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OK, it now looks like my dive in the world of PC is over and I pretty much know where I am staying. A well of so ago I was completely ignorant about the subject but now I could at least to understand what the common buzz-worlds means and able to ask more or less related questions. I still have no practical experience with the field and do not necessary know what the relation between those buzz-worlds and actual Sound now, based on collective “somebody’s else experience” I kind of understand what I am trying to do. Since I was bothering people with all of it I would like to compile my thought that I end up with.

First all of I would like to express gratitude to all whoa assist me and advised me: the contributors of this site, the numerous people who send me direct emails, the recording engineers and technicians, the application engineers designers at some manufacturing houses and some dealers who believe me or not turned out be quite knowledgeable.

The very interesting aspect of my PC’s Audio exploration was a reassuring from very many people (with different credentials) that the recording sound to PC might yield very-very good result if it done properly. I still do not know how their definition of “very-very good result” might correlate with my own definition of “good result” but you and myself will learn about it in a few weeks. Also, I would like to point out that the my objectives of “success” of this entire experiment is not just get of PC “very-very good Sound” but to be able to preserve this “magic” of FM broadcasts that I fell might be more completed…. Anyhow, I have finish the “collect data” stage regarding this subject; the entire PC system is done and being assembled and anticipate it will take a few weeks (or more) to learn how to get out of it Sound that it might be capable of. Then it will be assessed and reported.

Here are some summarizing observations…

The PC:  Low processor speed, SCSI hard drives at 10,000 RPM… still looking for an old CD burner that will be able to writhe 1X speed. I have some people who telling me that it IS possible to burn a superb quality CDs and they share some their experiences how it should be done. I am very skeptical that I will be able to do it BUT I have heard their custom CD and I do confirm that their results were way ahead of any other custom CDs that I heard. Some radical people suggest building own non-switching PS for the recording/storing PC but I do not go for it at this point. The PC has WaveStudio, EAC and the newest Nero Recording Programs. The Sound Card… All my expirations ended up with practically unanimous recommendations of Lynx products.  The chose went for Lynx AES16 card as a better AES/EBU interface. As it turn out that Lynx 22 does not have as sophisticated output stage as AES16 and runs a previous, jitterier generation of Lynx’s outs. Also, the AES16 has transformers coupled outputs the make the entire card with more menacing ground to the rest of my systems. (Still I glad that I did not go optical and I initial though I would need). Also, the AES16 has a lot of advantages over the AES16-SRC as it has no module that allows perform the sample rate conversion.  In the end there are people who would build custom XLR cable sets (replacement for the stock CBL-AES1604) extending it as long as I wish. The AES16 can perfectly fine to run a quite long cubes. Use the SPIDIF input with this card is perfectly kosher thing to do but many people explicitly rejected ideas to use anything then AES/EBU at out stage of this card. Thanks God the BiDat runs AES/EBU and … I hope it will be up to the task…. The DAC as I told was Lavry’s Gold AD122 MKII. People pretty much shared between Prism, Pacific and Lavry but I have personal experiences with Lavrys and his concept that using his Gold line ADC and DAC should produce no other resent then a simple straight wire do sound very impressive, although quite bogus. Also, and it is very important for me… it would be possible to get rid of that miserable gold Lavry’s front plate… ;-)

In the end it would be VERY VERY cool if the PC recoding turn out to be sufficient enough to record the FM broadcast. In addition, it tunes out to be way less expensive then I thought it would be. I was thinking that the project might cost around $15K but it turn out to be way less expansive. Anyhow, I do not what to sound that the project is over, as I have no reference points about the Sound I will get out of this. However, I have no further frustrations of questions at this point and all that I need is to make it to work. I will report the results….

Rgs,
Romy the caT

PS: Dan Lavry: Truth in Tone Coloring

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