AMD Fusion APU

[reignofchaos]

Sorry for being noob, but where do u connect the e-Sata port of the cabinet to, in the mobo? Also, there would be absolutely no gaming in this PC for me, so i suppose the board should be perfect for media playback.

Also, am looking at something like this to store all my storage and share between multiple HTPCs...

Lian Li Industrial Co., Ltd.

Thats why i asked about USB 3.0 and e-Sata support.I think i would connect to the close HTPC via USB 3.0 and to the distant one via e-SATA(if i can find long enough cable that is).

I connected the e-sata port of the case to a normal sata port on the motherboard with the cable provided in the case. It works flawlessly.

I really wanted a mini itx lian li but all of them were just too big. They are very nice cases.

 

[Imrahn]

^^Thanx a lot mate....

 

[ShakenSoul]

I just got the poor man's HTPC cabinet CM Elite 360

Pretty decent cabinet and size for a HTPC.

I am using the Rii Mini Wireless keyboard

Rii Mini Wireless Keyboard is perfect for your HTPC, not your Wii (video) -- Engadget

Does a decent job, range is not great but solves your HTPC purpose.

Anyways I am using a Media Center Remote control with XBMC and I hardly use the wireless keyboard. XBMC has inbuilt support for the remote and I believe its a must for any HTPC with XBMC, provides a flawless media experience.

 

[hydra]

The last item that I needed got here today:



I hope to have the PC up and running by tonight

 

[gobble]

Hydra

I am particularly interested in hearing about the MUSICALITY of the Essence ST. I know it can provide good sound seperation and clean output etc., but I never heard anyone sing praises like "foot tapping quality" "emotive" etc.

Thanks

 

[Gijo George]

Congrats hydra.
Waiting for you to set everything up to come over check out your new "toy":licklips:

Can hopefully contribute our opinions on the "DAC Dynamics" thread, on the (if any) differences from the digital out of the MB vs SC to DAC and analogue out from SCetc.

 

[hydra]

The PC is done! :yahoo:

Pictures:
Work-in-progress


Nearly done


The finished product

..


With the amp plugged in to the RCA outs of the Xonar STX


More pics in my thread: http://www.hifivision.com/my-audio-video-setup/17554-making-baby-steps-into-hi-fi-4.html

...
I am particularly interested in hearing about the MUSICALITY of the Essence ST. I know it can provide good sound seperation and clean output etc., but I never heard anyone sing praises like "foot tapping quality" "emotive" etc.
...

I've noted down initial listening impressions in my thread (URL mentioned above, see post #38)

The SC is quite musical. Frankly, I don't have enough listening experience with home audio to really judge how musical it is. It is quite adequate for my needs (= I'm not going to be looking for an external DAC for a long time). A friend of mine who has listened to quite a few home setups visited me yesterday and he was very very impressed and his bank balance will probably take a substantial hit soon

...
Can hopefully contribute our opinions on the "DAC Dynamics" thread, on the (if any) differences from the digital out of the MB vs SC to DAC and analogue out from SCetc.

Thanks, Gijo! Well, I actually will not be able to help there. You see, to play it safe, I've disabled the on-board sound in the BIOS and I've not even loaded the MB's sound drivers. I did read in some forums that not doing this can cause issues while installing the STX, and there can be conflicts post-installation also.

But I will be making a comparison of the STX's analogue outputs > amp > speakers vs. the STX > optical > Caiman > amp > speakers chain. They are coming up soon in my thread (mentioned above). I have done the comparison, and just need time to write about it.

 

[gobble]

I've noted down initial listening impressions in my thread (URL mentioned above, see post #38)

The SC is quite musical. Frankly, I don't have enough listening experience with home audio to really judge how musical it is.

Thats easy. Do you have any Donkey Bray tracks? A good source will make even a Donkey Bray sound musical. You dont have to be an audiophile for that ... only a donkeyphile hyeah:

--G

 

[vivekphadnis]

Hey Hydra, congratulations.

I too bought that Lenovo mini keyboard. It's a great little thing.

 

[hydra]

Thats easy. Do you have any Donkey Bray tracks? A good source will make even a Donkey Bray sound musical. You dont have to be an audiophile for that ... only a donkeyphile hyeah:

Hey Hydra, congratulations.

I too bought that Lenovo mini keyboard. It's a great little thing.

Thanks, Vivek!

Yep, that is a handy little keyboard, isn't it? I've now really got the hang of it (both the trackball and the keyboard parts) and can zip through tasks pretty well.

 

[grebe925]

Tried the system for the first time today. 720p files play okay but there is jerky video in some scenes. I wanted to play around with the hardware acceleration settings. But overall, it looks good.

I would suggest this guide to set up the AMD GPU to use DXVA:

Watching H.264 videos using DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA)

After using his guide, MPC-HC smoothly plays anything I throw at it on my Radeon 3200 based system without taxing the CPU. I would also have the latest version of VLC media player installed as an alternative to MPC-HC.

 

[vivekphadnis]

I am using VLC with the K-Lite Codec Pack and it is perfect now.

 

[reignofchaos]

Have sorted out most of the video issues now. There were two main issues

SD Scaling : Got bicubic 1.0 scaling working in Media Player Classic using Dscaler with sharpen pixel shader. Its stunning how good low quality SD video looks now! Its significantly better than any media player or PS3 and rivals ABT/HQV standalone.

L5.1 HP decoding via DXVA2: This is normally a h.264 profile that very rarely exists but you do find one or two odd downloaded movies. ATI has been supporting this since mid 2010. You need a UVD2/UVD3 card to accelerate L5.1 High Profile and if using the ffdshow DXVA decoder, you'd would wan't to disable all checks in ffdshow since L5.1 is officially not a part of the DXVA spec by microsoft.

AFAIK no one box media player plays L5.1 HP encoded content correctly.

 

[hydra]

...

SD Scaling : Got bicubic 1.0 scaling working in Media Player Classic using Dscaler with sharpen pixel shader. Its stunning how good low quality SD video looks now! Its significantly better than any media player or PS3 and rivals ABT/HQV standalone.
...

Could you explain what you did exactly? I googled "Dscaler" and could understand you probably used Dscaler5. How do we set this up? Sorry if it is a very obvious thing -- I have no idea about video

 

[reignofchaos]

You can use pixel shaders to resize the video using bicubic interpolation for better image quality. Dscaler is not integrated into ffdshow so all you need to do is use ffdshow as your DXVA decoder in media player classic. You need to enable dscaler in ffdshow config. Also the output has to be set to EVR custom preset and resizer to Bicubic. Finally you need to set the pixel shader to sharpen complex.

SD video looks excellent after this.

 

[hydra]

^^ Ok, that sounded complicated, but I guess taking it it step by step, I might be able to try it out. Looks like I have something to try out for the weekend. Thanks!

 

[ShakenSoul]

What is the best way to play ripped bluray folder, .m2ts files from the hard drive. I am having trouble playing them with MPC.

 

[reignofchaos]

Just open the m2ts file directly. It should open MPC has problems with opening bluray dumps directly. Else you could use PowerDVD which reads m2ts with proper bluray menus etc. However PowerDVD costs money!

 

[ShakenSoul]

Thanks. Let me try PowerDVD11 from 'ahem' cannot be named sources to play bluray folder.

 

[hydra]

I use an MSI E350-IA-E45 mobo.

I've been getting system freezes/crashes every 1 hour of running or so since the last 3 days. The system continues getting power, but the signal to the TV (via HDMI) is lost. The OS apparently freezes. The system fans stay on. I have to lean on the power switch or the reset switch to switch the system off.

Since there were no software updates/installs or driver updates/installs or hardware changes, I didn't suspect Win 7.

Just now I left the machine on, on the BIOS screen, to monitor the CPU and System temperature. The CPU temp kept climbing and the system switched itself off (system fans stayed on, power light was on) at 68 degrees C. The system temp was 42 or 43 degrees C at that time.

I've attached a snap of the screen I took a few seconds before the system switched itself off.

Are these temps too high? Should I change any of the the fan settings? The system was running fine for the past few months on exactly the same settings, so I'm wondering where the problem is. Is the Mobo packing up?

@roc and @vivek, you guys have the same mobo, right? What are your idle temps like?