[TriLUG] prowling for a small form-factor Linux box

Michael Hrivnak mhrivnak at triad.rr.com
Thu Feb 5 10:14:58 EST 2004


Being an audiophile, I'll pipe in here.  Computers are radio interference 
factories.  The smaller your box, the more interference will be concentrated 
around your sound card.  Laptops are terrible about picking up interference 
on audio channels.

That said, moving parts are a major producer of interference.  I like the 
diskless idea.

The only sure-fire way to get a quality audio signal away from your 
interference factory is through a digital cable.  I have very good results 
however with a soundblaster live! 5.1 with three analog outputs to my 5.1 
speaker system.  The ultimate home theater option would be a digital 5.1 
optical cable from your computer directly into your 5.1 surround sound stereo 
system.

On that note, I find the best place to buy QUALITY audio equipment is Now! 
Audio/Video.  Their staff is extremely knowledgeable, and all of their 
products are top of the line (don't expect bestbuy products and prices).

Good luck.

Michael

On Thursday 05 February 2004 09:24 am, Andrew Perrin wrote:
> Neat idea. What about using a mini-itx setup (see
> http://www.mini-itx.com/)? Typically, as I understand it, these take
> low-power, and therefore low-noise and low-heat, processors. There's no
> reason you couldn't buy a high-end sound card and pop it in.  No fans on
> the downstairs box should mean low interference with your sound system
> too.
>
> If you wanted to get really fancy, you could try booting it off the net,
> so you'd have no disk in the machine either.
>
> ap
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Andrew J Perrin - http://www.unc.edu/~aperrin
> Assistant Professor of Sociology, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
> clists at perrin.socsci.unc.edu * andrew_perrin (at) unc.edu
>
> On Thu, 5 Feb 2004, Greg Brown wrote:
> > Hey all.  I'm starting to search for a small form-factor linux box.
> > The purpose of this server is going to be the front-end of my home
> > audio system.  I've been ordered to get the 400 or so CDs digitized,
> > organized, categorized, etc.  So, my thoughts here are to rip
> > everything to MP3 (to allow for portability between the Macs) and place
> > all the files on my upstairs disk server.
> >
> > I'm looking for a small form factor *with excellent audio* (as I'd like
> > to plug this into my existing home audio system via RCA jacks) and an
> > PHP/Apache web server to sit downstairs on a 100 meg link.  All the CDs
> > and tracks will be organized in a MySQL database residing on the disk
> > server.  The user interface will be the PHP/Apache interface on the
> > small form factor box.  The idea here is the little, and hopefully
> > quiet, box will pull songs off the disk server and cache them on the
> > audio server to be played over the stereo.
> >
> > Does anyone have any idea what might fit this bill?  Audio quality and
> > noise are the highest factors followed by appearance and power draw.
> > I'm hoping to find something that sounds great, looks great, and uses
> > little power.   Heh.. if only it were that easy!
> >
> > Greg
> >
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