vladid

@bluesman, thank you, I appreciate the confirmation. That is what someone else also told me and why I ended up with the purchase.

Thank you for the suggestions! @stefano_mbp, Looked at the Adams, read up, technically an option, but they did not pass the "design committee" in our home. @Brucemck2, yes, I spoke with Sweetwater extensively and as much as they wanted to help, they do not sell the Genelec G speakers and F subs - meaning they do not carry the Genelec home line of products. At the end of the day the guy from Genelec USA fixed (somewhat, incompletely, whattamess) the Amazon listing and assured me those are the same versions as on the global site, not the earlier versions sold somewhere else at a discount. So I ended up ordering the Genelec 2xG2+F1 set.

I an revisiting the topic at the new thread here. Since this original thread, the finances had changed, but I saved up for a close-enough system. I also moved from a house in Chicago suburbs to a high-rise in San Francisco FD. So I have significantly less space (1/4) to deal with. Some suggestions here did not work out then, nor now, so I have moved it to that new thread.

I am having a very weird experience with buying a Genelec 2+1 set and wonder if it is a one-off, did anyone have any better experience (especially with their warranty), and if there is a comparable set I should consider instead. Because the shopping process kills the trust and I have serious doubts the company is interested in home market at all. After some research I decided on a Genelec 2xG2 (https://www.genelec.com/g-two) + F1 (https://www.genelec.com/f-one) setup. My one concern is a down-firing sub-woofer and I wanted to find it somewhere around San Francisco to "feel the floor". I live in a high-rise and do want to listen with a lower bass without disturbing the lower floor neighbors. Looking up dealers on the company website proven fruitless as there is no showroom, nor a company which would even consider a one-system sale. Listed companies which I contacted (about half dozen) are either full-house installers or out of business. Sweetwater, Crutchfield, Guitar Center do not carry the home line from Genelec. BH Photo at the time had a few listings which were non-returnable, not-cancelable, with some far future delivery. Amazon had the speakers (https://amazon.com/dp/B086VR9XRP) listed with a Genelec seller, no woofer. The listings and company pages were so bare that I was sure it is a scam. I also found a Finnish Design Shop https://finnishdesignshop.com/-p-26631.html and https://finnishdesignshop.com/-p-26625.html which listed it all considerably cheaper, even with shipping costs. So, naturally I pinged Genelec on Facebook and asked, hey are those sellers (Amazon and FDS) legit? I also wrote to FDS directly. Weirdly FDS insisted that the product is 220V only , while the manufacturer (in the Facebook message later) insisted that the speakers are 110-230. FDS felt they did not want to sell, stressing the grey market warranty and the wrong voltage. On an advise of their corporate on Facebook I also emailed Genelec USA - and heard nothing for four business days. I provided the feedback to corporate again and immediately next day heard from the USA office. The bottom line was: the Amazon listing and BH PhotoVideo are legit, here are the warranty conditions (shipment covered), sorry we do not have anything to show near San Francisco. OK, then I am ready to buy and the question is where? By now BH PV has new listings without non-cancelable non-returnable markings, although still on the special order(https://bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1430349-REG and https://bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1542976-REG). Fine. But they have no specs. But they have model numbers. Oh, but the official page has no model numbers. So I do not know what it is BHPV selling. And the Amazon listing was wildly differing specs from the manufacturer: Manufacturer --- Amazon 100 dB --- 95 dB 56 Hz - 25 kHz (-6 dB) --- 65 Hz - 21 kHz (-3dB) 50 W Bass + 50 W Treble --- Woofer 20 W + Tweeter 20 W Neither Amazon listing nor Genelec website have model numbers listed. What am I buying? Do I really have to communicate that much with that many companies to spend $2.4K and know what am I getting? At this point I am wondering if Genelec give anything but lip service to customers. Everything was polite, but either wrong or delayed like nobody cares. So may someone suggest a comparable setup, which I can feed from my computer's toslink or USB? White speaker color is my wife's request, small speaker size is a "should have" as well. May be a separate DAC - but all to be under $2.5K pre-tax. Side-firing sub is preferred. Or, if you had and experience buying Genelec in the US - and may be even a warranty event, may you please, share? Thank you!

Very interesting options - thank you! I am very intrigued by RL906, Emotiva. Vanatoo seems to have more complexity than I need. Coincidentally, Genelec US sent me a note that in some reasonable time they may have an ability to have the G Threes + F Two system for an audition in Chicago. Which I am looking forward to - and it gives me more time to research the options. Thank you, your answers are very helpful!

I extensively use beyerdynamic T 1 headphones with Benchmark DAC 2 D (well, happened). The cord limits mobility somewhat, plus I would love to have a little more "stage". I am happy with the sound, but want a change at times. The thinking is to get an amped 2.1 system under $3000. Specifically I thought of Genelec G Three with their F Two subwoofer (like in the "systems" tab here) off of the same DAC. But those Genelecs are not available around Chicago to listen to. Even if I would like it, showrooms sound very differently than my office. So, a few questions: Is my assumption realistic that I can find a sound setup comparable to what I have at the price I target? Is it a good idea anyway? What would be your choice of a system like that? Thank you!

To the original point - some artists, like Glenn Gould, preferred studio to a concert hall once equipment got adequate. Because it goes both ways and the audience "feedback" may be distracting to otherwise great artist.

Paul, I was not addressing a general question of preference of RAID1 over backup. Rather, I did not want what I believe to be a misleading argumentation against RAID1 to stay unanswered. A decision on a best fit storage solution is so much context dependent that I do not see a utility to generally discuss it. It may make sense to mention what may be considered when designing it. For me personally backup goes first before any other concerns. I usually have at least two backup mechanisms in place, both out of the system, one of them off-site, resource permitting. For both backup and availability solutions one should consider use cases, available expertise, available time to create and manage the solution, costs, existing infrastructure. I personally run on a combination of 2x2TB RAID1 and 5x3TB RAID6, which as of yesterday moved from Synology to a Xubuntu system (with a failed HDD fun in the process). That RAID6 hosts backups for everything as far as media goes - about 15GB FLACs, 30k+ raw photos and negligible number of home videos. I have not had a problem of co-hosting many things on the same file server - may be because my Media Center is set to play files from memory instead of disk and I only listen via the DAC/headphones. I also seem not to be a music quality gourmet in the scope of this forum, meaning that I am OK to expect a music interrupt when spinning up 10-15 Vagrant VMs on the laptop. So when talking about storage, backup is not an interesting point for me personally but rather an obvious prerequisite. I assumed that Chis treated it similarly - focusing on how the storage can be improved beyond a backup strategy, which is too context-dependant to discuss in that article.

No. It is not how it works. Drive failure in the modern RAID context is a number of media I/O errors exceeding firmware retry limit. Those errors are per disk sector or block of allocation. I/O errors are caught by the RAID manager and used as a criteria to take the failed disk offline. RAID1 does not mirror data from one disk to another. Here is how it works (simplified): 1. When a write request is received from a process an attempt is made to write the data from buffer to both disks, in most cases simultaneously. If the data in the write request is garbage, then that garbage will be written to both disks. Not a fault of RAID1. 1.a. if one write fails, then that disk is taken offline and the RAID pair declared as degraded, with whatever notification follow-up happening. It is up to the user to replace the failed drive. The still good drive continues to operate and is not aware of the other drive's failure. No bad data is written on a functional drive because of another drive's failure. 1.b. If both writes fail, then the whole RAID is announced as failed and taken offline. No further IO is allowed to either of the disks without user's intervention. 2. When a read request is received from a process, an attempt is made to read data from one or both disks. Read policy is determined by the RAID programmer, and certainly depends on the current failure state of disks, striping configuration, etc. Again, there are no drive writes happening at this point. 2.ab. Read failures handling is close enough to write failures handling, so see the 1.a and 1.b items. 3. After user believes they got a good drive installed instead of the failed one, then they can issue a command to the RAID manager to restore the data from the old functional drive to the newly-installed drive. It is the user's responsibility to enter the command correctly and the new disk will receive exactly the data contained on the old functional disk. It is a bit more complicated, as simultaneously the whole RAID will accommodate read/write requests from the system. If operated properly, RAID1 will protect from a single drive failure. A double drive failure, which is when the second drive fails before the first failed one replaced and restored, is not protected against - exactly because the last copy available to RAID manager gets corrupted and the RAID manager has no source for data restore. This is where the backup comes handy. If the controller fails on the electronics level, then most likely it is just the controller which needs to be replaced. I have not seen another scenario since 1984, when I first dealt with RAID. If it is the controller firmware which is buggy, then yes, the RAID1 may be doomed. However, those firmware issues are rarely last for long - and no vendor reputation is a replacement for reading early adopters' reviews. You are also likely to discover this early in the RAID lifecycle. Similarly, firmware may be (and often is) buggy on SATA controllers or MB chipsets so there is no added risk - but rather a replaced risk. If one uses a software RAID manager it is the same thing - those are well tested because of a very large user base. And one still should be wary of new software releases. Again, at the end of the day RAID is not a backup and will not save from every imaginable failure. But it will speed up recovery from some of reasonably frequent failures.

Thank you! That worked for me and is much easier to navigate.

Quite frankly I am missing your point about why RAID1 is a bad idea. The issues you bring up are not the ones RAID1 addresses by design, so they are not applicable. The issues you mention normally addressed by backup arrangements, and RAID is not backup. More so, Chris writes about backup separately and how it may interact administratively with RAID1, but nowhere I see he conflates the two. Hyping "potential for disaster with RAID1" is akin saying that if RAID1 can be used poorly (i.e. it is not fool-proof), then it should not be used at all. In this case, I think that the use of RAID1 is quite appropriate for the stated purpose of simpler recovery from a single disk failure.

Yeah, for whatever reason the site limits my login to 28 comments on this post like for another commenter. All comments show after logging out.

Do you have a first-hand experience with PC-Q25 case? How do you like it? Asking, because I had high hopes for Lian-Li PC-Q35 and was disappointed with it's drive bay arrangements when installed it.

Wow... what a sense of entitlement... how rude...

Chris, Thank you, nice write-up - including the decision logic. For less price-conscious yet compact setup have you considered the M1 case from https://www.ncases.com/ by any chance? Although I do not use this case for audio streaming, I found that it is pleasantly versatile and has a nice form-factor for the storage/cooling options it accommodates. The only issue with this case is it's limited availability. If you can find a Mini-ITX, Mini-DTX motherboard/CPU combination satisfactory for audio, it may fit well. I use it with i7-4770k, Asus Z87iDeluxe MB, Corsair H100i cooler, fans upgraded to Noctua, SSD. If an audio storage system may get by with i5 CPU and NH-L9i cooler (which I use in my NAS in a different case) NCASE M1 will allow for two extra internal 3.5" HDDs - and you always can add eSATA/USB via the available PCI if motherboard expansion features are not satisfactory. Great case.