Part 2 — Building the System
In Part 1, the idea was relatively simple: build a small computer around a Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum Pro.
But once the first enclosure started taking shape, another idea emerged.
What if this wasn’t one computer?
What if the X-Fi machine became one component of a complete audio system?
That question led to a rather unusual direction: a stack of small, dedicated computers, each built around a particular piece of hardware and each occupying its own place in a system inspired by the modular hi-fi equipment of the 1990s.
It looks less like a collection of PCs and more like a hi-fi system that might have existed around the turn of the millennium.
Except it never did.
From PC to Hi-Fi System
The inspiration for the design isn’t really the traditional PC.
It is the component hi-fi system.
During the 1990s, manufacturers such as Sony, Denon, Pioneer and Technics produced systems made from individual components that shared the same width, proportions and visual language.
A CD player could sit on top of an amplifier. A tuner could be added below it. A cassette deck could become another component.
Each box had a specific job.
The idea here is to follow the same philosophy, except the components contain computers.
The Four Components
The current concept consists of four components.
At the top is the Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum Pro external unit. Its distinctive front panel is the visual centerpiece of the system.
Immediately below it is the computer built around the X-Fi PCI card.
The computer uses the same compact GIGABYTE GA-J1800N-D2PH Mini-ITX platform described in Part 1. The X-Fi card is installed horizontally using a 90-degree PCI riser, allowing the entire computer to remain shallow enough to match the external Platinum unit.
Below that comes another computer.
This time, the same basic hardware platform houses an E-MU 0404 PCI.
The idea is deliberately symmetrical: two small computers based on essentially the same hardware, but with completely different personalities because of the audio interfaces they contain.
The X-Fi machine represents the consumer PC audio world of its era—surround sound, gaming, Dolby Digital and DTS.
The E-MU machine represents another side of PC audio: recording, professional audio and high-quality stereo reproduction.
Finally, at the bottom of the stack is another small computer whose main purpose is to house a CD drive.
It is perhaps the most excessive component of the whole system.
And that is precisely why I like it.
A Computer Just for a CD Drive
There is obviously no technical requirement for a CD drive to have its own computer.
A single modern PC could handle the CD drive, both sound cards and everything else in the system.
But that would miss the point.
The CD machine is intended to behave like the CD transport in an old component system.
It gets its own enclosure.
It gets its own place in the stack.
It gets its own purpose.
The result is a computer system designed according to the logic of a hi-fi system rather than the logic of a modern PC.
Same Platform, Different Jobs
One of the things I particularly like about this approach is that the underlying computers don’t need to be exotic.
The GA-J1800N-D2PH is a low-power Mini-ITX platform. It doesn’t need to be powerful because none of these machines is intended to be a general-purpose computer.
They are appliances.
The motherboard, SSD and power system can remain largely identical between the machines.
The expansion hardware determines what each computer becomes.
That reverses the usual way of designing a PC.
Normally, the computer is the main product and the expansion card is an accessory.
Here, the expansion card is the reason for building the computer in the first place.
The computer is built around the hardware.
Designing the Stack
The enclosures are being built from aluminum, using a combination of bent sheet and aluminum profiles.
The width is shared between the components so that they can stack together as a coherent system.
Black acrylic is used for the front panels, creating a common visual element between the aluminum chassis and the original X-Fi Platinum.
The goal isn’t to make four identical boxes.
It is to make four components that look as though they belong to the same product family.
The X-Fi unit naturally has the most elaborate front panel.
The two audio computers can be much simpler.
The CD component can have little more than the optical drive and a power control.
From the front, however, all four should read as parts of the same system.
The Speakers
The system also needs loudspeakers.
For that role, I’m considering Creative GigaWorks T20 speakers installed into custom MDF cabinets.
The original T20 electronics and drivers provide the functional core, while the new cabinets allow the speakers to become part of the visual system.
Wood or wood veneer introduces a material that would have been completely at home in a 1990s hi-fi system, while black fronts and aluminum trim can visually connect the speakers to the central stack.
A removable grille would complete the look.
The intention isn’t to make the T20s look modern.
It is to make them look as though they belong to the same fictional product line as the electronics.
A Product That Never Existed
This is where the project has become particularly interesting to me.
Imagine that, sometime around the late 1990s or early 2000s, a company had decided to build a modular computer audio system according to the principles of Japanese hi-fi.
Instead of putting everything into one tower, it could have offered separate components:
Digital Surround Processor
Audio Computer
Professional Audio Computer
CD Transport
with matching loudspeakers.
The technology would not have been particularly futuristic.
The packaging would have been.
That product never existed.
So now I’m building it.
Why Build It?
There is no practical reason to use several small computers where one modern machine could perform all of these functions.
But practical efficiency isn’t really the objective here.
The objective is to give interesting old hardware a new context.
The X-Fi isn’t merely an old PCI sound card.
The E-MU 0404 isn’t merely an old professional audio interface.
The CD drive isn’t merely an obsolete storage device.
They become components.
And when those components are given matching enclosures, placed into a stack and surrounded by matching speakers, something unexpected happens.
The collection starts to look like a product.
A product from an alternate history of personal audio.
That is the kind of project I want Off-Label Hardware to document.
Not simply keeping old technology alive, but asking:
What else could it have been?