power supply w/o a fan?

The heat pipe technology they use is both pretty high tech and extremely efficient. It is NASA derived and being used in large industrial applications for heat recovery and control.

But then again, I'm not super geek[]. Zalman TNN series, very very interesting. I'm going to check them out right now.

[NOSValves]

Craig, my parents live in Northern Ontario and I totally know what you are talking about. My parents moved up there when I finished my gr.12 and moved out to univ. I spend my christmas holidays and parts of my summers up there with them, and its a small town of 1800 or less. But I've met more nice, social people up there than I have down here near toronto. Something about their way of live, so much more laid back. Everyone pretty much knows me by my name, be it at a store or the bait shop. But then again we are the only non-Canadian family up by that neck of the woods. I absolutely love N.Ontario, and the fishing is to die for. Which town do you visit every year?

ranjith,

I've been visiting the White River area about 75 miles north of the tip of Lake Superior since I was 12 years old. You couldn't ask for a better place to just get away from it all. Yes the fishing is phenominal although I have witnessed its decline over the years. But that reached a high point and now the fish numbers and sizes are returning since Ontario started some smart regulations. I personally keep very few of what we catch but I'm in the minority.

I had to keep this one!

[Gilbert]

Wooohooo! Man! Look at those snappers.

Bet that fish has a mouth full of teeth too [].

I'll drop anything and everything to talk fishing. PC cooling hell, look at that toothy bugger.