Hypnotoad

Just fixed it by accident! I was going to put in the HDMI and accidentally removed the USB to the Audiophilleo. As soon as I did that, iTunes started playing through the internal speakers. I plugged the Audiophilleo back in and everything worked again. I guess for some reason the Audiophilleo needed to be reset. Thanks everyone.

I've restarted the computer, shut it down, etc. I did the CMD-R and that didn't seem to help. I will try emailing Channel-D but if you have any thoughts in the meantime, I'm all ears.

It won't play just with iTunes. You can select any track you like, but if you hit play nothing happens. I have checked the Audio Midi and repeatedly reset the default output in both Pure Music and Audirvana. It seems to me that this problem arose after trying the Less is More setting on Pure Music. But that might not be right. That is the last change I remember making.

That fixed the burning problem, thanks Paul! However, a problem that I thought was related doesn't seem to be fixed. When I try to play anything through Audirvana or Pure Music it doesn't play at all (when using the iTunes interface). In Audirvana it looks like it plays one second (but makes no noise). In Pure Music it doesn't play at all -- if you press play it waits a few seconds and then says "paused" again. Similarly, if I just load iTunes alone it doesn't play music at all. Again, I wasn't having this problem at all before. It started shortly after I installed Pure Music, but I was getting Pure Music to work fine for a while. - David

Thanks. I can easily connect the Mini to my TV as a monitor -- it sits right under the TV. We do have a MacBook, but it just has Firewire 400 and the new Mac Mini only has Firewire 800, so I don't think there is a way to get Target mode to work...

Great, thanks. I am running the computer using screen sharing. I brought in my keyboard from work to set up the computer, but now it is back at work. I tried holding down option while restarting it with screen sharing, but, as I expected, that didn't work. So I may need to wait until Monday to bring back the keyboard and try this out. - David

I ripped over 250 CDs with XLD when I just had Bitperfect loaded on my computer. No problems. Then I bought a Mac Mini as a dedicated music server and continued to rip fine with XLD. I installed and tried Audirvana, which basically went fine, although I started to get errors about how I didn't have write access to my iTunes library (which is on an external hard drive). I repeatedly had to manually change the read/write access, and I don't know why. Recently I installed Pure Music. Now XLD won't rip CDs at all. If I shut down the computer, restart it, launch XLD and immediately try to rip a disc, it gives me the error "Unable to open the disc. Please check if it is not used by other applications." Any ideas about what might be going on?

Well, the total cost for the Octave and Audiophilleo is right around $1600. The Mac Mini, solid state drive, ram, hard drive, usb cable (WireWorld Ultraviolet) add another $900 or so. Call that the digital front end, $2500. I considered a lot of different options in that price range, some of them with much larger power supplies, tube stages, powered by a car battery, etc. From my research, given this budget, and given my music preferences, it seemed to me that this was the best option available for me. I guess what I am saying is that I agree that power supply and output stage definitely matter. But I tend to try to look at the whole component and not let my preconceived notions of what should sound best move me away from trusted first hand reviews. The Octave is a very small package, but seems to have many of the virtues that people look for when they seek out tube equipment or massive transformers.

I had said a bit about my vinyl setup at the end of my initial report, but here is a bit more detail: It is a vintage Garrard 301 turntable that has been restored and put in a constrained-layer plinth (made by Joey in the Philippines). It has a SME 3012R tonearm, a Yamamoto ebony headshell and an Uwe ebony body for the Denon 103 cartridge. The 103 has been retipped by Soundsmith in NY with a ruby cantilever and optimized contour diamond. The step-up transformer is by Auditorium 23, designed to match with the Denon 103 and Shindo electronics. The phonostage is built into the Shindo Aurieges. In short, it is a cheaper version of this: http://www.toneimports.com/shindo/shindo301.html There are dozens of articles around the internet about this sort of set up. I can point you towards some info, if you'd like. Picture of my set-up attached.

Just a quick addendum: I had a friend over for some testing. We listened to the Stello for half an hour and then switched over to the Audiophilleo. I hadn't told him which I preferred and he thought I preferred the Stello. Within 20 seconds he said, "I think I really like this one [the Audiophilleo] much better." He is someone who often worries that that things sound different, but not necessarily better. Here was a case where he thought it was clear. In fact, we thought the jump from the Stello to the Audiophilleo was at least as big as the jump from the Audiophilleo to the vinyl rig. Considering that my vinyl rig costs at least a $1000 more, that is really quite amazing. Now I am trying out other programs (Pure Music) and trying to decide about upsampling. But the differences are smaller here and will take some time to sort out.

Glad you like the review, Ted and Paul. I am interested in checking out some hirez. Maybe it will be able to really challenge my vinyl set-up. Right now the computer set-up is remarkable, but on a well-mastered and well-pressed slab of vinyl, vinyl clearly wins: more solid and three-dimensional, more direct, more alive. To be honest, I had two reasons for setting up a computer system: (1) to improve the sound of the large library of CDs I have from my pre-vinyl days and (2) to listen to music that can't be found on vinyl, or that sounds much worse on vinyl. So much of my favorite listening recently has not been of audiophile material: the Davies transfers of Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, 60's soul, Reggae, rap, awesome music I picked up in the middle of Turkey, etc. All of it sounds much better on this set up. In fact, one of my requirements is that my equipment make the music I want to listen to sound good, rather than the equipment dictating what music I want to listen to. Nothing will replace the feel of pulling out a jazz album and putting it on (jazz is the heart of my collection). But I am more than happy to explore hi-rez.

I don't want to post the same review all over the internet, but I got the most advice here and at the Audiogon website, so I thought I would post my review in both places (lightly revised here). Well, I've had my Octave and USB to SPDIF devices for about 12 days now. In short, with the right set-up I am truly surprised -- I didn't think digital could sound this good, this vinyl-like. My ripped CDs have more life and soul than I thought possible. I ripped the CDs using XLD/CD Paranoid. I bought a Mac Mini to use as a dedicated music server, put a solid state drive in it, 8 GB of ram, and put my music on a firewire Minipro external drive. At first I was playing the files with Bit Perfect. It sounded better than iTunes on its own. But as soon as I switched to the free trial of Audirvana Plus, it was obvious that this was a huge jump up. My wife often thinks my changes are splitting hairs, immediately said it sounded much better. I haven't tried Amarra or Pure Music yet. Since there were 30-day money back guarantees for both devices, I bought two different usb/spdif converters: the Audiophilleo2 and the Stello U3. They have both been burnt in for more than 50 hours now, but probably less than 100. The Audiophilleo consistently sounds much, much better than the Stello. The first thing I notice is how much more dynamic it is. I also notice more low-level details on the Audiophilleo. I was worried that this might be the sort of thing that at first seems better but with time comes to seem unnatural. Far from it, the Audiophilleo feels more natural. I lose interest much more quickly with the Stello. I want to keep listening with the Audiophilleo. In some ways what is most impressive to me is that I have no fatigue at all. When I tried playing CDs through my Oppo my ears hurt after half an hour. I had been pretty happy with my Play Station 1. But this set-up is clearly in a different league. More life, more detail, clearer highers and lows -- just better. And I can listen happily all day long. I am having a lot of fun going through listening to my favorite CDs in much higher fidelity. So anyway, I will report back after I've had the system for longer, but this is what I'm thinking so far. For reference, my pre-amp and amp are Shindo: Auriges and Montrachet. Tannoy red 10" drivers in Cornetta enclosure. Turntable is a Garrard 301 with SME 3012 arm, Denon 103 cartridge, and Auditorium 23 step-up. This is very much a modernized vintage system, one that tries to capture the unrestrained, dynamic sound and magic feel of vintage electronics and match it with the accuracy and extension of contemporary equipment. I am thrilled that the computer audio system fits seamlessly into this.

As a self-confessed Apple fanboy, I'm Happy to hear that's your experience, Mister Wednesday. I generally haven't had much luck with Apple phone support -- finding the Apple Stores much better. Since I've always lived in big urban areas as an adult (LA, SF Bay Area, Chicago), they have always been around. Recently I had a case where I spent two hours on phone support trying to figure out a Time Machine problem, ended up going into the Apple Store and they fixed in in 5 minutes. Interesting, tvad how most of your problems were with the battery. I recently had the screen on my Air replaced -- would've cost $850. Of course, none of those are problems you would have with a Mac Mini. As I said in my first post, I always get AppleCare with laptops and it has always been a good idea. [Edit for clarity]

I think part of what was unintuitive for me, when I first opened BitPerfect on my dock, is that there isn't a little white dot underneath the dock icon. I figured out on my own that the menu was on the upper right, but at first I thought that the program hadn't launched. This is the only program I own that does not put a little dot under the dock icon when it is open. That is the sign I use to tell if a program has launched.

I was expecting a higher percentage of people to advise against Apple Care. But I do understand the want for peace of mind. And I do understand that computer parts fail. Even the solid state hard drive on my Air had to be replaced. So it really is a question of risk management. Since the Mac Mini comes with a 1 year limited warranty, you are really just paying for the second and third year (in the US). So $50 a year. It is also interesting that the cost of AppleCare is the same whether you are spending $580 or over $1000 for a fully-loaded Mac Mini. It seems to me that AppleCare makes more and more sense the higher up the hierarchy you go. It is only $120 for AppleCare on a iMac and that can easily cost three-times as much as a Mini.