What specification of Laptop or Notebook is required to store and play HD downloads?

[JohnNB]

Hi,
I have dipped my toe into the world of HD music downloads but my little Acer Aspire One isn't fast enough to play high res music files smoothly without breaks in playback. I took the laptop to my local laptop repair shop as I hoped I could increase the memory to solve this. It's got 1GB memory and 250GB hard drive. According to shop the processor is too slow to cope with music files properly and this can't be changed. So I need to replace it. It's over 5 years old so don't mind changing it. Any tips on the minimum requirements to store and play HD music files? (I play them through a DAC).
John

[Spectral Morn]

Hi,
I have dipped my toe into the world of HD music downloads but my little Acer Aspire One isn't fast enough to play high res music files smoothly without breaks in playback. I took the laptop to my local laptop repair shop as I hoped I could increase the memory to solve this. It's got 1GB memory and 250GB hard drive. According to shop the processor is too slow to cope with music files properly and this can't be changed. So I need to replace it. It's over 5 years old so don't mind changing it. Any tips on the minimum requirements to store and play HD music files? (I play them through a DAC).
John

I have had relatively successful (talking about the hassles with any PC, used as a source) playback of all types of files, via two rather geriatric laptop PCs one an Acer ( Acer 1810TZ Notebook) and one a Fujitsu, in theory neither should have worked, but they did not play SACD (ripped via a PS3 I assume), not in DSD, but ISO. A more modern Windows 8 does play these with no issues.

If you want to play DSD then I think you will need a more modern computer, but if you are happy with 24 bit up to 192, then give your Acer a go. Download Fidelizer (it minimises Windows function to concentrate on music, the degree of which you can pick) and JRiver as the server program.

[roob]

Get the most system memory you can 16GB+, if your media player has a memory playback feature use this, the song is loaded into that memory and played back from there cutting down on accessing the hard drive during playback so uses less resources.

[JohnNB]

Thanks Neil. Your advice may be related to Andy's message below. I use Foobar2000, but haven't explored whether it's got memory. I'll have a look and give it a try. My rDAC only handles 24bit/96khz, and I'm happy to stick with that for now. I'm using Windows 10, which I believe uses a lot of memory. Will look for Fidelizer. I didn't fancy paying for JRiver even though |I enjoyed the free trial, and found it easier to use than Foobar. This is a big learning curve for me.

[Andrei]

Get the most system memory you can 16GB+, if your media player has a memory playback feature use this, the song is loaded into that memory and played back from there cutting down on accessing the hard drive during playback so uses less resources.

+1. 16GB is plenty. Any extra dosh in the memory budget can go on faster memory. I specified 1866 Mhz ram on my build a few years ago. No doubt you can improve on that now. You will want foo_ramdisk and foo_out_wasapi
from http://www.foobar2000.org/components . You load the files into memory manually with the mouse by alt-clicking and choosing Utilities → Add to RAM-Disk.

[JohnNB]

Brilliant. Thanks Andrei.

[Audio Advent]

Hi,
I have dipped my toe into the world of HD music downloads but my little Acer Aspire One isn't fast enough to play high res music files smoothly without breaks in playback. I took the laptop to my local laptop repair shop as I hoped I could increase the memory to solve this. It's got 1GB memory and 250GB hard drive. According to shop the processor is too slow to cope with music files properly and this can't be changed. So I need to replace it. It's over 5 years old so don't mind changing it. Any tips on the minimum requirements to store and play HD music files? (I play them through a DAC).
John

If a beige G3 Mac could happily run 16 odd tracks at 16/48 then I'd suggest it would be perfectly capable to play back 32/384 stereo had the hardware been around!

If you don't know old Macs, then this is a 1997 machine or so, equivalent of about a Pentium II or III .

So what prevents a machine like your Acer from playing HD tracks? Software. Software bloat from both the OS and the player software's own hardware demands. But of course you can't go backwards to get old machines to support modern USB dacs or other audio interfaces without using the bloated OS's.

Take a look at the Linux, open-source multi-track recording software Ardur for example - http://ardour.org/requirements.html . Recommended requirements are ANY 32 bit Intel processor, 2GB ram for multitrack where the limiting factor for sample rate will be your audio interface hardware. Processing power is only really needed for plug-ins, not playback.

EDIT: In other words, find the right software and OS for your Acer and all should be absolutely fine! Linux would likely be the solution.