Building a Windows MCE 2005 PC - Part 3
Installing and configuring Media Center 2005, the tuner and display setup, and the things the manual does not tell you.
Home theatre, digital audio, and the measurements behind the arguments about them.
34 articles.
Installing and configuring Media Center 2005, the tuner and display setup, and the things the manual does not tell you.
Living with the finished machine: what worked, what did not, and what I would do differently.
The first part of a look at what is true and what is folklore in digital audio: sample rates, bit depth, and the arguments that will not go away.
The build itself — case, motherboard, tuners and the quiet-running compromises a machine that lives in a living room has to make.
A review of Cary Audio Design's Cinema 6 AV processor, with bench measurements alongside the listening.
The Marantz DV6500 universal player with the JLTi analogue-stage modification, measured and listened to against the standard machine.
A review of the Panasonic DVD-S97 universal player, including its video processing and how it handles progressive output.
Building a Windows Media Center Edition 2005 home theatre PC: what the platform could do in 2005, and choosing the parts.
A review of the Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 for MichaelDVD.
Why signals that exceed digital full scale between samples clip in the reconstruction filter, how much headroom players actually leave, and what it does to the sound.
The last of the series: SACD against CD on the same titles, and a look at whether the format or the master is doing the work.
Turning the same measurements on vinyl: LP transfers against their CD counterparts, and where the audible differences really come from.
Recording the CD, DVD-A and SACD releases of one album through the same converter and comparing what came back — waveforms, levels and ultrasonic content.
The second part of the format comparison: spectral analysis of the same three transfers, and what the ultrasonic energy above 22kHz actually contains.
Closing the three-format comparison with the dynamic range figures, and what they say about mastering rather than about the formats themselves.
A short measurement note: harmonic distortion that turned out to belong to the amplifier rather than to any of the players feeding it.
A 2004 APC Magazine roundup of four Windows programs for watching and recording digital television in Australia, reproduced from the Word file as it was sent to the magazine, editorial scaffolding and all.
The same 2004 roundup after APC's Dan Warne had been through it, a third shorter, with a co-author added, the boxout cut and two of my mistakes fixed.
The third piece of my July 2004 APC batch, a Girder and TIRA tutorial with two boxouts, reproduced from the manuscript as it left my hands — with the draft's self-written brief and what changed between the two versions on the way to the deadline.
The myHTPC workshop from my July 2004 APC batch, reproduced from the manuscript that went to the magazine — the piece that was commissioned at the highest rate, abandoned on day one under an XMLTV heading, and finished across one long weekend.
The first version of the 0dBFS+ work: what six players and one amplifier actually did with peaks that exceed digital full scale.
Why most of my music DVDs did not sound as good as my CDs, traced through the waveforms of the same recordings in every format the discs offered.
Why a PC beat three set-top DVD players in my own living room, and what it took to build one that was quiet enough to sit beside them.
A review of the Pioneer DV-S733A for MichaelDVD, written with Tony Rogers.
Subjects across the audio and video, sized by the number of articles each one appears in. Each one leads to every article on that subject, in whatever category it was filed under.