Windows Media Center 2005 - a few questions

[tigerwoodKhorns]

Why do you want ANY fans in a music server? It simply isn't necessary and certainly not desireable.

Dave

I thought that it may be a necessary and desirable to cool my power supply and CPU.

It probably is if you are using an office type computer. As I mentioned before, my I designed my present music server in 2003 and the only moving part in it is the HDD...and that was chosen for it's near silence and cannot be heard unless you put your ear on the case. The power supply and CPU are both designed to be fanless. This technology has improved considerably since I built this unit such that fanless CPU's are considerably faster and can even support video playback now. I did not care about video in a music server so mine still serves just fine.

I knew that was why you made your comment. Shameless advertising[6]

I already have the sunk cost of the server and I really like the graphic interface. I use a 22" monitor and you can see it clearly from across the room AND easily navigate it with the remote. Microsoft really did a nice job on this. I use a cheapy Chaintec soundcard with optical out into a Musicfal Fidelity DAC. Sounds fantastic.

For me, I would like a server that boots as quickly as a cd player and has a similar interface as media center 2005 and that you can plug in external hard drives so that as they get cheaper you can keep increasing storage. I guess that I am describing a mini Mac. I already built the PC so I am using it. If this card solves the bogging (in MS's defense it does tell me that the video card is not compatible every time I boot) I will be happy, the interface is a home run if I can get it to work smoothly.

[Donkeyshins]

One idea I've been considering is building a music server system based on the D945GCLF board and a decent USB DAC. The board looks like this:

It uses an Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor (under the teeny-tiny passive cooler - the big active cooler is for the chipset) and runs for under $75 with the chip soldered on the board. Add 2GB RAM, a big HDD, a case, a passive chipset cooler (quiet, please!) and a small used LCD monitor and you'd be good to go.

-D

[tigerwoodKhorns]

One idea I've been considering is building a music server system based on the D945GCLF board and a decent USB DAC. The board looks like this:

It uses an Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor (under the teeny-tiny passive cooler - the big active cooler is for the chipset) and runs for under $75 with the chip soldered on the board. Add 2GB RAM, a big HDD, a case, a passive chipset cooler (quiet, please!) and a small used LCD monitor and you'd be good to go.

-D

I started out with XP Pro for my music server. After about a year or so I realized that I never used it because the interface was too difficult (no remote). That was wht I added MS Media Center 2005. Make sure that it will be user friendly.

Check out the case that I used:

http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=92400

Retails for about $100. The fans are quiet. I swapped the side fans out for with even quieter ones. I did some searching and found them for about $5 each from a parts supplier compared to about $25 each in a fancy box. The case matches my Musical Fidelity DAC very well. I had a Benchmark DAC 1 but swapped it out because the Musical Fidelity looks cleaner and is a great DAC.

Check out SilentPCReview .com

[Mallette]

>For me, I would like a server that boots as quickly as a cd player and
has a similar interface as media center 2005 and that you can plug in
external hard drives so that as they get cheaper you can keep
increasing storage. I guess that I am describing a mini Mac.

What you are describeing is embedded media Linux. You do not need all the overhead krap for word processing and such from Microsoft or Apple just to do music. Next gen for me.

Dave

[Rich_Guy]

Auzentech makes some very nice sound cards.

http://www.auzentech.com/site/products/x-plosion_cinema.php

[doctorcilantro]

And J. River makes the best media playback/organizer for WIndows based systems. Media Jukebox is free, but Media Center 12 is worth a price 5x the current cost.

And yes the quieter the better, but having one fan, such as a wlle designed, quiet PSU fan isn't going to be any louder than the ambient noise in most listening rooms....I worry much more about HD seek noise which I find can be much more audible. But if you have a silent "chamber", then sure it makes sense to cut out as much as possible. If your building an HTPC, music server, graphics workstation, gaming machine amalgalm (doing it all in one - which I like to do) you have to find the right balance of power, noise, heat, cooling etc.

I have an HIS IceQ 3850 and my room is pretty quiet; even its "loud" fan (maybe 30dba) blends into my listening environment; drop the needle it is nothing compared to some LPs surface noise. I waited for the newer 3870s to come out in fanless design and I've ordered one last week.....because in the end, less noise is better, but don't kill yourself over it imo.

Let us know how the new card works out, and since we're stuck with Windows every user here should be chekcing out a Minnesota software company's unreal offering for the PC (J. River Media Center 12). I have a little about in my blog, the features are endless, and it makes iTunes & WMP seem like they were designed/coded by 7 seven year olds. Makes using Windows a LOT less painful.

DC

[InnerTuber]

Windows "whatever", ASIO out, replace soundcard, exact copy to rip, find an obscure player, worry about KMixer, spend time trying to bypass everything Windows wants to do ~> to DAC to make music. Eventually bit perfect copy and playback .... I guess Mr. Gates cares a bit more about Office than music.

Mac, iTunes ~> to DAC. Bit perfect outta the box. Macbook and about 2TB external storage new for somewheres around ~$2,000.

Does that about sum up the music aspect? Heh, I use both for music but find Windows a pain for a music server system.

[seti]

Windows "whatever", ASIO out, replace soundcard, exact copy to rip, find an obscure player, worry about KMixer, spend time trying to bypass everything Windows wants to do ~> to DAC to make music. Eventually bit perfect copy and playback .... I guess Mr. Gates cares a bit more about Office than music.

Mac, iTunes ~> to DAC. Bit perfect outta the box. Macbook and about 2TB external storage new for somewheres around ~$2,000.

Does that about sum up the music aspect? Heh, I use both for music but find Windows a pain for a music server system.

Windows is a pain. It is tailored more for corporate enviroment than what people want to do. I love my Mac Powerbook. There is a reason they have come back from the brink of corporate death in the last 10 years. They focus on what people want to do and help us do it without too much confusion. I'd like a Mini Mac and 1TB of storage. I am think about getting the Cambridge Audio 840C which has a DAC available for any digital source or audio toy.

[tigerwoodKhorns]

And J. River makes the best media playback/organizer for WIndows based systems. Media Jukebox is free, but Media Center 12 is worth a price 5x the current cost.

And yes the quieter the better, but having one fan, such as a wlle designed, quiet PSU fan isn't going to be any louder than the ambient noise in most listening rooms....I worry much more about HD seek noise which I find can be much more audible. But if you have a silent "chamber", then sure it makes sense to cut out as much as possible. If your building an HTPC, music server, graphics workstation, gaming machine amalgalm (doing it all in one - which I like to do) you have to find the right balance of power, noise, heat, cooling etc.

I have an HIS IceQ 3850 and my room is pretty quiet; even its "loud" fan (maybe 30dba) blends into my listening environment; drop the needle it is nothing compared to some LPs surface noise. I waited for the newer 3870s to come out in fanless design and I've ordered one last week.....because in the end, less noise is better, but don't kill yourself over it imo.

Let us know how the new card works out, and since we're stuck with Windows every user here should be chekcing out a Minnesota software company's unreal offering for the PC (J. River Media Center 12). I have a little about in my blog, the features are endless, and it makes iTunes & WMP seem like they were designed/coded by 7 seven year olds. Makes using Windows a LOT less painful.

DC

I just read up on the JC River Media Center 12, it looks interesting. My next hurdle after getting the computer to work smoothly is to clean up the interface because it looks cluttered (a bunch of icons for each artist). I read you blogpost. That is what I am looking for, one icon for each artist.

Does JC Media Center use minimal resources? Media Center 2005 seems to use a lot of computing power (at least now it does with the wrong video card). If so, is there a way to use JC Media Center with Windows XP and then change settings to eliminate all of the extra BS in XP that is not needed. If so, what are those settings?

[InnerTuber]

iTunes has a simple interface. Arguably more lookups for titles etc. score hits. If you use any of the Windows systems and encode WAV you may well have tagging headaches down the road.

MacBook and Mini are near silent. iMac a little louder. Put your external hardrive wherever you want and run Airport Extreme Base and wirelessly stream to iTunes at the receiver. All the effort for silence, to me is more a PC issue. I can stick my ear right up to my Macbook and generally hear nothing. The hard disk seeks are in another room. btw - some disks are louder than others in drive bays. I use WD Caviars I think it is. I can hear when i encode, but that doesn't really matter.

The only big negative about iTunes is Apple refuses to include FLAC. I don't compress at all so it's not a big deal. Some would say forcing lossless is a negative.

I've tried a lot of players and iTunes works in my lazy world. I use Winamp on my PCs, but I did like Media Monkey too. WinAmp can really mess up cover art in folders once in a while. A pain to correct. I don't like the "folder" logic for storing music. That's just my opinion.

Bottom line to me is its a hare and turtle race for quality output. One road is simpler, not better. Both can get you to the finish line.

Note the mini certainly works, but the lack of screen can make some tasks more difficult. Manually adding cover art, updates etc. Not sure how that will shake out with the new remote features yet. Some folks use Signal and mini and love it. I like to be able to grab the laptop and hook direct to external storage to rip at times - goes faster. I usually run Coverflow too which I just like. The little apple remote works fine for me.

[InnerTuber]

TW - it's pretty easy to blast thru a few media players, most are free.

Media Monkey, WinAmp, J River. Most will grab the media already encoded off the drive and you can compare interfaces. Unless you have obscure music they all look up info pretty well.

[seti]

iTunes has a simple interface. Arguably more lookups for titles etc. score hits. If you use any of the Windows systems and encode WAV you may well have tagging headaches down the road.

MacBook and Mini are near silent. iMac a little louder. Put your external hardrive wherever you want and run Airport Extreme Base and wirelessly stream to iTunes at the receiver. All the effort for silence, to me is more a PC issue. I can stick my ear right up to my Macbook and generally hear nothing. The hard disk seeks are in another room. btw - some disks are louder than others in drive bays. I use WD Caviars I think it is. I can hear when i encode, but that doesn't really matter.

The only big negative about iTunes is Apple refuses to include FLAC. I don't compress at all so it's not a big deal. Some would say forcing lossless is a negative.

I've tried a lot of players and iTunes works in my lazy world. I use Winamp on my PCs, but I did like Media Monkey too. WinAmp can really mess up cover art in folders once in a while. A pain to correct. I don't like the "folder" logic for storing music. That's just my opinion.

Bottom line to me is its a hare and turtle race for quality output. One road is simpler, not better. Both can get you to the finish line.

Note the mini certainly works, but the lack of screen can make some tasks more difficult. Manually adding cover art, updates etc. Not sure how that will shake out with the new remote features yet. Some folks use Signal and mini and love it. I like to be able to grab the laptop and hook direct to external storage to rip at times - goes faster. I usually run Coverflow too which I just like. The little apple remote works fine for me.

Agreed.

Do you use Frontrow with the remote? I find myself just using iTunes but sometimes Frontrow. It is a simple application.

[InnerTuber]

I have some, but I usually just put iTunes in Coverflow mode, full screen and run a CD or playlist. If a song comes on and I get a funny look from the wife, I keep the remote around and advance.

For me, having the track info diplayed big is good. I can see what the song is in case I forgot about it and I can usually see it w/o glasses. No small feat across the room!

I'd have to go look back at Frontrow, but something was different - maybe it didn't work right on coverart with playlists. I forget.

BTW - I'm all for Windows based systems too. I have and use them. Just pointing out some pros and cons.

[doctorcilantro]

Geez, it's not that hard to get bit perfect from Windows. Install a half-decent player (not sure what obscure means - you don't have to pilgramage to Mecca...use a search engine), get a decent soundcard (a no brainer for anyone half serious abut audio), and push play. Bit Perfect is overrated anyway, things like ReplayGain (which is not Normalization) aren't going to destroy fidelity and are pragmatic applications useful in the real world.

As much as we all love to hate M$, it's often more cost effective, and using iTunes I consider more tortuous than anything Windows has to offer. That said, I too use Mac for other things, so I'm just offering solutions for people "stuck" with Windows []

You can use Player & Audiograbber (two seperate apps) that can access FreeDB & Gracenote respectively; these apps will update the Cdplayer.ini so J. river can effectively utilize the metadata from its proprietary YADB, Gracenote, and FreeDB. I need to blog about this as well. With getting into the lossless vs. lossy debate, my opinion is to rip lossless for archival purposes and usually just transcode/sync to handhelds/portables with mp3/ogg etc. So tagging in MC is very powerful given that wav is really pointless since we can compress it to pretty much half size and gain the tagging capabilites that InnerTube mentioned.

DC

[doctorcilantro]

I dont' think I edited the blog post yet regarding multi-value tag fields (semi-colon delimited).MC lets you create custom tag fields, the default ones are locked to make metadata more compatible with other players (like when you sitch iTunes and want to map all the metadata to the right place). I suggest a custom field of this sort which as a multi-value field allows a file to "show up" in two places at once. Neil Young & Michael Jackson can be retained as Artist on a specific track but then be tagged Neil Young;Michael Jackson and show up under each artist's recpetcive "tile" in MC. I'll edit that post this afternoon. Feel free to PM or email me with any questions; the J. River Interact forums are a great repositry of knowledge regarding MC.

DC

[InnerTuber]

Guess I thought in Win you would have to go ASIO which may mean bypass the soundcard or get the appropriate one to bypass KMix. Given technology why settle for less than exisits on the original CD. Or if you go higher resolution why bother if ...

Neverless if it plays and one is happy, then that's the bottom line.

[seti]

I have some, but I usually just put iTunes in Coverflow mode, full screen and run a CD or playlist. If a song comes on and I get a funny look from the wife, I keep the remote around and advance.

For me, having the track info diplayed big is good. I can see what the song is in case I forgot about it and I can usually see it w/o glasses. No small feat across the room!

I'd have to go look back at Frontrow, but something was different - maybe it didn't work right on coverart with playlists. I forget.

BTW - I'm all for Windows based systems too. I have and use them. Just pointing out some pros and cons.

I support 200+ PCs for my employer so when I go home it is a PC free zone. I am Mac spoiled.

You can make any operating system work for you even BeOS.

[DrWho]

However, your statement about cheap memory makes zero sense. You are suggesting that, since memory is cheap, let's just write gigabytes of OS overhead nobody needs so we all get our money's worth for the ghz processors required just for the OS to run?

Many years ago programmers prided themselves on writeing efficienct code that executed quickly. MANY years ago...

Crikey, Mike, I did not think you capable of such a statement.

I'm not saying more efficient code isn't a better thing, but the amount of memory an OS uses is not one of the prime areas to increase performance anymore. Back when 1kB of memory was a huge deal, yes, you had to write efficient code. On the same level, one might scoff at the incredible power inefficiency of a class A amplifier...

But getting back to windows specifically, I don't think you could claim that they're programming things into the OS that nobody ever uses, which is to say, they have to program in a lot of overhead because they have to cater to a market where everyone wants very different things - so in essence, the OS almost has to do everything. If you are really so concerned about the efficiency of your OS, then why don't you go in and manually control everything the OS is doing? It is actually quite easy to do. It seems to me that most of the people that complain about Windows are complaining because it doesn't automatically work ideally for their specific application - and I suppose for some, manually configuring things is too much to ask, but since when did computers ever work by magic? It's also interesting to note that of the choices out there, Apple makes other decisions for you, but limits your control, and then Unix forces you to do everything manually (though as Unix becomes more automatic, it uses up more memory).

For what it's worth, my install of XP is taking up 113MB of memory. To get the "same" (hardly) functionality and convenience from a Unix OS (like say FreeBSD or OpenSUSE), I'm using at least 90MB. Mac OSX takes up about 150MB? A fresh install of windows takes up about 230MB if I'm remembering correctly? Either way, you could spend another $10 for an extra 512MB of ram and not even notice the memory that the OS is using.

And though it won't seem that way, I'm really not a microsoft fanboy. There are things I really dislike, but it has nothing to do with how much memory the OS uses. It's just like people that complain about Bose...totally missing the intent of the product.

[seti]

However, your statement about cheap memory makes zero sense. You are suggesting that, since memory is cheap, let's just write gigabytes of OS overhead nobody needs so we all get our money's worth for the ghz processors required just for the OS to run?

Many years ago programmers prided themselves on writeing efficienct code that executed quickly. MANY years ago...

Crikey, Mike, I did not think you capable of such a statement.

I'm not saying more efficient code isn't a better thing, but the amount of memory an OS uses is not one of the prime areas to increase performance anymore. Back when 1kB of memory was a huge deal, yes, you had to write efficient code. On the same level, one might scoff at the incredible power inefficiency of a class A amplifier...

But getting back to windows specifically, I don't think you could claim that they're programming things into the OS that nobody ever uses, which is to say, they have to program in a lot of overhead because they have to cater to a market where everyone wants very different things - so in essence, the OS almost has to do everything. If you are really so concerned about the efficiency of your OS, then why don't you go in and manually control everything the OS is doing? It is actually quite easy to do. It seems to me that most of the people that complain about Windows are complaining because it doesn't automatically work ideally for their specific application - and I suppose for some, manually configuring things is too much to ask, but since when did computers ever work by magic? It's also interesting to note that of the choices out there, Apple makes other decisions for you, but limits your control, and then Unix forces you to do everything manually (though as Unix becomes more automatic, it uses up more memory).

For what it's worth, my install of XP is taking up 113MB of memory. To get the "same" (hardly) functionality and convenience from a Unix OS (like say FreeBSD or OpenSUSE), I'm using at least 90MB. Mac OSX takes up about 150MB? A fresh install of windows takes up about 230MB if I'm remembering correctly? Either way, you could spend another $10 for an extra 512MB of ram and not even notice the memory that the OS is using.

And though it won't seem that way, I'm really not a microsoft fanboy. There are things I really dislike, but it has nothing to do with how much memory the OS uses. It's just like people that complain about Bose...totally missing the intent of the product.

Windows isn't necessarily programming things into the OS nobody uses but adding support for everything under the sun into their massive monolithic out of control kernel. It is a mess. Not to mention their software which is so tied to the OS that it is practically part of the OS. This is why they have been so vulnerable security wise. Don't even get me started on security. It is really bad and the prealence of adware spyware is proof. How many tools are needed to keep it clean and functional?

Memory management is not one of windows strengths. Mostly the problem is memory leaks in software written by vendors rushing products to market.. It has been my experience that this is where unix and linux excels. You can totally trim Unix/Linux in ways windows will never be able to. The kernel can be recompiled to include only the features you require and you can rip out the kitchen sink so to speak. This is a major strength. You do need to know your hardware very well. In the past I have hacked together my own linux box using a small custom kernel with no GUI which is where all modern OSs are guilty of being piggy even my favorite OS X. I like to use these linux boxes as appliances with web interfaces to control the OS and streaming software. Linux is the Swiss Army knife of computing. You can do things with a throw away computer with linux that you couldn't imagine doing with windows or OS X. Linux is fun but the learning curve is high.

I'll stop ranting now..... Shut up Seti : )

[Mallette]

Thanks, Seti. Save me a bunch of typeing...

Mike, I know this seems weird and you can go ahead and assume I'm just a bellyachin ol' fahrt, but the fact is I've seen computers get slower and slower for the past 15 years as MS has slowly choked them to death. Simply pulling up a directory once was almost instantaneous. I remember when I pushed the power button and I was ready to word process in about the length of time it took to get my hands to the keyboard. I remember real premptive multi-tasking.

All gone. There isn't a dime's worth of difference between Apple and MS, and if there was MS would have killed it off. Linux, being open source and existing wherever a geek lives, isn't subject to commercial death so it lives on.

However, even Linux is merely a reflection of where we were.

Except for MS, PC's would be by human reaction times instantaneous by now. CPU speeds are such that only an impossibly obese OS can possibly slow them to the reaction we get. Frankly, I do not know how they do it...and, frankly, I don't think they do either.

Dave