Multimedia PC

Crucial part changing, Soundcard

2008-02-05T04:53:00.000+07:00

If you planning on better sound reproduction came out from your speaker, you need to change your sound source to a better one, in other words you should change your soundcard.
My onboard audio from gigabyte's motherboard was pretty decent for a common listener. But actually I think this motherboard missed some important factor when used for music listening. A bit lack in treble and bass made it sound a bit muddy in my Altec Lansing VS2121. It also produce a so-so bass that neither thumping nor tight. For a frequent music listener like me, who use winamp whenever I turn on my PC, that's pretty unsatisfying. Not that I hate the sound, but if you can improve the audio creation from your PC by changing your soundcard, then why not?
Hopefully, when I was searching for a good soundcard to replace my onboard one, my dad give his not-so-old "EDIROL" UA 25 to me. When I first saw this soundcard, I thought that this was a studio dedicated soundcard. But of course you can also used it as a standard soundcard too. EDIROL brand comes from the same company of renowned pro audio company, ROLAND. This thing was an external type soundcard, so you can plug your instrument in two input jacks ( if you intend to do some recording ), plug your speaker cable through the output jacks, and even adjusting volume level was all made easier. Oh and it support DIGITAL IN and OUT (coaxial) too. But this soundcard not supporting multichannel speakers, and it just have a RCA type connection. It's a recording dedicated soundcard afterall, and I don't really need a multichannel speakers cause I rarely watching movies or playing games in my PC.
Now comes to the sound quality. Well if I compared this to my onboard audio, it produce a noticeable difference. The treble was more crisp and clean thus it gives much more detail from my speakers. Bass and midrange was also sound cleaner and tighter. Though I thought that this soundcard was a bit too bright, but overall it improves the sound reproduction and it indeed better than my onboard audio.

Motherboard Changing

2007-10-18T21:20:00.000+07:00

Nowadays, people tend to use a newer version of memory, which is DDR2. And so do I. DDR2 can perform faster than the previous version of DDR, so it became pretty essential for modern desktop.

Unfortunately, my old motherboard doesn't support this newtype DDR cause it support up to DDR400 and couldn't go to DDR2 which start from working frequency of 533. I made up my mind on using DDR2 memory, so I go to some computer mall and hunt some decent motherboard. And after spent some time searching for 'em, I decided to buy a GIGABYTE motherboard coded GA-965PDS3.

This motherboard uses Intel 965 chipset and cost me about $150 at the time I bought them, and I'm pretty sure the price should have gone down by now. The other feature this motherboard offers was three PCI slot, one PCIe 16x, 8 SATA port, realtek 8 channel onboard audio with digital (S/PDIF) output, four memory socket with dual channel configuration, and it's using gigabyte's famous solid capacitor for longer durability. It also support quadcore processor and of course DDR2 (up to DDR2 800).

Upon changing my motherboard, I put my Corsair TwinX2 1Gb DDR2 667 into two of four socket and also my old 2.66 GHz Pentium D in its place. Well I don't feel the difference immediately, but when I tried it on some game, it does have a better performance than my previous one, and I'm pretty much satisfied in investing on this board.

Misc: Computer Expo

2007-07-29T20:03:00.000+07:00

Today I came to a Computer Expo held at one of the exhibition building in my city. There's many reason for me to come there. First, we might found something not usually sold at a shop in usual time, and I did found that! I see a soundcard that not usually found in any shop in my city, but it's too bad that I'm not bring much money that time, so I just skipped this rare opportunity (T_T). Second, if there was an expo, then there's a high chance that we can get something that have lower cost than usual (I bought a flashdisk with 2 Gb capacity and it cost me about $15, which is $5 lower than usual price). But in the end, I just coming out with just a new flashdisk in my pocket and I bought no other things. It's ok though, because there's many exhibition held on August too, so I just wait till the next expo and start 'hunting' for something valuable there ^_^

Speaker Change : Altec Lansing VS2121

2007-07-27T06:23:00.002+07:00

In late 2005 (several month after I bought my PC), I decided to change my speaker first. The only reason for that is because my standard speaker is way too awful to hear. It give a muddy sound and no bass punch at all.

The speaker I used to replace my standard speaker is Altec Lansing VS2121. It cost me about $40 (if the currency of my country are converted to US Dollar, that is). This speaker have a total power of 28 watt RMS (well that's pretty much and far exceed my previous speaker system which is only have 5 watt of power). As I expected, this speakers sounds much better than my old speaker. It have clearer sound, both in treble and mid, and it have a nice bass too (because it's a 2.1 configured speaker, that have a subwoofer in their package for producing low frequency sound including bass and some lower mid).

I'm pretty satisfied with my setup now. Changing my first speaker was really made my music listening experience different than before. But my multimedia-PC building just begun, and there's a lot more to do before I can consider my PC as a multimedia PC.

Making multimedia PC : First thought

2007-07-26T15:01:00.000+07:00

If you interested in watching movies, music listening, or maybe playing games, you may think that you need an LCD display, a DVD and CD player that can play your DVD movies or music CD's to feed your interest in movies and musics, a home theater speaker system that may be accompanied by a good AV receiver for better Audio and Video output, and a video game console. And for that, the cost you have to pay would be so high.

Then, if you have the same interest yet tight on budget and don't want to spend that much of money, you can easily make your Desktop computer into a multimedia PC that can accomplish all of your multimedia needs. The cost would be quite low compared to make a real multimedia system, and the goods you need will relatively easy to find