HTPC vs Lex MC12B or Casablanca

Hey Steve,


Does that mean that HTPC are not capable of surround sound decoding? Or just not to the degree an audiophile would be happy with?


I have heard the pass through on the Theta is very good as is its pre amp section. I run my Wadias direct and have had to manually change the connectors every time I change to HT.


Thanks.


Bruce.

Hey Rick,


You have a HTPC that is as good as a standalone processor but you still use the CBIII as a processor? So bottom line is that using the state of the art computer parts, I will not be able to get anywhere near the performance of a dedicated processor?


I can understand that the power supply, circuitry, software, DACs are not exactly optimized nor are high end components used in a HTPC so I guess I am being unrealistic for a HTPC to replace a CBIII and Esoteric UX1.


I have heard that the Lynx 2 sound processor card is good and uses high end crystal dacs but I guess the rest of the HTPC still uses lousy power supplies and less than optimized analog sections.


I was wondering about the quality of the transport in an HTPC as well.


Is it fair to say that an HTPC can replace the DVD player, can even do surround decoding but would not give a result that an audiophile would be happy with?


Bruce.

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128bit is the memory bus (and has nothing to do with the DAC quality). Some benefits of HTPC:


- Can play most video formats

- Playback SW is very versatile (different color and AR settings are possible for each DVD)

- Purely digital path (DVD, MPEG2 decoding, deinterlacer, scaling, output on DVI all in the digital domain)

- Ability for more advanced automation

- Superior image quality on film sources... video sources need an additional board for good deinterlacing (the deinterlacer in video cards stink).

- Some others I've forgotten about


As for audio, you can get exceptional audio quality from a HTPC. Take a look/listen to the Lynx line of cards ($800-1k)... a lot of CDs are mastered using a high end soundcard. You have to be careful though... not all cards have good bass management. If the DVD/CD player is your only source, then I'd consider a full HTPC solution. If you plan on having multiple sources (LP, TV, etc.) then get a separate pre/pro and use the HTPC for video (output audio digitally to the pre/pro).

I've been looking into some high-end audio cards recently. One of the features I was looking for in particular was the ability to accept an external word clock. Sure enough, a number of cards do that, including the LynxTWO, LynxAES, M-Audio Delta 1010, etc.


What's nice about this is that if you have an external DAC that provides an external clock output (or you use a separate clock altogether), you can completely eliminate any jitter caused by the HTPC itself. Add some power supply isolation and I really can't see any audiophile being disappointed by the quality of such as setup. After all, you're using the same DAC you've grown to love already. Of course, that's all on paper for now.


As a side benefit, I realized that some of these sound cards could also be used, in conjunction with a player from http://www.dvdupgrades.ch, to provide pristine bit-for-bit copies of DVD-Audio discs, and transparent, all-digital 24-bit/176.4kHz transcodes of SACD discs. Who would have thought you could store your high-res audio discs on a media server? But if you pay the right price, you can do just that.

Thanks everyone for their input.


I guess the bottom line is that the HTPC can in fact replace the dvd player as well as the processor.


However, the overall sound quality will not be the same. And for a guy that is used to listening to pretty good sound, an HTPC probably would not cut it, at least not for what I am looking to do.


I suppose in the future, there may be a card that can rival an extreme dac and perhaps DIY power supplies and circuitry that rival some of these high end brands but not today.


However, its all digital and convergence is happening as we speak. I do foresee when all digital media can be held on a server and called up anywhere, any time in a networked house.


For a couple thousand dollars, I will probably still build it and try the thing just for kicks. If I don't like it, I can still use the computer as a media server and still buy the casablanca or MC 12b.


Bruce.

Hi, Bruce.


As someone who once used an HTPC as a surround processor (analog outs - straight to power amps) and subsequently abandoned it for a Lexicon, let me say that the HTPC makes a stellar DVD player and scaler, but as an audio processor, it's a black hole.


Aside from the poor ways in which the Windows OS handles audio (which can be circumvented), there can be/are issues with digital volume processing, output voltage amplitude and more. But the biggest problem is that the companies that are producing DVD player software (such as WinDVD, PowerDVD and NVDVD) are focused primarily on the video side of things. And while they're doing a great job on that, the audio is still pretty weak.


While it's true that high-end cards like the Lynx are up to the task, in comparisons to something as pedestrian as a Denon receiver (as recently as a year or so ago), an HTPC simply did not measure up with regard to surround processing - and that's not necessarily a hardware issue.


At the time I was beating my head against this brick wall, there was no software DVD player that gave adequate software control over bass management, channel delay, crossover points, etc. The latest version of TheaterTek does all of that, though, and combined with a Lynx or RME card, who knows how close one might get to the performance of a Lex or CB? (Although you're still faced with inferior processing and steering algorithms, AFAIK.) If I were going to try this, though, TheaterTek 2.0 (with the Advanced Audio Pack) is where I would start.


As a DVD transport, my personal opinion is that an HTPC does an outstanding job. Some DVD drives do a better job than others wrt error correction, etc., but if you buy one of the better ones and rip the media to hard disk, you'll have none of the problems/issues associated with reading optical media.
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If you don't like it, you could use it as a high performance/low-cost scaler (or just sell it) but an HTPC doesn't necessarily make a great media server - completely different design criteria.
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While I agree with you about the HTPCs headaches, the second part of that statement isn't really accurate. Software DVD players offer excellent aspect ratio control and an unbeatable feature set. As an example, most SW DVD players offer a "bookmark" function that automatically recognizes the DVD and takes you to the actual start of the movie (or wherever you bookmark) - bypassing previews, commercials, studio vanity reels, etc. I don't know of any CE players with that functionality.


I'm unfamiliar with the Lumagen VisionPro HDP, but an HTPC does a superb job of scaling to 1080p, provides exceptionally granular control over the image, and does so for less than half the cost of the Lumagen unit and an SDI modded DVD deck (albeit at the cost of a painstaking build and tweaking process.)

Chris W:


The last thing I want to do for now is to introduce a PC and/or a client server system into my home entertainment system.


I already spend far too much time with them already, and as such I have chosen to avoid using them.


I've played with my laptop as an HTPC (Dell Inspiron 9100, with 128 MB Radeon 9700/1GB RAM/3.2GHz HT Pentium IV). It's quite powerful and gives me a good picture but it's not worth the effort involved to get HTPC up and running for me.


See above about the amount of time I spend on computers. I have a feeling that my sentiment is very similar to others.


Plus, the hardware available as ASICs is dramatically more powerful than what's available in an HTPC.



Cheers,

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John, could you elaborate on this statement? I agree that a specialized ASIC will outperform a general CPU for it's intended task. However, a HTPC contains 2 very powerful chips (CPU and GPU) that allows you to perform standard scaling and deinterlacing tasks + additional processing (ffdshow, etc.). Compare this with an ASIC solution found in an external scaler... the HTPC results are vastly superior (for a given price point). Oh, I almost forgot: how many resolutions can modern external scalers handle? A HTPC allows you to drive an exact resolution and refresh rate (very nice for those people with strange native resolutions on their digital PJs).


I agree with you about fiddling with computers... it's a pain. With my recent HTPC build I used Acronis TrueImage to completely back up the O/S partition. Now if something starts acting flaky I simply restore the original install (takes about 10min for 4GB+). Saved files (DVD profiler entries, remote codes, etc.) reside on a separate partition.

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To each his own, and I completely understand and can relate to your sentiment. That said, I'm not sure you can fully appreciate what a well-designed HTPC/media server can do for ease of use.


By ripping your entire CD collection (in a lossless format, of course) and DVD collection to your media server, you can have virtually instantaneous access to all your media. (SACD and DVD-A excepted.) Using WiFi-enabled Pocket PCs as activity-centric (rather than device-centric) remote controls - with full-color, fully-customizable screens, you have complete bi-directional remote control. Pick up a PPC anywhere in the house, browse your music collection and press play. Or hand the PPC to a guest and let them browse your DVD collection, make a selection, and press play - all the associated gear powers up, inputs are configured, and the movie immediately begins playing. You can even interface it with your lighting system and motorized draperies.


Properly configured, it's a thing of beauty. (But yes, the path that gets you there can be filled with aggravation.)

Hi leedc,


I'm glad you started this thread as I have been making exactly the same evaluation you asked about for a couple of months now. The conclusion I have come to is that HTPCs can do some things very very well. If you listen to recorded music (other than DVD-A or SACD unless you are willing to transcode an analog signal which works quite well) or if you watch pre-recorded video, HTPC with maybe a Lynx or RME card could work for you--depending on your base management needs and spekaer set-up.


If you watch a lot of HD off the air and HD-satellite or listen to SACDs like I do, it may well be true as was remarked earlier that HTPC would be an audio black hole.


I am going to buy an Anthem Statement D1, Theta CBIII, Meridian G68 or Lex 12B. But I'm going to wait until they figure out how they are going to handle HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, IEEE 1394 and HDMI. My point being that stand alone high end processors have their shortcomings too. An HTPC is in the long run more flexible via new programs and new boards. Just one example inferred above, all those high end processors can't handle DD 7.1 inputs like many receivers can--but a Lynx or RME can easily do that at much less cost.


Bottom Line: the solution depends on your planned use and how much effort you are willing to put into it. There is no one solution for better or for worse. Now why nobody has seen the market opporunity here is beyond all of us....

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While it isn't cheap (hey, this is the $20K+ part of the forum!) you could check out the Kaleidescape. It not only has the bookmark feature you mention, but you don't have to bookmark it manually. It will also be able to interface with an automatic screen masking system to adjust your screen masks for the aspect ratio of the film and will dim the lights when the film starts and raise them when the end credits start to roll. It will also combine two-disc films into one seemless film automatically.


I had several HTPCs and they have been demoted to scaling from SDI modded players and/or running my Odyssee (very good at that!).