whanafi

Deliberately trying to twist people's words accomplishes what? This is too hostile an environment for exchanging info. I have nothing to sell, just trying to expand people's awareness of alternatives, which is apparently quite unwelcome. If every contribution is treated as requiring defense of the orthodoxy, then please keep talking to yourselves, and I will bow out.

It seems that a different thread would have permitted a better exchange of info, but since "which sound card to buy" has the possible answer of "none", I started here. To recap, if you want to create a high quality digital music system, you are faced with a myriad of choices and approaches. Taking the purist view that the path should be short, and the source should be untouched, I made the personal decision to get the digital file to the DAC with as little drama as possible. That means keeping the source file as data as long as possible, dropping avoidable interfaces such as sound cards, USB cables, Firewire,and so on, then providing a digital data stream to a DAC. In my case that means Vortexbox, Transporter, Bryston BP26 pre-amp, Bryston 4BSST2 amp, and then KEF Reference 205/2 speakers. I have just acquired a Bryston BDA-1 DAC to try in place of the Transporter. If that works better, then the Transporter will just be a digital player rather than analogue source. As to video, it is typically encoded for multi-channel playback, and I have a completely separate system for that. I am sorry I am not an Apple fanboy, and don't follow the orthodoxy here, but that's life.

"If I may be permitted to be pedantic for a moment, the way you are using the Vortexbox is really no different from using any computer and taking time to set it up for audio. You could as easily as use the Squeezebox add a suitable sound card and connect it directly to your DAC (this is what Sonore systems use remember). Currently your Vortexbox is basically used as a NAS type device." To be pedantic, you would have to be correct. I think you have missed the point entirely. The whole point of the Vortexbox setup is to AVOID putting a sound card in a PC and taking the time to set it up for audio, which will then be compromised by the environment. And no, it is not running as a NAS, it is running as a music server. As I said in the original description, I rip on a PC, move the files to a NAS, and then push them to the Vortexbox which is running Squeezebox Server. The physical hardware is a Shuttle small form factor PC with an external power supply and a 500 Gb notebook hard drive. This is a headless appliance, not a computer available for other tasks. And finally on your comments, the Squeezebox family does run Pandora, and Rhapsody,and Last.FM, and Slacker, and Radioio, and Live365 and thousands of internet radio stations, and RSS feeds, and anything else you want to configure. As to the ability to play video, this forum is for Computer audiophiles, not multipurpose computaphiles. I have a different approach for video, as I said. People are all bent out of shape over cables, interfaces, software, hardware - ultimately in danger of losing the original objective which is the accurate reproduction of audio sources. I am describing an alternative to people who want simple but complete management of their music repository with excellent sound reproduction. Why attack something that works because it is different that what you know?

I won't get into personal preferences for operating systems. I have used Windows since it was invented, and am comfortable in the environment. MAC's baffle me because so much of what I want to do is hidden or just different. I use many PC's so it is not a question of trying to combine all tasks into one device. The music server actually runs LINUX, an OS I have tried to love but can't. The point is that the Vortexbox image is downloadable, and installs by itself, so I don't need to understand anything about the OS. I also don't understand the OS in my microwave or washing machine... Vortexbox effectively turns whatever PC it is installed on into an appliance, which then just does it's job. I don't have a monitor or keyboard or mouse attached to that box, just connect to it via a web browser if I need to (which is rare). When I want to watch video media or other sources, I have my laptop or desktop, or the big plasma screen and a Western Digital TV HD Media Player. All data is stored on a NAS, and pushed to relevant devices by backup jobs that run when I don't. I think part of the problem people seem to be experiencing is simply that they are trying to use a general purpose computing device as an audio device. Yes, PC's and MAC's have audio capability, but it was never designed for the purpose it is now being tasked with. There is something I call the "Greater Toaster Theory", which observes that when you are cold in the kitchen, it is better to install a furnace than to modify your toaster to heat the room. You just end up with burnt toast otherwise.

I am into upgrading as much as the next geek, but at some point, the job is done, and I want to kick back and listen to the music. What is there about the SPDIF interface that needs upgrading? In the path I describe, it is isolated from the problems of general PC/MAC and used to transfer the data to the DAC. The interface specifies sufficient bandwidth and performance for the data streams I have available (24/192 max, also limited by the DAC). It works, and works well. Any limitation pales in comparison to managing the PC environment, which by its nature is unsuitable. (discussed in this thread among others - http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Playback-Engines#comment-21746

A $10K CD transport is going to have a 20$ CD reader and a DAC and an analogue out. If you ignore the analogue, there is no way it is going to sound better than the source file going through the same DAC. That's the whole point of going digital - remove the variables of Red Book real time decoding, start with a stable source file, and convert the data to an analogue signal to be fed to an amp and speakers. I don't understand why anyone would want to try and do the conversion on a PC (or MAC), with all the issues of sound cards, interfaces, OS choices, drivers, cables, EMI, EFI, mechanical noise and so on ad nauseum. You can have an open source/free distribution like Vortexbox running on minimal equipment (ATOM-based PC) feeding a player like the Squeezebox Touch. You have full control over the library, playlists, remote control, everything, and if you don't like the analogue out from the Squeezebox, you just feed your own DAC-of-choice. Why worry about sound cards, interfaces, and all the variables that people keep obsessing about. Feed a data stream to the DAC.