Using a netbook as audio source?

[Janat]

What do you think of using a netbook as an audio source in a hifi system? I'm planning to use a Samsung N220 netbook ad the source, but my guess is that its line out connector is not of very high quality, not to mention its DAC...

I'm thinking that maybe I should get a DAC with USB input. I don't have any high resolution music, only cd quality. Which DAC should I get?

[Stratmangler]

I'm thinking that maybe I should get a DAC with USB input. I don't have any high resolution music, only cd quality. Which DAC should I get?

You're asking that question around here ?

[Vincent Kars]

Playback sec doesn’t require much power so a net book should do.
Make sure it is a silent one, nothing as horrible as listening to a string quartet accompanied by a cpu cooler and a rattling HD.
Today there are may DAC’s with USB input.
Most of them are adaptive mode USB using a simple drop in chip.
A couple of new models have asynchronous mode USB and allow for higher resolutions (up to 24 bit / 96 kHz)
A couple of them can be found here: http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/HW/USB_DAC.htm

[Marco]

Hi Vincent,

Any chance of telling us where you're from, or are you a secret agent? I have asked you on number of occasions now

Cheers!

Marco.

[Vincent Kars]

Would you be so kind to explain to me what the relevance is of knowing somebody’s geographical location?

[Marco]

Hi Vincent,

If you have to ask that question then you obviously haven't read many of the discussions here and/or the whole of the Welcome area (or Our Ethos)!

In fact, have you created a Welcome thread since joining? If not, you should do so.

As far as location details are concerned, all we're asking for is something basic like 'London, UK', or whatever. It's hardly too much to ask, so please, add it to your profile - thanks!

Marco.

[Marco]

Thanks for complying, Vincent! Now you see that's interesting, as I wouldn't have guessed before that you were from Holland

Incidentally, reading through the website on your signature, I discovered this quote from Gordon Holt of Stereophile:

Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me..

I'm not entirely sure such views fit in with Our Ethos, or on a staunchly subjectivist site such as AOS, but if you sympathise with those views, then that's entirely your prerogative.

Have you read Our Ethos: http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?t=17 - noting in particular posts #5 and #6?

Marco.

[Janat]

You're asking that question around here ?

Hmm... What's the problem here?

[twelvebears]

Hmm... What's the problem here?

Nothing as such, other than there's quite likely to be a (rightly) popular, audio bargain choice offered.

[twelvebears]

What do you think of using a netbook as an audio source in a hifi system? I'm planning to use a Samsung N220 netbook ad the source, but my guess is that its line out connector is not of very high quality, not to mention its DAC...

I'm thinking that maybe I should get a DAC with USB input. I don't have any high resolution music, only cd quality. Which DAC should I get?

As it happens I've been considering the same thing myself as an easy, low cost alternative to moving my iMac to my garden den once it's finished.

If you're planning to use the netbook as a way to interface with a network streaming device like a squeezebox (i.e. providing a point to connect a USBC drive and use the browser interface), then I'd say it's fine. In fact this exactly what I was planning.

If on the other had you were going to play files directly from the netbook to the DAC (let alone the actual audio outputs), then I wouldn't expect great things.

By their very nature, netbooks are a whole load of comparatively cheap electronic components jammed together in a very small space - screen, hard drive, power supply etc, etc. It's inevitable that there's going to be a load of potential for the output to be less than ideal. I mean it's hardly how an audio manufacturer would go about designing and packaging a CD transport is it? And that's essentially what you asking the netbook to act as in this case, except it's also having to do a whole load of other stuff that a transport wouldn't.