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Thank you Mark - this is useful - I am surprised how many high end equipment makers do not consider the needs of automation - one would think that, with USB and Computer audio, this would go a very sophisticated route, but, for now, it is quite the contrary. I currently have a Bryston BDA-1 which has a 12V trigger and it turns on-off with the computer. I also have the Stereo rig working as a HT and, within the same setup, I have other things like turning on the screen projector, moving the projection screen down, all being controlled by desktop icons. I wonder how others are doing. It seems the world is, at the moment, confined to either high-end stereo with mostly manual control for the equipment or multichannel receivers with a Logitech remote ... but one would expect these worlds to converge. Anyway - I am going off-topic here - again, thanks for your reply.

Hi - I had asked a question in this thread before, but rather in the midst of an intense discussion on another topic. I think my question got lost. Please allow me to post it one more time: To the Vega owners: I understand that there are standby and sleep modes. Assuming the unit is taken to standby, when you switch to power-on again, will it come back to the same settings as before (input selected, volume level, display settings, etc.) ? Or are there default settings that will override the previous ones ? I also have the same question regarding the switch from sleep to power-on, if anyone tried. Your help is much appreciated.

I have a couple of questions for the Auralic Vega owners. I understand that there are standby and sleep modes. If you switch the unit from power-on to standby, when you switch to power-on again, will it come back to the same settings as before (input selected, volume level, display settings, etc.) ? Also, the same question when switching to sleep. Your help is much appreciated. Gerson

Thank you both, for your insights on the Power-on behaviour of the Hex. It's surprising how many high end products don't factor usability very well. I am waiting for a DAC that will have a second USB connection to be used for control. It would be a killer feature !

Hello, I have a Bryston BDA-1 which turns on with the rest of the rig because it has a 12V trigger. It can be powered off with the trigger, and once brought on again, it comes back selecting input previously used. The question here is: what is the behaviour of the Metrum Hex ? If you plug it on the wall, does it come powered on or off ? Does it remember its previous state if it is powered off along with other components, such that when powered on it will come back on with the previous input selected ? Any help here would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Gerson

Hi Chris, thank you for your reply. My confusion came from the labeling of the outputs, the fixed output being the line out and the other being the headphone output. If I were to use the variable output to connect to a power amplifier, would that be an acceptable configuration ? I don't know much about impedance matching, voltage levels and the like, and I was wondering if controlling the output of a power amplifier through the volume control of the headphone output would still produce optimum sound quality. Regards, Gerson

I am confused by the statement that the Meridian Explorer serves as a "preamp". With its fixed analog output, how could I connnect it to a power amplifier ? Am missing something here ?

Thank you, everybody, for your feedback. Sounds like leaving it on is the way to go. It is intriguing to hear the comment about the Alpha being too clinical - this is my reservation with the Bryston unit. That said, if having the Berkeley available in a place like Brazil is a challenge, think about the Phasure ... So, sometimes one has to be pragmatic. I guess for me the choice has to be the Bada, indeed. Regarding the need to leave the unit on, I think I got my answer - thanks ! Not what I wanted to hear, though - kudos to Bryston for thinking about automation. Perhaps there are other folks like me that are keen to mix good stereo sound with a Home Theater arrangement in one setup. For those, automation does indeed help, even at the expense of waiting for the warm up for the ultimate sound. I haven't done exausting testing, but haven't found a detriment with mixing the computer audio stuff with video cards, projectors, etc. If anybody would be interested in my experiences on this topic, I would be happy to open another thread. Again, thanks, everybody for your helpful replies ... Gerson

Greetings, everyone, I have a Bryston BDA-1, which is a top performer, but I am intrigued with what was once described by Chris as less of a 3D presentation of a soundstage, when compared to the Berkeley unit. I can relate to that from what I sometimes miss with the Bryston presentation, but I haven't heard the Berkeley (and it would be hard to hear it here in Brazil). So I am willing to give the BADA unit a try the hard way - buying one. To that end, if anybody else has had any experience comparing the Bryston with the Berkeley, your feedback would be greatly appreciated. The rest of my setup includes a computer with a Juli@ card, a pair of ICE power ASP1000 monoblocks and the Dynaudio Contour S5.4 speakers. I also have another question, regarding power on/off automation. The Bryston has a 12V trigger, which gives it great usability. I can turn it on at the same time as the computer and the power amp and there are no pops, clicks or any other noise. Same when everything goes off commanded by the computer going to standby. By reading the Berkeley manual, it hints at the idea of leaving it on all the time - something I wouldn't do (this is not "green" enough). So I wonder if folks have had any experience with turning the Berkeley on at the same time as your other gear, and whether that caused any unwanted or damaging speaker noise. Best regards to all ... Gerson.

@vortecjr When you say you checked the Voyage MPD to Minerva, which connection did you use ? I had the understanding that Weiss does not provide firewire drivers for Linux and I am wondering if you can still connect it with some type of native driver, or if you used the SPDIF interface with some other SPDIF / AES-EBU IO to the computer. I think I know the answer based on your signature, but I wanted to check ! Thanks.

"It did not recognize the Lynx card and I've had no joy thus far in getting it working. All tips and hints welcome here" You can find in the ALSA website the inventory of all cards natively supported. check http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Vendor-Lynx_Studio_Technology

"I was wondering if you talked to Alsa people about the impossibility to output the sound automatically (a la Amarra) with the original sample rate"<br /> <br /> This can be done with ease, but it is not really a feature of ALSA directly, but rather of the driver for the specific card, under ALSA. Thus, you may experience different results according to the card or chipset you are using. <br /> <br /> I can tell you that it can happen as you described with the Intel HD Audio ALSA driver, with the Realtek chipset. It also happens with the ESI Juli@. I didn't have good results with an old Creative Sound Blaster. <br /> <br /> ALSA has a mixer, alsamixer, which is the default route for all sounds in the system. The mixer resamples everything to 48KHz. So the casual user of ALSA will not get bit perfect output. In order to achieve the bit perfect output, you have to bypass the mixer and plug directly to the hardware.<br />

Hi Chris and everybody else. Thanks for this site which provides a wealth of information. I have had so far only browsed through the many topics, but this one made me think I have some knowledge I should share. <br /> <br /> I believe the choices made here are great ones. However I would like to point out that I do think Linux is still viable. For me, after acquiring a Bryston BDA-1, the ability of playing natively on all sample rates as per the requirement #13 was a must. I am able do that, both on Windows and Linux with the Juli@ card. I bought mine recently and was unaware of this supply problem. I acquired it from FloridaMusicCo. I just visited their site and don't know if they still have it in stock or not. But it is listed there. <br /> <br /> The issue with Linux is to have a sound card that has good driver support with ALSA (ALSA is the current sound infrastructure in the Linux kernel). This restricts the possibilities a bit. But the Juli@ (and other cards using the Envy24HT chipset) is supported. I think Juli@ is superior to other Envy24HT cards because it has two clocks. This card makes for a relatively unexpensive and effective digital I/O. However, the card's breakout cable is indeed a disaster. There are some DIY discussions in the web regarding better connections, for those that have the patience to deal with that. <br /> <br /> Now for the requirement #7. First I would like to comment that not all players are created equal in the Linux space, in particular for FLAC. FLAC decoding is typically embedded in the players, so mplayer and MPD (for example) produced different results on the same file. Some FLAC files, in particular the ones with "exotic" sample rates can be a problem. Much to my surprise, the most consistent player was also the one with the best user interface (in my opinion) - XBMC, from xbmc.org. While primarily a multimedia player, it behaves flawlessly with FLAC files, sending their decodes directly to the sound card with no manual sample rate switch anywhere. I haven't tested other music file formats.<br /> <br /> Two comments about XBMC. One: its installation was a breeze. I just had to install Ubuntu from the live CD - no fancy options or tricks there. Then, the XBMC site provides a few instructions to add the XBMC repository to the source list in your Ubuntu system. Next, it is just one command to install it. One other comment: XBMC (or any Linux player, for that matter) will not do bit-perfect output out of the box. You will need to create a file called .asoundrc that creates a virtual device that plugs straight to the hardware, bypassing the ALSA mixer. Then you have to choose that virtual device as your output in XBMC. I can provide details on that if required.<br /> <br /> And one last comment: I think everybody would agree that the Lynx AES16 is a better I/O than the Juli@. To my knowledge (I hope I can be corrected) the Lynx card is NOT supported on Linux. The other promising multiple sample rate interface is the M2Tech Hiface, but for the moment this one is only a promise as far as Linux goes. <br /> <br /> Sorry for the long post, but I hope this contributes to the dialog. Again, I don't think this Linux/Juli@/XBMC alternative disqualifies in any way the choices made by Chris.<br /> <br /> Gerson<br />