tmornini

Wow, that's a terrific story! I spent a very short amount of time in UNIX with ed, and have been a consistent vi(m) user ever since. I cannot imagine using something like ed for very long. Thank you very much! What year was that? Also, what language were you using that was so very terse?

Their margin on the physical hardware may be substantial, but it's extremely difficult to gauge their true margins without knowing their engineering spend for develop the products.<br /> <br /> They've been working on their file server for over a year. How much salary does that represent?<br /> <br /> I don't particularly care, I just want to listen to the beautiful music. :-)<br />

I use a Oyaide Neo+ 9->6 pin between my Mac Mini and Weiss DAC 202. Way better than the $20 cable at the local computer store. And that makes me cry a little on the inside. This should not be the case! :-(

blain78: "Then, why do so many agree (in the CA forums that hear the differences), including myself that WAV sounds best (meaning: most realistic, dynamic, involving, detail retrieval) on both PC and MAC? i have not once heard, FLAC or ALAC sounds best, and majority (in the CA forums that hear the differences) prefer WAV over AIFF." I cannot answer your question, but I can give at least one possible explanation. I believe there's a leftover bias from about a decade ago when the sins against information theory I outlined above, combined with CPUs that were power hungry monsters with trivial computational capacity compared to modern systems, caused the decompression code to transmit "unpleasant" EF noise to internal DACs (aka "sound cards"), whereas putting the processor into a *steady* "wait loop" while WAV could be streamed from the hard drives directly to the sound card via DMA (direct memory access) might produce less unpleasant noise, may explain how early digital folks heard pretty huge differences. Whew, that was tricky to say! :-) So why do people still hear it today? Once a "truth" is spread by authoritative individuals, it's hard to squash those ideas complete! History is clear on this subject, people are SLOW to change their minds. This is particularly true, I think, when the reason has been may have been misattributed, i.e. the problem was never the file format, per-se, but the poor playback performance of the hardware, which the format "accidentally" improved. And finally, I'm more than willing to believe that some of this is still in action today, though no doubt at far lower levels than previously existed. We KNOW the gap is closing, so the differences we're listening for are becoming increasing smaller. The point I want to get across is this: That anyone CAN hear a difference between formats should ONLY be attributed to failures at the computer hardware (EF leakage), playback software (bit loss), OS (bit loss), cabling (bit loss), or DAC. And if the DAC has high enough EF immunity, D/A accuracy (including timing!) and analog linearity, then NOTHING that comes before the DAC can matter at all! We have ways to KNOW that the correct bits are arriving at the DAC, it can be measured several ways and some DACs now have verification systems built in. Nobody is disputing this anymore. So, the root question we need to ask ourselves is this: Do we believe that a DAC should perform identically when fed identical bits? The modern world suggests that the answer to that question should be "yes." To the extent that it's not true today is, to me, a failure of the DAC. We *will* have DACs that perform independently of anything else in the chain. In fact, I'd be very surprised if the people who have done their own tests and cannot tell the differences probably have DACs that behave this way. And let's be clear, the ability to be independent of input is entirely orthogonal to the ability to produce world-class playback. I suggest that a DAC that behaves independently of source but doesn't sound good is a sign of doing some things properly (handling the data) and other things poorly (RF immunity, conversion, and/or analog section). It's also possibly a mix of the two types of things. But it's not proof that the component isn't resolving enough to tell the difference, if that makes sense. The ideal component would be independent of source AND sound wonderfully. :-)

I've said it before, but I'll take this opportunity to say it again: The problem with everyone who argues the point "it's bit perfect, so it has to sound the same," lies with their fundamental belief that no laws of information theory have been violated. And, unfortunately, I believe that MANY, if not MOST, or perhaps ALL of the DAC machinery in existence appears to violate a basic rule of information theory. I'm not suggesting the designers are incompetent or ignorant, but I am suggesting that their designs fall short of ideal. This isn't much of a criticism, as almost nothing in the world proves to be ideal. :-) To people who grew up in digital information systems, BITS ARE BITS. They have two states: on or off. Information theory says that a bit can ONLY have two possible states, and this has served information systems well. Bit comparisons are understood to be proof that any method of bit transmission can be deemed to be identical if the bits can be reconstituted accurately on the other side. Yet it's entirely clear that MOST posters on this site agree that various bit *timing* issues in the transmission chain affect sound quality. I certainly do, having experimented on the subject. But that means, without a doubt, that information theory has been violated in the designs. Why? Because when that's true bits now have more than two states! They can be on or off, AND early, on-time, or late. :-) This goes to why asynchronous generally(!) sounds better than synchronous: async systems buffer the stream and reclock it on the receiving side, which removes the concept of timing from the bitstream. I suspect the good sounding synchronous systems have been buffering and re-clocking for a long time! If a DAC sounds differently when fed identical bitstreams, then essentially ANYTHING that alters the timing of the bits CAN and WILL change the resulting sound. Everything I've said so far is, to the best of my long experience of digital systems, a fact. From here, I'll go to opinion. I *do* believe those who can hear a difference. I *do not* believe those who believe that one format universally sounds better than another. The timing issues that CAN and DO affect sound quality could easily change when: 1) OS is updated 2) Player software is updated 3) Hardware platform is changed Even if we take it down to RF (which I believe *does* come into effect in some systems) the exact sequence of microprocessor instructions which get executed to read, decode, and transfer the bits to the DAC are *incredibly* complex and non-deterministic in modern operating systems. So, while I do believe folks can hear a difference, I believe that MANY factors come into play to subtly affect the final sound. Worse yet, these factors change on a regular basis, and are nearly always different BETWEEN non-identical systems. I do not believe that saying "Format A sounds better than B" (short of bit-imperfectness) will never be true, in general, though it may well be true for a single system or set of systems. Switching back into fact mode, I'll add this. IF the playback software decodes the file into RAM into a common format *before* playback begins, then I believe I can say with 100% confidence that it's IMPOSSIBLE that file format can affect the final sound quality. I'll put on my asbestos suit and await the flames to arrive. :-)

I believe they store the streamed song locally as a cache. In the future, to listen again, no additional bandwidth is consumed. Additionally, the experience will be better, as the playback will start instantly, and won't skip when you walk into an elevator. :-)<br /> <br /> And, if the device fills up, they can destroy the least recently listened to songs.<br /> <br /> The *vast* majority of people listen to a small subset of their libraries over and over again. iMatch's stream+download methodology is optimized for that case.

AudioTap sounds very cool.<br /> <br /> I find it a bit hard to believe that it can work at full quality while on 3G, the bandwidth doesn't seem to be there to make this work while walking down the street.<br /> <br /> How does it work for you in that situation?

Ubiquitous access to my data is making my life better and more interesting on a daily basis!<br /> <br /> I love pausing Pandora in my house, and continuing at the same place in my car when I drive away. :-)<br /> <br /> There's always been tons of EM. The universe and sun are giant EM generators. :-)<br />

I'm just going to assume you were joking.<br /> <br /> Would have been SUPER funny if you had said something nasty about my mother, and compared me to Hitler somehow. :-)<br /> <br /> Keep it coming, you're hilarious!<br />

I'll be the devil's advocate here.<br /> <br /> I'm using Match, and so far, so good.<br /> <br /> I use Time Machine for backup of my computers, and I also remote back up to BackBlaze from my Music server. I don't EVER want RIP all my music again. :-)<br /> <br /> Since my definitive library on my music server. I matched from there first.<br /> <br /> Then I deliberately trashed my iTunes folder on my laptop and matched. BOOM! A few minutes later I had a completely populated library (which no doubt has a few issues), INCLUDING my playlists. Very cool.<br /> <br /> Then I set it up on the phone. Again, BOOM! everything is there. Nice.<br /> <br /> No more syncing, ever. Good riddance!<br /> <br /> Yes, it's true, my iPhone is 100% lossy though my library is 95% lossless.<br /> <br /> The most negative thing I agree with you about, Chris, is that it's not matching my hires files. I'm willing to bet that this is more about a poorly discriminating filter than a policy by Apple. However Apple is doing it's signatures, it could certainly do it against the hires versions, as signature creation is done locally.<br /> <br /> I'm pretty confident that I'll soon update my Match and fine that my hires music has been matched, or down sampled and uploaded, and is now available everywhere just like everything else.<br /> <br /> Apple fanboy? You bet.

Still wishing I had RIPed to single file FLAC + cue sheet + RIP log. :-)

I do agree with everyone that having a non-laptop around will improve the availability of your music. HOWEVER! If you're living in an Apple environment, you can now stream wirelessly from your iPhone and/or iPad in addition to streaming from your computer. The time for fixed placement computers is behind us. Buy a laptop and set your family free! :-) We recently switched from a home iMac to a MacBook Air for my wife and son. Never again will they feel disconnected when we're out of town.

"...and a 24-bit optical input option."

You're not clueless. Audio/Midi Setup is a Macintosh application. I'm not familiar with Windows, so unfortunately I cannot help you out.

Here's a nice graphic courtesy of our friends at HDTracks. :-)