OK – time to get into the last 2 bits of the PC. This is the sound card and the BluRay drive.
The BluRay Drive
I figured for this one that I should go to the source of all BluRay evil and pick a Sony. I figure if they can’t get the technology right for their own creations, then there’s no point to anything.
Sony have had a reputation for excellent technical implementations, with very poor (could you call it Draconian?) marketing – remember BetaMax? Sony tried to enforce their own rule that any movie company that put their movies onto the BetaMax format had to pay Sony a royalty – from memory, not just once per movie, but for every tape sold. FAIL!
Sony also got into a bit of hot water over some of their music CDs produced under the Sony BMG label that contained additional content (malware) that automatically installed whenever you placed it in a PC CD drive. FAIL!
And now, Sony finally got their wish to receive royalties for every BluRay disc and player (hardware or software) sold because they were able to convince the movie companies that their format provided the best copy protection. Fair enough – I’m not one who downloads movies or rips them off friends, I’ve purchased originals of all my DVDs and BluRays. The unfortunate thing is that the copy protection is so, ummm, “good”, that you have to jump through numerous hoops to get it working even when you’ve got all the legitimate discs! FAIL!
Anyway, that’s my vent. At the end of the day, it wasn’t just Sony that was responsible, but given their history, I think it’s safe to say that they held a large part of the sway in the development of the format and the “protection” and restrictions that go along with it.
…but back to my original point, I bought a Sony BWU-500S BluRay drive which has been faultless from the start, so all good on that front.
The Sound Card
I can’t even begin to tell you how much research I put into this. But I’ll try anyway!
I read just about every review on every sound card that seemed suitable. This included offerings from (the final choice) Asus, Auzentech, Creative and HT Omega Claro (the Halo XT). I looked at all the specs, compared it with what I wanted and pretty much narrowed it down to the only choice for me – the Asus Xonar HDAV 1.3 Deluxe. This card has swappable opamps so of course I had to spend a couple of weeks researching the best opamps going around. I finally came across some produced by a company called Burson Audio out of Melbourne that seemed to fit the bill for the sound quality I was looking for. The only trick was going to be fitting these large opamps into the cramped space on the card.
Pictured below is the card after installation of some Burson Audio opamps as well as some temporary Burr-Brown OPA627AP IC opamps in the daughter card.
 The Mother Card! Can you spot the mod? |  Here’s a hint – there used to be an EMI shield covering this entire card. |
 Anybody want an EMI shield? One owner, never used, great condition! |  |
 Here’s the daughter card with some minor mods applied. The row of IC opamps just above the row of capacitors are Burr-Brown OPA627AP chips on single-channel to dual-channel adapters. More mods to come for this one – just got to save up a little more cash! |  Terrible pic, I know, but if you look really closely you can see the Mother Card at the top with the Burson opamps and the daughter card at the bottom left has now been partially modded with another Burson opamp in the buffer section for the centre/subwoofer output. |
My final choice of sound card was based on compatibility with all the BluRay “standards”, quality out of the box, but with the capability to upgrade through some mods to the card. That pretty much left the Asus and the HT Omega, although I couldn’t find anywhere that sold the HT Omega new, so that really only left the Asus.
I would have liked to have gone for the slightly higher-specced Asus Essence ST/STX, but the only one that enabled a connection to the daughter card for full 7.1 analogue output was the ST which was only available as a PCI card (and not PCIe). And of course, I bought a motherboard that didn’t have any older PCI slots. Gaaaaah! Asus, you fools! Oh well, I’m sure there was a good reason for it, I’m just venting again…
Quick Impressions
Out of the box prior to any mods, I wasn’t that impressed with the card. All the reviews I read raved about the Asus being a true audiophile card, but unless audiophiles have lowered their standards recently, I didn’t hear it myself. Don’t get me wrong, the card is probably one of the highest quality PC sound cards you can buy, but I was hoping for more. The mid-range sounded a little “dead” – in particular the guitars on Dire Straits’ “Brothers in Arms”. They seemed to lose their “crunch” and tone and there seemed to be some artifacts being produced in the lower to mid-bass that weren’t all that pleasant.
Although, I must say that this sound balance worked pretty well for movies – it was already better to my ears than what I was previously getting through my Marantz SR5600 which is a pretty nice piece of equipment in its own right. Everything seemed to have much more presence and involved you more in the movie.
I’ll leave it until my next post to discuss the complete detail of how this card sounded out of the box and how it sounds now with the Burson discrete opamps. The short story is that with the Burson’s, this piece of kit is definitely what I would call “high-end” and nothing short of absolutely sensational. Especially running through my Anthem PVA7 power amp and Paradigm Titan speakers.
Anyway, more on that later.
The Modding Process
Gotta say – it was a little tricky. There’s not a lot of room between the 3 IC opamps on the Mother Card. I originally purchased 3 Burson opamps with 8-pin DIP headers installed. The front (buffer) section accepted that quite nicely, but left me questioning how on earth I was going to squeeze the other two in.
In my first (failed) attempt, I de-soldered the DIP headers from 2 of the opamps and tried to bend the remaining length in the leads so that they would fit. I managed to fit one (just!) but I didn’t have enough length left in the leads to fit the other one. Then I thought that they might fit nicely in the front sections of the daughter card (for the centre/subwoofer and L/R side surround outputs). It was then that I discovered I had destroyed one of the opamps in my de-soldering attempts. D’OH!!!
So I bought 2 more to fit back into the Mother Card and this time I got them with 4cm leads that I could bend into just about any position I needed. I didn’t want to stretch my already questionable soldering skills by trying to de-solder the DIP sockets and then re-solder the opamps directly to the board, so I just got lazy and plugged the leads directly into the corresponding points on each socket. Works perfectly and the opamps are not moving so I’m not fussed.
Conclusion
So that was pretty much all the bits for the PC done. Other than the work of installing all the software, everything was good to go.
For all the parts listed below, I had spent just under $2500 and got a piece of equipment that is way better than anything I’ve ever owned and as good as stuff that I’ve heard in Hi-Fi stores costing twice as much and more (just for the receiver/processor). Am I stoked? The answer to that is a very qualified and enthusiastic “Yes!”
The bits are:
- Silverstone GD01MX case
- Silverstone Strider Gold power supply
- Gigabyte GA-H67MA-D2H-B3 motherboard
- Intel i3-2100 CPU @ 3.1GHz
- 4GB Corsair DDR3 RAM module @ 1333MHz
- 2 x Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB drives
- Sony BWU-500S BluRay drive
- Asus Xonar HDAV 1.3 Deluxe sound card
- Burson Audio and Burr-Brown opamps for sound card mods
- Analogue audio cables + HDMI cable
Next up – I’ll give you my subjective review of the system (audio primarily, but video also).
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