Having recently discovered this forum, I was looking through the message archives to get a feel for the place when I came across this thread. It sums up, from my point of view, what is wrong with most audio forums. Everything is dumbed-down to the lowest common denominator. Mr. Turboglo wants every discussion pitched at his current level of understanding: But, once he has mastered the basics, where will he go to get more advanced information?
He demands to know what RAID is. Apparently, he doesn’t know about Wikipedia or Goggle. The Wiki would have provided a complete, accurate, and well-written article describing the basics and links to related information. Google would have provided links to nearly everything that is known and written about the subject of RAID. Instead of typing wikipedia.com or google.com in the address bar of his browser, Mr. Turboglo wants others to research, compose, proofread, and type a complete explanation and post it on this forum for his benefit. Do you think anyone else who is curious about RAID will know to search out this thread to find the answer? Although I know what RAID is, I sometimes forget the subtle differences between the different types. For a quick refresh, I consult the above-mentioned references. I did that today and, in the process, read two interesting articles highlighting the pitfalls of RAID 5.
Like Mr. Turboglo, I am new to computer audio and I am seeking information and peers to discuss things with; but I am coming from a different direction. I already know the basics of PCs and digital audio and I am aiming for much higher audio quality than can be bought off the shelf. My current interest is exploring different kinds of oversampling and interpolation. To that end, I have designed a custom DAC that does 1, 2, 4, and 8x oversampling with different flavors of interpolation. In addition, I am looking at a different approach to software-based upsampling and interpolation to be performed on-the-fly by my music server.
My audio server front-end will be a fanless PC with a small SSD. The back-end will be a couple of quiet PCs in my home-office providing 2TB of RAID 1 NAS. I’ll be writing my own database software because the available stuff is all crap. I dislike the Swiss army knife approach to software. The result is always bug-ridden bloatware that tries to do a little of everything but doesn’t do anything very well. I will also probably have to write my own device drivers because I want to send configuration information to the DAC on a file-by-file basis and none of the drivers I’ve looked at allow that kind of control.
I’m sorry if my use of jargon and acronyms upsets Mr. Turboglo or others; but that’s the way most people communicate with their peers. I’m sure Mr. Turboglo does the same when he talks to other pilots. Of course, as an instructor, it is his job, to introduce his students to the basics before moving to advanced topics. I didn’t join this forum just so I could be someone’s private tutor!
I guess Computer Audiophile is not my kind of place.
