Happy

ac3320 - many thanks you set me off on an afternoon of discovery. To image a CD on a mac (Tested on Lion) 1. In Disk Utility, select the CD in the left pane.. 2. Select the File menu > New > Disk Image From Folder... 3. A box will popup "Select Folder to Image". In the top right is a search box. Click on the search box to enable it, then type into it a forward slash (the '/', in other words.) This will bring up a new sheet labelled "Go To The Folder". Finish typing /Volumes into the dialog. Note that the initial V is capitalized. If you type this in all lower-case, you seem to be sent to the root folder, so capitalize correctly. If you have the CD in your taskbar you can select it from there. 4. Select the name of the CD that you want to image, and click the "Image" button. 5. You will get another dialog box allowing you to select where you want to save the disc image. You can choose somewhere convenient, such as your Desktop if you wish. Image format should be set to DVD/CD master. Unless you need to protect it for some reason, set Encryption to none. 6. When the process is done, you will have a file with the name of your audio CD and the extension .cdr on your Desktop, or wherever you decided to save it. (the cdr is the same as an iso). Now this is where it gets curious. I used SHA1 signatures to check the files (file equivalence). The sha1 of the original disc song (in finder) = sha1 of the image song (in Finder). If you rip the disc using itunes or xld you get a DIFFERENT sha1 i.e. the file has different bits in it (the os still reports the same file size); the ripping software (xld or itunes) is modifying the native file. The process of imaging the CD seems to have copied the CD (without ripping) or at least converted the bits suitable for a file system image. I tried this with SimplyBurns and Toast - same effect. Note also that (prob. obvious to some) that xld produces a different sha1 than itunes - i.e. a different bit image. I wonder how many of us are listening to the same bits of a specific song... So my task to create a bit image of the CD continues...... /Paul

I've not come across the need to record the gaps before;) So you don't really want to rip the tracks as much as duplicate the CD. I'll take a look. Regards

ac3320. My advice is don't use the CD (and is implicit tech) to store an archive. At some point the CD's won't exist, iso will have changed and toast/computer CD players won't exist. (aside - I have backup dvd's and tapes recorded 5 years ago that are no longer readable - the devices to read them no longer exist). Instead rip your CD's into lossless aiff format and store them somewhere. You can always recreate the CD or next gen tech from the aiff files. Where you store them is interesting and depends on your personal level of reliability. The obvious choices are a RAID5/6 system or in the cloud using backblaze or equivalent.

ZFS supports explicit compression independently for each 'filesystem'. The choices are: Original Data Size : 412MB lzjb : 312MB Compression ratio : 1.32 gzip : 293MB Compression ratio : 1.41 gzip9 : 292MB Compression ratio : 1.41 On office like data sets. You can switch on and off compression for the filesystem whenever you like. I'm not sure how hfscompression would work over afp. ZFS also supports Deduplication although I have never used it - it is the big feature in Enterprise Storage. FreeNAS 8 I don't believe supports dedup at the moment - encryption and dedup are rumored in release 8.1 /Paul

I used rsync for years, I now use Goodsync - it is very good/inexpensive and preserves those apple idiosyncratic things that Unix doesn't like. I recommend it highly. /Paul

Well there are a couple of ways to set this up. This is my setup. I purchased a Supermicro 16 Disk, rack mountable, PC enclosure. I installed a motherboard (I had spare), processor, 4M memory. I added 5 * 2T disks and 9 * 1Tbyte disks (I had lying around - from different manufactures). I downloaded FreeNAS 8 - it resides/boots on/from a USB stick (not on a hard drive). It executes in memory. Config: The 5 * 2T disks are configured as a RaidZ2 ZFS pool, the 9*1Tbyte disks are configured as another RAIDZ2 pool. FreeNAS8 is now very stable - previous versions were not that lucky. In ZFS one can assign several filesystems to a pool. Each filesystem can be used/exports as NFS, iSCSI, afp, windows share CIFS, FTP, SSH, TFTP. When this happens you gain the underlying reliability of ZFS. For the music stuff I use afp. The MACs around the house just mount the drive as a afp folder - then you can operate as if the files were local (I have a wired GE network). I use a ZFS filesystem for TimeMachine. I also use various filesystems for work related stuff e.g. web hosting. The filesytems are snapshotted every 60 mins - for a duration of 2 weeks. Each weekly snapshot is kept for 1 year. I run bitchecks every day, smart is also enabled. One can use a smaller system e.g. standard PC with 3/4/5 drive bays - a nice feature of FreeNAS is that the OS and App is kept on a USB stick - no need to lose a drive bay to the OS - best kept for storage. I have tested ZFS - removed drives, inserted drives, swapped drives created bit errors etc.. it works like a dream. /Paul

MACZFS will make it easier. http://www.freenas.org/ is a server based version of ZFS. To use it you will need to be comfortable with unix/admin operations. /Paul

I use ZFS for everything in the house including music. I have 18TB of space organised as RAIDZ2. I snapshot every 60 mins and hold the snapshots for 2 weeks. Regular RAID is really not very good. RAID5 has serious flaws - most people won't see the problems until they get a failure. I currently use FreeNAS. MacZFS will be very good when it comes out. ZFS is exceptional technology. /Paul

That's not you in a former life is it?

I have both. Isolation transformers are head and shoulders better. I no longer use the regenerators. I opted for Balanced power from Equitech. /Paul

All I've now added an Ayre KX-R preamp to the system. I avoided pre-amps for a long time - more cost, more parts of the chain. In the end I wanted two things: 1. Better electrical isolation from the computer source. 2. Removal of the volume control (setting the Alpha DAC gain to unity) - the volume adjust is created by the Ayre VGT. The increase is performance is dramatic - not subtle at all. I considered the system to be excellent before - it is now very high performance. It affords me the opportunity to now A/B different DACs, USB/Firewire etc. As an additional benefit I can now pass-through my 5.1 Surround Sound Processor i.e. integrate 5.1 with 2.0. I support the view above - a real benefit to the next gen DACs will be better pre-amp stages or leave the pre-amp to an external device. The Pre-Amp wasn't cheap BUT unlike most system changes the marginal value dwarfed the marginal cost. /Paul

Yep they are HP DL360. Aside I run FreeNAS on your recommendation - many thanks for that. /Paul

I have been asked by several to see some pictures of my Media room. Here are 5 overview images. A fisheye of the room. The cabling going to the room. (The cabling design/noise issues were a major design issue esp. with 107dB speakers). The Servers that I use - I currently run 18 Tbytes with ZFS (using 2 bit redundancy). The servers store/feed all music and video to the house. The room was computer modeled - are re-sized/designed. The rear of the room - you will notice the bookcases set at 14 degrees - this provides a acoustic lens for dispersion of the sound from the front. 12mm picture of the front of the room. Bass traps in the corners. Also traps in the nodal points. Helmholtz resonators in the front corners The ceiling has absorbers set at 19 degrees - these prevent reflections in the vertical space. The speakers - horns plus extra subs (also horns). There is a Tom Evans Amp at the front. The speakers on the wall (center) are only used in Surround Sound applications. I researched and engineered the room and the sound from first principles over a period of 2 years. The sound is dramatic. Many of the problems discussed on Audiophile I cannot reproduce on my system. I have been asked to create a web blog going through the whole design process. If this of interest I'd be happy to do it. - its quite a lot of work. Regards Paul

I've tried all of them - Exact Audio Copy is arguably the best - they will all rip well - depends on the condition of your source CD's. I have 2Tbytes ripped with itunes - switch on the error correction detection. /Paul

Please don't lose the will to live. Rip to AIFF or ALAC - use itunes. If you get a FLAC file convert it to AIFF/ALAC. Feel free to use an alternative ripper. done /Paul