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davip

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  1. "...I like to keep a very open mind about audio and measurements etc...<br /> <br /> 1. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence..."<br /> <br /> Interesting choice of quotes Chris -- the Einstein one is very true, but in all my years in science (getting on for 25 now) I only ever saw one person beyond the originator use the 'absence of evidence' quote in print. In the Earth Science / Archaeology world this is the business of interpretation without adequate justification, whistling-up theories and finding 'ritual' behaviour under every pebble. In audio, there are sound reasons for why old technology like vinyl sounds better (33 1/3 rpm was always transparent to the 15 ips source, unlike red book CD), but the 'absence' quote is a faith-based fallacy. <br /> <br /> I don't spend much time here anymore for a number of reasons, but I'll throw this in on Fremer and those who are content merely to say he's an idiot for hearing more on vinyl. One of the most extraordinary sounding things I ever owned on vinyl was Peter Gabriel 4 -- a 16-bit digital recording from when 16 bit (Sony) was de facto and Umatic video tape was the recording medium. I've never heard PG4 on CD (16 bit red book) sound anything like that, and I even have the original issue Target 'flat master'. Snake oil? No, I simply think people used to care about music production then and no longer do with CD (which was only ever about convenience and squeezing as much as possible onto the medium -- Karajan's fault, for those who remember). The same thing has happened with digital TV ('Freeview') and the lush analogue signal that we have lost in the transition to the YouTube-ish visuals we get for broadcast TV now, ditto DAB vs. FM.<br /> <br /> This is why I've given-up on further audio expenditure or music serving. If you can all hear the difference between one USB cable and another (or rather the impedance difference that is the likely cause) then good luck to you. Computer audiophilia? If sound quality is paramount, you'd be better off spinning black plastic in these digitally-remastered days...<br /> <br /> I used to work in a recording studio in London in my younger days, so heard plenty of first gen Revox masters and can confirm that a well set-up turntable gave you most all of it. I might have to put all my Smiths 7.5 ips reel-to-reel copy masters on Ebay one day, along with my four-track master copy of 'A Day In the Life'...<br /> <br /> D<br />
  2. Splendid -- thanks for all your responses. I think my perspective, implied certainly but not entirely picked-up in the comments, is that music serving has a way to go before it reaches the ease of CD. Whether the disc is a 10-track CD, 100-track DVD or a 1000-track BD, the instant track access feature is simplicity itself, and something music servers have yet to match: put the albums on the disc in track order, and playing the whole album is a just a matter of hitting the number of the first track on the remote. Don't underestimate the willingness of people to ignore a better alternative in the name of simplicity (citing "mp3" here should make this point). That point is that music serving does not have this ease to it (I'm talking simplicity, not flexibility), and I doubt it will ever come, despite the wishes of a few 1000 computer audiophiles. It is indeed like comparing apples and oranges Chris: computers are not toasters, as you say, and neither were they designed for user friendly music playback; they can be made to do so, and there will always be providers to capitalise on the audiophile market for add-ons (e.g., the unfortunate recent CA forum tale of the lawyer cum con-man who tricked a CA member out of $3500 for a lousy DAC), but I just don't think the music-listening public has the 'patience' that you concede is necessary for their use. I am far from unfamiliar with computers, and it's more patience than I can muster -- as generally implemented, it gets in the way of the music. "I'm not following you on this one. When I want to hear a track number or start of an album I just select it from an iPod Touch without browsing through anything...". Perhaps I was obscure here: Often I like to listen to single tracks from different albums (never the same, so forget playlists), and a push of '4' on the remote gets me Statues by OMD, a push of '7 7' gets me The Box by Fad Gadget, and so-on (and like CDs, after a while you get to know the numbers, so don't even have to look at the insert). I have an ipod Touch, so tell me how you do that "...without browsing through anything"? All of the foregoing also explains how I switch from album to album easily. Oh, and there is no backup as such, as I own all my own music on CD -- where I don't have the disc, a backup on my work PC and one on my 64GB thumb drive (> 1000 wav files) serves here "The Mini is the smallest but not easiest. I think a MacBook for $999 is the easiest. It has the built-in monitor and keyboard". This is my point Chris -- if you are happy to have a keyboard and a monitor as part of your listening experience then that's fine, but it isn't for everyone (in fact, I would wager that it's mostly for no-one) and that is why the evolution of the 'format' you're looking for likely won't happen. People have a well-founded (dis)respect for computers based on experience -- they use them when they have to for work or to comunicate. Like I said, it gets in the way (and as for 'writing custom scripts' in music listening, QED). Once you have your Macs, RAID, wireless network, NAS etc. setup, perhaps it all works fine and dandy, but let's not try and kid anyone that this was easy! Look at your forum -- are there comparable fora online where people quiz each other about how to make music come out of their CD player? No. It is such aspects as make formats fail, and I truly think home music serving will never be anything more than a niche thing for audiophiles with a technical bent. What do you think will happen when BDs are released with the entire remastered Beatles and Pink Floyd catalogues on a single disc? Who do you think will make the money and the headway here: the purveyors of $199 BD players or those of computer-based audio? I'm not provoking the natives -- I used to be one, but I've given my iPod to my gf and gone back to optical. When it's a BD-RW, it'll be a single disc in a player I'll never have to remove except to add new albums EAC'd on my work PC (which is BD already, my employer paying for my works computing). Like I said, it serves music to me in the way I want, and is just as rosy in its other name. I thank you all for your responses -- and will keep up with the site, sticking my oar in as-and-when cheers, Dave
  3. I am indeed -- as I have both iPod Touch and DVD-A, I am well placed to do so. Tell me how you find a single album or track with one tap on the iPod screen and then compare that with the track access push of a remote control? I would have thought the ease issue was self-evident, but apparently not...
  4. Oh well, perhaps I can hope for some further replies -- ones that actually consider the issues raised. Nothing separates a fool from his money quicker than the tag of exclusivity...
  5. Hello Chris et al. Here's something that's been on my mind for a while that I would be genuinely interested in a few opinions on. Having played with an iPod touch for some time I find that I've rather lost interest in music servers, and not in a good way. Whatever the fate of recorded music is to be , the implementation of many of these systems is poor compared to what we have currently, as well as being ill thought-out, and often prohibitively expense. For examples of each, consider the following. It used to be that we put entire albums on to play during the good old days of vinyl, but having got used to the extremely well thought-out and simple 'operating system' of CD playback, I find that I miss it in music serving. When I want to hear a track number or the start of an album, I simply click one numbered button and I'm there. With a server (an iPod say), I have to scroll through categories, artists, albums and tracks -- even the Soolos (sp?), generally regarded as the finest implementation of this art, has an aspect of this. Y'see, the reason I can do the 'one-touch' thing with my CDs is that I don't use CDs -- I use DVD-A. Bear with me! Although this format died a death, and is now as popular as Betamax, DVD-R discs are still available (indeed, they sell in the 100s of millions annually). There is plenty of freeware online (e.g., Adobeman's GUI -- Google it) that uses these discs to rip DVD-A discs of WAV files of whatever persuasion you like (e.g., in my case, mixed 16 and 24 bit music). I get just under 100 full-res red-book tracks on a home made DVD-A disc this way, each album or each indivdual track selectable by a press of one numbered button on the remote of my JVC EX-A1 micro (you know, the one with the wide-range wood cone speakers). One hundred tracks? What good is that you might say. However, I'll take any bets you like that I'll be doing the same thing in 12 months time with home made dual-layer Blu-ray (BD-A) discs, and they'll hold over 1000 full-res WAV files, each accessible in the same way. I have yet to find a serving system that gives me the same flexibiiity and ease of use (not to mention cost), both of which I'll come on to now. As far as I can tell, the easiest computer serving set-up (at least, judged by the comments on CA) is the Mac mini. However, it has no real interface, unless you want to play music with a keyboard and a monitor, so the way to go is to control this with the ipod Touch. One flash computer used to control another HDD computer (with outboard hardware necessary for backup). Smart implementation? I don't think so, and I used to work in IT. Lastly, we come to cost. That Mac set-up will knock you back a cool 1000. And that's a cheapie. Look at the rest: the Sonneteer Morpheus, literally a 'music centre' (for those of us who remember such things) with a HDD -- an even cooler 5000. Then there's the Linn's and the Soolos' etc., with 10k tarrifs, not to mention the jokey Windows PCs dressed-up as audiophile jobs with 7000 price tags to match (e.g., see the last CES examples). In short (!), we should all be cautious of consigning physical media to history (as the CA home page header suggests). The method of delivery may be going electronic, but the opportunistic way music on computer is being pushed by the audiophile companies and retailers looks sure to confine your dreams of a media-less world to a tiny percentage of the music-listening public, unless these vendors shape up on all the above fronts. One of the delights of CDs for me (some compensation for the lousy sound quality), relative to vinyl, is that I am able to remove filler material from my listening -- crap tracks from albums, if you prefer (please, no nonsense about sitting down -- presumably alone, in the 'sweet spot' -- and listening to the whole of an album, unless you like your listening decided for you). Having done so, I now find that my entire music collection fits on 10 DVD-R/A discs. The whole lot will fit on one dual-layer BD-disc too. A hardware player (with hardware decoding of video, for anyone who knows the problems of software decoding) with a single, large-capacity disc in it is a music server in all but the computer aspect -- something I think most people would galdy do without. Music servers? You can keep them! Dave P 03/11/2009: UPDATE: I'm trying to push things this way though: http://www.ipodtouchfans.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1933420#post1933420
  6. Marketing? I don't think that a career in formalised artifice really helps the debate. The question was about perceptions in the audible range, and this site is about computer Audiophilia, an area of inquiry that maintains that not all ears are cut from the same Cloth.
  7. Hello Larry; Here's something to think about given the nature of the replies you're getting. Once you get past the Apple fanboy stuff and suggestions that people's ears are being tricked into hearing non-existent differences, consider how you hear a losslessly-compressed file on playback Apple Lossless and FLAC both require 'recomposition' to play (the analogy being the un-zipping of a file). This is done on-the-fly, and while you don't hear any delay it does take processing power to do this in real-time. Doesn't matter what lossless format you use or whether your PMP/ PC / MAC uses hardware or software decoding, there will be a physical penalty in terms of processor and power use If, as seems to be the case, some people can 'hear' this then more power to them (with little cause for some of the MAC respondents to suggest that this is without meaning -- an aspect I see increasingly on CA threads). Frankly, with storage getting bigger and cheaper all the time, I can't see why people don't use uncompressed WAV or AIFF; compression is all about getting it to the end user, not storage any more As an aside / question, the WAV format is not just proprietary to PCs -- it is the file format that any burning program can turn straight back into a full RedBook CD. I don't know if AIFF is the same, but if it isn't I would think about sticking with WAV For some of the respondents, a win-Win situation seems unpalatable however good it is. Incidentally, Macs have 'no viruses' because the user base is too small to justify their creation (unlike Windows). If more people used them, the problems would be the same as for PCs cheers, Dave
  8. Rather than all the tooting of MAC horns here masquerading as advice, there is a simple way to address this issue for yourself: i) Use EAC to rip your CDs to WAV (make sure you have the configuration wizard set everything for quality rather than speed) ii) Rip the resulting WAV files to CDR, again using EAC (se note below*) iii) Play the CDR back on your hifi. It should sound identical to the original. If you find that it doesn't, and you can confirm that you didn't mess up anywhere, then your ears may well be too 'golden' for computer audio! * Note: EAC is an easy but capable piece of freeware -- rather than explain all the details of ripping and writing, I suggest that you get to grips with it yourself. If you're serious about ripping digital, then this software is all you need. I have an iPod Touch packed full of EAC-ripped MFSL WAVs -- I have never looked back; when I can send those WAVs to a pure digital (PWM) amplifier, I never will... Hope this helps...
  9. Isn't this great? The only thing I picked up on that looks bad is that it won't run cover flow from your iTunes, but that will surely come at some point. This sort of functionality is is just what I was getting at in a previous post (http://www.computeraudiophile.com/node/452) in response to Chris' "Build an Audiophile Home Server" thread. Having a Touch or Phone control iTunes is ok, but it's effectively two computers doing the job of one -- I look forward to the day (surely not too far off) when I can do without the Mac Mini and send all my MoFi WAV files direct from my 256GB Touch over wifi, preferably to a wireless-equipped TACT digital amp. Sure, the Touch battery life would blow, but so what; a one-piece, backup-free audiophile home server for a few 100$!!<br /> <br /> Wishful thinking? I'd put money on all this being possible within 24 months...<br /> <br /> cheers,<br /> Dave<br />
  10. Glad you liked the watch reference Chris! Well, in the context of acoustical room treatments (and at risk of repeating content from a previous post: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/node/334), the TACT digital audio (PWM) amps also have real-time room correction as an option in the more pricey models. When these suckers are a little more affordable (and can be fed WAVs via USB / Firewire [or from a mac controlled by a Touch]) I am so in there... Are they up for sending you one? cheers, Dave
  11. I also wonder why it doesn't come up more often -- computer audio is all about convergence, and I for one want to hear my Sherlock Holmes VOB files (and Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator etc...) with the same clarity I hear my music, and through the same interface. A skinny display on the wall does nothing to interfere here. Your comment on locking TVs out of the listening room made me smile a little Chris -- made me recall Ivor Tiefenbrun (founder of Linn) back in the day -- he wouldn't allow people wearing digital watches into his listening room because he maintained that he could hear the resonance of the tiny speaker within and it ruined his listening pleasure! Plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose :-) N.B. Am I ever looking forward to that iPhone and presumably iPod Touch interface to iTunes...
  12. I've gotta say Turboglo that I've never come across the sort of 'showing-off' that you describe (unless I'm one of the offenders!). Most everything I've read here is helpful and, at worst, a bit off-topic when the responder has actually fluffed and misunderstood what the questioner is after (i.e., the opposite of what you describe). Nevertheless, let's not forget that computer audio is 'digital' in the same way that the new cameras were 'digital' a few years ago -- the manufacturers gloried in telling everyone that they no longer 'needed film' but were rather less forthcoming on the 'however, you will need a computer' aspect. Computers being what they are, it was never going to be like the true 'plug and play' of a CD player, an RCA cable and an amp, and I think that the level of exchanges here reflect that level of complexity. However, I'm all for not making 'hard' any harder than it is already! cheers, Dave
  13. At the risk of adding nothing to the discussion can I draw attention to a previous post where I detail the years of experience I have had with Lacie drives and why NO-ONE should consider using them in an audio capacity: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/node/29 http://www.computeraudiophile.com/node/407 cheers, Dave
  14. Hi Tim, You seem to want what I'm looking for (ref: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/node/452) -- a digital PWM amp with a USB input. I think what most people on this thread weren't getting was the 'powerdac' aspect of all this, where a digital signal is amplified digitally and only converted to analogue at the speaker terminals. For all those with digital signals (i.e., CDs, Wav files etc.) this is surely the ideal, as amplification without conversion ought to be free of quality issues [and cable voodoo ;-)] if implemented properly. 'Bitperfect'. I don't have a product solution for you; however, while all CD transports have a SPDIF / toslink output and all (true) digital amps currently have an SPDIF input, more and more people are playing their digital audio from PCs and Macs -- it won't be long before the digital amplifier people start usb-equipping their hardware to get that market... On a related note (Chris), what sort of digital signal do the 6th gen Ipods spit out when caressed by the likes of the Wadia Itransport? Get a true digital amp to segue with that and we're all there, 256GB NAND notwithstanding... cheers, Dave
  15. Hello Chris,<br /> <br /> The more I read on here about people's 24/96 audio wishes [of less interest to me, more anon] and the drive for audiophile music serving, the more I come back to the digital amplifier issue. Do you remember the TACT Millenium from a decade back -- the $10k amplifier that amplified digitally; SPDIF inputs, no -ve feedback, no clipping, volume adjusted by ps voltage regulation, effectively a DAC with gain and widely reviewed as the best sounding amp ever for digital signals? They now have a model (the M 2150) at $2200. Currently their amplifiers are only SPDIF, but USB is surely on the drawing-board. Such an amp connected to a laptop (or Ipod) would be the answer to most computer audiophile's dreams. Oh, and it's 24/96 out of the box. <br /> <br /> Any chance of a review?<br /> <br /> As for 24/96, while there seems to be lots of new music around, the big issue for me is the source. Lots of the Ampex masters from the 70s and 80s degraded during storage (the binding emulsion leached out), making them useless as archive. After baking in an oven (!), it was possible to play the tapes once to extract the signal, but they were useless therafter. Guess what so many of these master tapes were recorded to when this issue was discovered in the 1990s? 16/44 DAT. Pink Floyd, Roxy Music, many of the classic albums of 20 to 30 years ago are now fixed at this resolution (although the record companies don't trumpet this). Some of them (e.g., Avalon, by Roxy) were released as SACDs, even though the source is now only 16 bit. <br /> <br /> So my excitement about 24/96 is limited. Still, the TACT amps look like a great opportunity for the server crowd. See if you can get one!<br /> <br /> cheers,<br /> Dave
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