alcina

Yay! Ditto! Have moved over to running Voyage mpd embedded on an Alix box (the old firewall from work!). Totally silent, low power. Pulls files off the NAS. It's as simple a setup as can be. Controlled either via the laptop or the iPod depending on which is closest to hand. Am very pleased with it.

Simple answer: Depends. It depends on how you're listening to your speakers. If you are relaxing in an armchair some 10 feet away from your speakers in a large room with soft furnishing, then you might find the studio monitors a little weak. Conversely if you're listening only a couple of feet away from your speakers in a pseudo studio environment (e.g. your listening "station" is your computer work desk) then big 'ol floorstanders are going to sound lopsided, not to mention being in the way. There are undoubtedly exceptions to the rule with both lots of speakers, but generally which you chose depends on how you're listening to them. Downstairs in the living room I have B&W CM7s, I sit about 8 feet away from them, relaxing in a comfy chair with my eyes closed and a beverage of choice in my hand. Upstairs I have some Tannoy M..um..somethings..which sit on either side of my two computer monitors (they're shielded) and pump out whatever helps me to concentrate on my work. The CM7s sound a lot better (but then they were a lot more expensive - you can get much better quality monitors than the Tannoys), but they'd be impractical upstairs on my desk next to the wall.

That kind of says it all! It appears that there are effectively two definitions of audiophile going on: 1) Someone who prefers not simply to buy the cheapest all-in-one manager's special from Dixons because it matches their curtains (drapes), but who reads reviews and listens to different equipment before buying it. This is the wikipedia view and probably most audio-layman's view of audiophile. 2) Someone who obsessively pursues their own personal audio Nirvana, no matter the cost; who will not settle for anything less than The Very Very Best (in their opinion). This is the extreme (and wealthy!) audiophile. Where on this continuum does a person who just wants to make sure they have a reasonably decent hifi setup stop, and a person who is an audiophile start? The wikipedia view of an audiophile seems to be anyone who makes a vaguely informed choice about their equipment. I'm not sure personally that I'd put an audiophile there, but equally I think audiophilia (hmm...that sounds very wrong...) starts well before obsessive insanity kicks in. For what it's worth, I think PeterSt is right - though we will probably quibble of the meaning of "obsessive" You can make an informed choice about your equipment, but that doesn't make you an audiophile, just a savvy, sensible buyer of hifi. The audiophile is someone who never really manages to say, "that's good enough for me, I'll stop there". They might say, "that's really, really good and I really, really like it", but they are always slightly worried/excited (delete as applicable) about the possibility that they can get an even better experience* with another tweak or purchase. They might not actually buy it (not all audiophiles are wealthy, but then again not all excellent musical experiences cost vast amounts of money) it's more of an aspiration / desire thing. * "experience" is whatever it is you personally are looking for in your music reproduction Just my 2p Alcina

It is bewildering when people have diametrically opposed views on how something sounds - surely they all can't be right? However, I have reached the conclusion that they *are* all right, the problem is that the topic is subjective. There is only one way round this that I can see: jump in with both feet - just beg/borrow/buy (I won't advocate stealing here!) one of the DACs on your shortlist. Listen to it in your system. Work out if you like it, if you feel it's lacking something, if you feel it has any flaws, if you feel it has any fabulous features etc.. Then come back to the forums. Read all the reviews again - take particular note of the reviews that match your own thoughts. These reviewers are probably going to be on your wavelength. You and they are probably looking for the same experience. They are not "right" and the others "wrong", it's just that you probably like the same sorts of things as they do sound-wise. Once you've got an idea of the baseline for each reviewer (both those with whom you agree and those with whom you disagree) you can start to interpret what they write. To be simplistic: if Person X says that the MegaDAC sounds thin and and boring, but you find it rich and satisfying, then if Person X next comments on the SupaDAC and says it's involving, rich and moving, then the chances are you are going to find it too coloured or boggy even. And vice versa. Also take note of their whole system (often in people's sig), again if you have the same tastes in amp and speakers, you'll probably have the same tastes in DACs. But, unfortunately, there's no getting around that first jump. For my 2p on which DAC you should just for first - I started with the Apogee Duet and I now use the Valab NOS DAC. I am after a wide, wide, deep sound stage. The wide sound stage is important as I hate boxiness. I like to "see" clearly where the performers are positioned in the stereo mix. I hate sibilance with a vengeance, but I don't want to lose clarity and upper harmonics. I want musical, involving richness. I don't mind colour providing I like the shade So...that's the experience I'm after, and all my comments should be interpreted in the light of what I like. I hope that helps you make up your mind which way to jump first! @Erik Ooer....isn't it just!

Many thanks to all for the advice about digitally dubbing DATs. I bought myself a bog standard glass fibre cable to go from the DAT player (Sony DATman...bless it!) to the Mac Mini, downloaded Audacity and started recording. Only with Audacity I found that it only imported the left channel Just to test I fired up Sound Studio which came free with one of my earlier macs, and it accepted the digital stream as stereo, so I've stuck with Sound Studio. Works a treat! For information...I have some CD dubs onto DAT. The DATman does have SCMS...but the digital transfer onto the Mac via Sound Studio of these, effectively 2nd generation dubs, is unaffected by SCMS. (Chris, delete this paragraph if you deem it unsuitable!) Alcina

Indeed thanks to all the other folks who suggested the Valab on this forum otherwise I would never have tried it myself. I've burned mine in now and am really very happy with it - although I'm game for a tweak or two! Toying with buying a second one just in case... Alcina

Dealers and distributors don't pay the street price per box. If they did then the mythical New York hi-fi dealer wouldn't be making a single cent on the sale of the product - which I doubt. But even if you take the street price, the conversion price of the untaxed $1995 is 1207.44 UK pounds. The import duty on that is 120.74 = 1328.18. Add on 15% VAT when it arrives in this country (which it is currently, lowered to help this kind of market) that is 1527.41 UK pounds. So they've added 622.59 pounds on (i.e. over half of the original cost of the product) per box for shipping, advertising, demoing, administrative costs, etc., etc.. They're on a hiding to nowhere. This does not reflect the true cost of this kind of thing. They are not going to shift boxes in the UK at this price. And to get back to the original posting - Bryston are not the slave of their distributors. The company they are using is clearly creaming in profit to the detriment of the product sales - moreover if the original poster's problems in obtaining a demo are widespread, then not only are they creaming a profit they're not even distributing properly. Double the problem. Bryston need to sort their act out if they want to break into the UK market. If they don't then fine, continue as is. But don't pretend to be interested in the international market and then treat the customers like this. Alcina

May I ask a really dumb question? It hadn't occurred to me that I might be able to do a digital transfer of my DAT tapes! I was going to go the analogue route. Mine are mostly 48kHz and 44.1KHz. What software on the mac are you using to do the transfer? Alcina

All reports say something like: it sounds great when you first switch it on, then over the next 150 or so hours it changes and very often sounds not so good, then around 200 hours it opens out better than before. I have mine burning in 24 hours a day at the moment, next weekend should see the 200 hours completed for a proper listening test. Steve Nugent has suggested some upgrades for it on an earlier thread. I myself would like to try some Elna Cerafine capacitors once it's burned in it as my CD75 is chock full of Cerafines, and the point of my exercise is to find something that sounds like my CD75. My impression is that the Valab isn't the best speced (by a long shot), and isn't the best measured (also by a long shot), and is definitely "coloured", but those that like it *really* like its sound and its musicality. So I think, yes, there are "better" DACs, but the warts of this particular one are either right up your street, or you can't stand it. And at the end of the day it's only 125 pounds, so worth a try! Alcina

...but I do have a Duet so am I allowed to comment? I really like the Apogee. I like its musicality, what it does with the music, its involvement etc.. I've not had chance to try things like the Bryston and the Lavery, but I suspect that I would find them too dry, too clinical judging by other people's comments. However...after many weeks of listening and comparing I have decided that the Duet still wasn't as moving musically as my CD player, which is a 20 year old Marantz CD75. It was close, but the CD75 was just more musical, more moving, had wider and more relaxed soundstage, and was more involved. Basically just "more". So I started looking for a DAC that might sound more like my CD75. In the (probably mistaken) belief that because it used DAC chips from the same family as the CD75, and because it was cheap, I ordered one of the infamous Valab NOS DACs off eBay. I've only had it a day, so I probably really shouldn't say this, but my initial impressions are that I may have found the Duet replacement. i.e. it has all the moving and musical qualities of the Duet, but is even better. It does indeed sound much like my CD75 in a/b testing. I have to give it the 200 hours burn in yet, but my gut impression is quite positive. I don't want to put words into your mouth, but your description of why you like the Duet seems to imply we're after the same sort of experience. If you still want to try other DACs, I would recommend that you put the Valab NOS DAC on your possibility list. Alcina

@usernaim250 On a mac all network drives and usb/firewire drives/sticks etc. get mounted under /Volumes as you saw in Get Info. The reason it tells you "no such object" is because there's a space in the name of the server. In unix spaces have to be escaped with a backslash (as indeed do other characters like round brackets) eg. /Volumes/Sea 1.4. As the space wasn't escaped, it's only looked for a volume named "Sea", which doesn't exist. This, of course, is laborious to type manually. Bash, the default shell on OSX, has a short cut to help you out - the tab key. Start typing the name of the file/folder/drive you want, just the first letter if there isn't much in the folder, and then press tab and the command line will auto-complete the rest of the name including escaping all that needs to be escaped. If there is more than one option for the auto-complete, then it will beep at you and display the options available, so press the next letter in the file/folder/drive you want and press tab again. Remember unix is case sensitive. Hope that makes sense! Example: Your command, as you rightly say, is "cp -R" (i.e. copy recursively), and the arguments are the source folder then the destination folder. So, say you want to copy files from your usb stick named "My Great Music (usb stick)" to your a folder named "From My USB Stick" inside your Music folder in your home directory. If this were me I'd type: cp -R /V [tab] which would auto-complete to: cp -R /Volumes/ then I'd add on the end: cp -R /Volumes/M [tab] which would auto-complete to: cp -R /Volumes/My Great Music (usb stick)/ then I'd add on to the end: cp -R /Volumes/My Great Music (usb stick)/* $HOME/Mu [tab] ("$HOME" is the shell's shortcut for for your home directory) which would auto-complete to: cp -R /Volumes/My Great Music (usb stick)/* /Users/myusername/Music/ then I'd add to the end: cp -R /Volumes/My Great Music (usb stick)/* /Users/myusername/Music/F [tab] which would auto-complete to: cp -R /Volumes/My Great Music (usb stick)/* /Users/myusername/Music/From My USB Stick/ Then you just press [enter] and everything on your usb stick will be copied over to your Music folder But this is operationally no different from doing it in the Finder by opening up the source folder, selecting all, and drag copying them over to the destination folder. The Finder takes care of any spaces in names automatically. I'm not advocating that using the command line is the best way to copy files, I'm merely answering your question as to why it didn't work for you, and offering a hopefully helpful tip should you wish to use the command line in the future for anything. Alcina

In unix folders are actually files (which contain the names of the content folders/files and other information), so it's the equivalent of having two files named "Led Zeplin". So basically it's asking if you want to overwrite one file with another file of the same name - not such a perverse concept put like that perhaps? Just different ways of doing things and if you're familiar with one then the other seems very strange and unintuitive. As Eloise says, pros and cons to both, choose your warts and stick with them Alcina

Lorks a lummie! They're charging MORE than pounds for dollars! I've seen plenty of stuff in the past that's pounds for dollars (which was particularly galling when the pound was virtually 2 dollars), but since the advent of the internet this nasty practice of just changing the dollar to a pound had, I thought, all but ceased. By all accounts from American chums the mighty US dollar is not in its finest state of health at the moment either, and the current exchange rate is 1.64 dollars to the pound. Not the other way round! I appreciate that they have to set the price well in advance of exchange rates, but at no point was the pound worth less than the dollar, neither, even at the height of the bank collapses and floating duck house fiascos, was it ever going to be! I appreciate that this doesn't help your auditioning, but have you looked at ordering from the Euro zone? I recall when I was pricing these things up a few months ago the Euro price was considerably more in line with the actual exchange rate. Germany particularly seemed to be well stocked and reasonably priced. The EU also has the advantage of the same mains voltage, which importing from America doesn't. Just my 0.024 Euros

For info... On the Apogee website they are offering a free 800/400 Firewire cable to all Apogee Duet owners who purchased their Duet since October 2008. All new Apogee Duets, from June 1st, will come with the 400/800 cable. This is because, of course, the new macs only come with Firewire 800 and the Duet has Firewire 400. In the US you appear to apply online, but it looks like you must have registered your Duet. Outside the US you follow the link to find your country's distributer. For UK Duet owners: Here in the UK the distributer is Sonic Distribution. I had to email phil at sonic-distribution dot com with the serial number of my Duet and they posted me a cable - which arrived the next day. This is superb customer support in my books! Alcina

The Apogee blurb tells you that you will hear a dramatic difference. In my personal experience, I didn't hear a dramatic difference. I heard a difference, but I wouldn't rate it as "dramatic" Your mileage may, of course, vary. The critical listening can start to spoil your enjoyment of the music. I'm still struggling with "is the Apogee better/worse or just different from my CD player". You end up listening to the same snatch of music over and over again. Not good. Alcina