SidHo

For the last 10 years or so I've been very happy with MusicCollector although I have tried others. It is available for ios, Mac and windows and is extremely powerful and versatile. If you want to check it out there at "www.collectors.com".

Frozen!

If you have 4gigs already I would stay with it. I think it should be ample unless you notice clicking or other artifacts with memory play. I have 8gigs now up from 2gigs. I jumped to 8 because it was so cheap, less than $100 so it seemed silly not to get the "Full Monty". I noticed no increase in the quality of sound itself. The issues were with memory play on longer tracks and hi Rez files especially when other programs running at the same time as playing music would cause drop outs and clicks. That disappeared when I upped the memory. I'm pretty sure 8gigs is over kill and I'm thinking the results would have been just as good with 4gigs. If you are upgrading from 2gigs then you'd probably spend the extra $40-50 like I did.

Batito7- no, any DAC including the DacMagic is going to convert the digital signal to analog only. You will need a computer or processor of some kind. I, as many others use the Mac mini for this although there are lots of other options to choose from.

Jhwalker - that's interesting. If it is playing from memory I wonder why they don't say that in their literature or in their forum? I have to say though it does seem to continue with the pattern I've seen from them. I like the sound of Fidelia but have complained about their manual. It does a terrible job explaining what the different features do and how to implement them intelligently. I'm starting to think they are doing it on purpose.

I don't think I would have figured that out for a long time.

Thought I'd piggyback my question on this thread. I've started using XLD again. I can't remember If this was happening before but when I try to edit flac files I only see a screen that labels the flac files to be burned one track at a time. I would like to know if there's a screen that labels things like album name and artist that are common to the whole album so they don't need to be entered separately for each track. If so how do I get that screen?

Thx JM. It looks like memory will make the CPU over less likely. I didn't think memory play would be an option when I got my mini, now we have seveal to choose from. I'll up my mini to 8 gigs and see what happens. It's so cheap now anyway.

I'll tell you what amazes Me is how so many seemingly bit perfect players can sound so different. I remember the first incarnation of Audirvana was not near the top of my favorite players. All the players I've tried without exception sounded better than my old linn ikemi cd player. All very detailed excellent base, midrange and highs to varying degrees. Until I tried fidelia the one thing I didn't hear was any real depth of the soundstage... I like the highs with Fidelia as well very liquid, no graininess. (the only talked about players I have not used are amarra and player because I don't use iTunes). Audirvana's last update now makes it 2 players with depth. It's definitely better than the previous version to my ears with a real depth in the soundstage that wasn't there before. The base does seem to be more defined, whether there's more of it I don't know. It's definitely one of my two favorite players, a real achievement. I havn't done enough listening to say anything else. Actually I have but it's been hard not to be paying attention to the music and forget about the player! I wonder how much more improvement is possible? Like I said, before 6 months or a year ago I wouldn't think what I'm hearing in my system now would be happening without sinking at least a few grand into a DAC. Thanks for the world class player. P.S. I've got a question. Would increasing my memory from 2 to 4 or 8 gigs stop the CPU overload from happening? I'm hoping people with that amount of memory in a new (aluminum) Mac mini could relate their experience with this.

Damien, I don't mind doing that check with Hallab if I can. The thing is though I don't know what it is. I did a google and found some reference to an apple utility although I don't see it in utilities on my Mac. If I do download it ( if that's what I need to do), will it be self apparent what I will be doing with it while or after I run Fidelia? Sorry but as I said my knowledge of computers doesn't go beyond a reasonably adept hobbyist. On another note. I do get fairly frequent CPU overloads even on shorter tracks of 5 minutes. I do have the media manager portion of Plex running in the background possibly some other things I'm not aware of. This is a basic question but could you or someone tell me what I do to find out what is running in the background and how much "juice" it's using?

For the first time I experienced the crackling from Audirvana without the cause being CPU overload. It sounded very much like small scratches plyed on an LP. I'm mentioning it here because for me I don't think it was a defect in the program and may be helpful to Damien or someone out there. What seems to have caused this... I was listening to 24/96 files with Fidelia. I switched to Audirvana to listen to a 5.1 24/96 version of Dark Side of the Moon because Fidelia only plays stereo files. As soon as the bass slowly comes up in the beginning there was soft popping sounds that sounded very similar ro a scratched LP except the noise seemed to be tied to the volume or energy in the signal, being more frequent in higher volume passages. I was pissed because this is the first time I listened to this version and thought it was a copy of an old LP. I switched to the 16/44.1 version and it was still there. I exited and restarted Audirvana and it was gone completely in both versions. I'm not a programmer but it seems something from Fidelia was still lingering in memory. I try to shut down all other programs when listening with the mini but maybe some of us have things running in the background that could have some affect? I don't know, just putting it out there. Audirvana has become one of my favorite players though and I'm starting to have a pang of conscience and will be making a donation soon.

There's an off button on Audirvana that shuts down the program. It's not a big deal, I guess it just furthers the allusion of being a stereo component. I find it a little more convenient as well. As far as the GUI being uneccassary. Yeah, so? It looks nice. Totally subjective. I like decibel to - sound wise and interface. It's amazing how many quality choices have materialized for us Mac users in the last 6 months or so.

Pale Rider I agree.. Your definitely dense. . Seriously though I do agree about the power button, It's not a priority for me but I do like it on Audirvana and find it a little handier. I have flac files almost exclusively and don't use iTunes. Besides that I prefer to have manual control of setting up files and several times if I'm not careful with iTunes it's automatically rearranged my files int a big mess. I want my files to reflect the albums they came from and my files are Artist/Album/tracks. One thing you reminded me of when you mentioned track controls is having the library in the remote and computer reflect that hierarchy. With Fidelia box sets are displayed as individual CD's and if there is only one album attached to an artist it goes right to the track display in the remote. This makes it hard to find a particular cd from a box set that has a title longer than 20 characters or so. I know that one can set up play lists but that's not my habit because I listen to a lot of different albums. So one other thing I may as well mention is when you do pick a track or album it doesn't stopp playing but keeps playing through your library until there's a lightning strike. For my listening habits I prefer something like decibel or Audirvana where you select what you want as a file or files and it runs through that only.

I like the sound of Fidelia. There's a few things though that I'd like to see... Get rid of effect filter buttons on player and put them on the menu bar. In their place, or somewhere on the player put a library button and maybe a power (off) button. I, I think like a lot of "audiophiles" will never be tempted to use any filters. On the other hand even though I have the iPhone remote I often select tracks at the computer. It's mildly irritating because when I go to the menu bar and select "window" or "file" I have to bring the cursor down again to the player graphic to have the menu bar focus on Fidelia and then press window or file. I would really like to have a cover art visible. I'm from the Album generation as opposed to the mp3 crowd. And listen to albums not individual tracks. Any thoughts...

Your taste in music is similar to mine judging from your list. I don't normally give negative opinions on forums cuz everyones opinion is different and I don't "normally" enjoy stirring up controversy. But to me the hi Rez version I have of Ballads and Coltrane Plays the Blues sounded more on the dead side lacking some of the energy that is on my cd flac rip. The stereo image seemed to be more artificial with sax on one side and bass and drums on the other. The Koln Concert though was so much more revealing and involving I couldn't read while listening to it. I'm not up on stereo equipment after 20 years of trying to assemble a system I liked from different high end components I took the easy way out and bought all Linn knowing it was all excellent quality and pretty much guaranteed to sound good together. I know I don't have the absolute best (who does?) but after spending $30,000 plus over the years on systems I was never completely happy with I feel pretty content with what I have... Except I do want to improve the DAC. I think your right thinking about improving your speakers. I bet that would do a lot for all your music. Any way gotta go my bacon and eggs are ready. All the best.