NotRick

Hah, yeah, I actually used my phone, which I almost never do, and I didn't do my usual workflow which would have stripped that out. But that's a good example of why I find the "convenience" of these things so.... disturbing. If you don't think about it you can give away a lot of information you might not want to give. There's a real conflict of personal interests going on. For example many folks publish descriptions of their systems, some of which are very expensive. If you publish your name and address (which if I were at home when I took that picture, I would have) then you've just told someone where to go to pick up some high end audio gear, and if there's high end audio gear, there's probably other stuff.

Yes it does, but I prefer the slightly more colorful stickers

I'm still using a 3GS so the 5 should be safe for a bit. I'm seriously considering replacing my iPhone with a dumb phone - Maybe I can find a nice hack to put a mechanical switch to turn off the camera and mic except when I want them on... You know, I've never done a selfie with a phone... or any thing for that matter. No apple pay for me thanks. Apple is deep enough into my pockets with out adding that. What wrong with cash? I remember when cash was actually accepted in some places.... Okay, I exaggerate - the only places I know of that won't take cash are government offices - seriously. Crips I'm starting to sound like a luddite!

Everything I know about this came from ComputerAudiophile.com and a half dozen other sites. I haven't done any of these experiments myself yet, as I lack the proper equipment for the time being. So, given that caveat - I almost hate to do this to you but this tread goes into a lot of experiments done by SuperDad and others with the mac Mini. (LONG thread but interesting) ATTENTION Current Mac mini/A+ users: Boot Mavericks from an SD card, load a RAMdisk, dismount your internal SATA drives, and pour a drink for the musicians walking out of your speakers! There's lot of ideas in there that you can apply to the macbook pro. There's a script (I haven't tried) at Computer Audio Design HERE the script has two parts - one to optimize, one to reset (so everything works again). Unfortunately, if your macbook pro is like mine, there are no USB controllers that don't already have something on them. One has the Bluetooth the other the camera. This is from "About this Mac -> More Info -> System Report -> USB There may be a way to turn off the camera (probably is) and then I'd use that port - well I'd use that one even if I couldn't turn it off - try both and see which sounds better. If you can remove the USB -> S/PDif converter and go usb->usb that might help but I suspect your NAD doesn't do asynchronous USB so.... Best of luck.

It's why I never go to hi end audio stores - I'm terrified that I'll hear something better, then I'm just screwed. I try to keep my changes to maybe once every 8 to 10 years. If I did this all the time, I'd never get anything done (oh wait... I already have that problem...) and I'd be broke (oh, wait....) My rule - NEVER listen to anything you can't afford to buy, it just causes insanity. Although given the chance to listen to Mikey Fremer's system with all that wonderful vinyl... no I don't think I could turn that down. And it's so far out of my price range I'd probably be fine.... probably.

Only if you want the taxpayers to cover the bill

Oddly enough I've been looking into that. At the moment I'm leaning toward Gentoo, which I'll probably have to build on the mac with the gcc cross compiler - but it's designed to create minimal distributions as a base then add what's needed - and it's set up to boot from an SD card and it's supposed to be compatible with CuBox Gentoo Linux -- About Gentoo

To the best of my understanding - You can feed DSD direct, or via PCM. I think (and I'm still fuzzy on this) anything that comes into the DAC can be passed out the HDMI so if you want to decode the DSD downstream I think you can, but only on HDMI. I believe you can convert to PCM inside the Oppo and pass PCM out on the digital outputs. Also, I believe on input, only the rear USB type B connector will do DSD 128, either will do DSD 64 I'm not going to actually see my machine until after the Rocky Mountain show, as it will be at the show with Modwright. I've been searching for more info, and I'm sort of at the point of needing to call Oppo to verify a few things, since apparently not that many people have actually used it as a DSD DAC (given the scarcity of DSD files that sort of makes sense.)

It's mostly that pesky ocean. Turns out I'm about 2.5 hours away from Modwright's global headquarters. The shipping back and forth would definitely increase the cost. There's some mods done in New Zealand I think... I suspect that would be the same problem for anyone in the US unless they just didn't care about the shipping costs - there are a few of those out there. I suppose if someone wanted to be the dealer for the EU or Australia and they could afford to buy enough stock to make the shipping cost effective.... Still, there's the repair issue, and it's pretty easy to have a bad dealer mess up your reputation. No real easy solutions.

That's good to hear since I just ordered one from Modwrite - they'll be taking it to the show so I don't get it until Mid October but I'm okay with that for the show discount. I think they might have one more show unit left, but I don't expect it will last long - they've already sold 3 of the 4 I think. Working on the theory that the sources are the most important, (as long as you like the sonic signature of your speakers) then I figure the place to save is on the pre-amp and amp. As much as I wanted to order a Modwright integrated I'm going to have to just keep my 5 channel Adcom. Now I need to figure out which Pre amp to get. I'm sort of leaning toward the Parasound P5 or P7 as being very transparent. Although I'm open suggestions Sources are New - Modwright Oppo BDP-105D Some undefined computer (probably Mac Mini + JRiver) also open to suggestion. Vpi Super Scoutmaster / Shelter 501 -> Linn Phono Preamp Magnum Dynalab FT-101A tuner (I currently only get one station - fortunately is a very good Jazz / Blues station) Oh and the noise makers.... Xbox 360 PC gaming machine When I'm done I'll have a LOT fewer boxes in storage and a lot less gear to move.

I'm looking for a PS3 for SACD ripping - still trying to figure out if the firmware version makes a difference.... I keep getting sidetracked then trying to find the conversations again... Is someone here selling units? Original Poster: I have a Thunderbolt Duo set up as a mirror - it's very nice, very fast. I do most of my work on a MacBook Pro now, so I link up to the Duo for backups, I also use Buffalo 1T portables for backups so I can keep an off site. For the Bigger stuff I keep a few 3T drives at home and off site for backups. For what you're doing - I the NAS should be fine, and possibly more convenient. The big advantage to the Duo is the speed so if your working on the files - ripping, editing meta-data, etc then it might be a good choice but I'd think you could do the same work on the internal drive then transfer to the NAS...

I recently had two disks in the same raid 10 die, one on the main, one on the mirror - and one of the backup disks died In The Same DAY - being a paranoid sob I keep more than one backup. I never did figure out what killed them, although I don't use that Raid box anymore. The backup drive was a hot swap in the 5 drive array, and only got powered up when it was doing a backup - it was one of three that had that job. Bad things can, and do happen. Granted, that was the worst I've ever been hit, and I'm still trying to figure out what sort of Horrible Things I must have done in a previous life to have that happen... I keep no less than two full backups done after every major change, and I count on the mirror for the in-between stuff. I very occasionally lose something to a file overwrite that wasn't backed up, although not since I added a 2T NAS for TimeMachine. One backup set is onsite, one in the safety deposit box at the bank. I've got four copies of my photoshop work since I really don't want to have to redo any of that. I kind of wish I could do my backups on SSD but nobody makes a 3T SSD (and I don't think I could afford it even if they did). Audio is relatively easy to recover, 1000's of hours of photoshop work on hundreds of 400Mb - 2Gb files - not so easy. My writing is backed up to the Raid, two portables, and three flash drives - yes I'm that paranoid, but then I've been doing this since 1973 and experience is a merciless and sometimes painful teacher.

The idea behind the QA9 was to allow me to Rip vinyl to DSD for the AK240, and then stream back though the Oppo. Every once in a while I get in the mood for a Musical Event - and break out the vinyl, clean a few, and spin up the TT, but I've got stuff I'd like to listen to with out quite that much work... err fun At this point I'm leaning toward a analog pre with HT bypass - probably the parasound P7 or P5. Then I can feed the 105D analog and the Linn pre in, and just bypass it all when I want surround and use the 105D as the preamp. I need to understand more about linking in the gaming sources and the latency issues - I think I just need to bypass all the video processing if I have latency issues (more questions for the AVS guys I guess). Based on what I learned over at AVS - I may need an HDMI switch to deal with gaming boxes (or do the switching myself - since the only digital sources I will have are the 105D (sacd/bluray,cd,dvd, streaming audio) xbox, maybe ps3 (if can find the right equipment) I'm holding off on the Xbox One/ PS4 - mostly going back to PC gaming. JRiver handles DLNA and I can control it all from an iPad. I was looking at the Cary Audio SLP 05, but like I mentioned earlier I'm not sure how that will work with a bookshelf/sub setup - it's only an issue I think for the vinyl. I considered the idea of feeding the Vinyl though the QA9 then to the 105D and letting it decode the DSD stream but that's no different than ripping and feeding from the network, and I don't have to do that over and over. Maybe it would be simpler to give up on having the turntable as an Analog source and just use it to rip new vinyl and call it done. It's just hard to give that up. So, I may be getting closer. I'll check with the other guys and see how they're doing. Thanks.

I considered the effect of the marantz in the pure audio system, it's one of those tradeoffs I can't quite figure out a way around. The Concerto's need the sub for any real base response and I searched for long time to find one that blends pretty well - the downside is I need some sort of crossover to feed the sub. It's tough to figure out how to stick some of these components together with out actually having them to try. I could use and A+B output running A to the bookshelf speakers and B to the sub which could feed from the Oppo dedicated stereo out. Then I run into 5.1 DSD & DTS surround and I'm sort of stuck again, need the additional amps - and I'd have to feed the analog out from the surround back though the stereo preamp so the signal get's to the 2ch amps and speakers. Not going to connect the speakers to two different amps, don't want to feed the amps from two different Pre's - so... This is one of the reason I kept the Theater and the Music systems separate for so long. All this was somewhat easer when the pre-pro did all the heavy lifting, now it's happening everywhere. I figure as I've laid things out it looks like I can get pandora/netflix/Kitchen Sink/.... from the TV, the Receiver, the Oppo, the Mac, the Xbox, the only unit that I'm sure WON'T do it is the turntable - it's just a bit NUTS. 2ch Stereo was just so much easer I'll have to check the 105D thread on the AVS Forum. If I can figure out how how DSD and flac files to the Oppo so it can do it's DAC magic, say directly from a NAS - then I can use my iPad as the remote and skip the dedicated mac/pc/VortexBox all together, - then again - I'd lose out on any advantage that JRiver might provide... Speaking of iPad remotes - I guess marantz has an App that needs a bit of work, wonder if Sony does? That wold be convenient. Perhaps I should start a new thread and lay out my goals and constraints and see what suggestions come in that way. BTW the e28 looks very nice, but with my hearing, I think it's past the point of diminishing returns relative to the Oppo DAC. I still have decent hearing, but I have occasional tinnitus which I've gotten pretty good at ignoring. Ten years ago, I'd have ordered the e28 before writing this reply, now I'm trying to keep myself from heading down a path that will cost a lot of money for a sound quality that I won't hear in two or three years. The downside of being a bit shy of 60. There's a downside to having High Res files and a good DAC too. You really get a feel for how crapy a lot of the early CD mixes really were. I picked up a high res of Heart Like a Wheel - Linda Ronstadt, not much improvement over the 44/16 rip. I think the vinyl sounds quite a bit better - I need to compare them - it might just be nostalgia too.

Subscription service will be fairly common but it is unlikely to take over in the U.S. Mostly for geographical reasons. For example, I'm fairly rural, and having just tested my connection speed it comes up 15.44Mbps Down, 2.12Mbps up Not all that fast. Fast enough for Netflix, in a house of 1, multiple streams - in a family of 4? No. We're fighting the Net Neutrality thing at the moment - Netflix is now paying for higher speeds, which means at some point in the future I'll be paying for higher speeds (which I won't get). I suspect that most streamers will end up paying for additional (and in some cases non-existent) bandwidth improvements. Such is the nature of Crony Capitalism. The backbone carriers and ISP's use regulation to first seek monopoly protections, then seek changes to their categorization from public carrier to data service. Part of that is predatory use of regulation as a barrier to entry, part of it is fancy footwork to justify rate hikes. If the US had actually deregulated the phone system back when everyone though breaking up Bell was deregulation, then I think things would have shaken out much differently - not sure if it would have been better or worse and I don't plan to spend the time trying to figure it out - it is what it is. You can be sure, that in the current environment, additional laws and regulations covering streaming, subscriptions, and bandwidth will be coming. In any event, I'm likely to become more rural not less. Yes, urban is the trend, we're adding roughly 1.5% annual to urban centers world wide, in 2008 more than half the world population lived in urban centers. Most of the streaming technology advances are targeted to those areas as they provide the largest return on $ investment. Rural populations are declining, giving companies even less incentive to invest capital into those areas. As urbanization continues and there is no projected slowing as far out as 2050 that I can find, the demand and usage of available bandwidth will require additional infrastructure, which is both expensive (in a capital sense as well as a regulatory one), and time consuming. There will be technological advances that will allow the existing infrastructure to handle greater loads, but that path is likely to be cost effective for only so long, it will hit diminishing returns. For those of us going rural, trying to escape the over crowed cities, the incessant traffic and the noise and light pollution (not to mention the more noxious kind), the future of high bandwidth subscription looks a great deal less rosy. Another issue to consider is the reliance on a third party. What happens when WiMP or Spotify go out of business - and yes that could happen - it's happened to much bigger companies. Sure you'll find another supplier, but will your playlists transfer? Will it work with your hardware with out having to wait for the supplier to write new software? Or will you need to upgrade hardware. I'll give you one really chilling feature of cloud backups - more than one company filed for bankruptcy, the courts ceased the assets and the clients were unable to access their files, in one case it took several years to get things moving - not solved - just moving. A subscription service, where you don't actually OWN anything would have a much smaller impact, but don't assume it will be a minor blip. In terms of Source Providers (record companies - assuming they say alive) a subscription service is a much more controllable business model than what they've been dealing with - starting with the first pirated MP3 files though Napster, and continuing on though bit torrent and other peer to peer sharing services. If all the music is coming from the studios to the streaming providers to you - well I suspect the studios will be fine with that, don't expect the prices to remain as low as they are as the streaming business strangles the sales of CD's more than it already has. There is no doubt - we live in interesting times.