Paul Held

Many good recommendations from other posters. I have several sets of codings in iTunes for my prog library, but I'll use only two here: "old style" (original prog masters) and "new style" (those who learned from the masters or have evolved). The stunning wave of new bands in the last 10 years from Europe and some from the US have completely revitalized the genre. Here goes with a partial list: Progressive "old style": Rush Genesis (Gabriel era + Trick/Wind only - not Prog after that!) ELP Yes King Crimson Bill Bruford (band: BB, Stewart, Holdsworth, Berlin) Alan Holdsworth (solo) Progressive "new style": Izz Porcupine Tree Abigail's Ghost Ephrat Wolverine Sieges Even Andromeda Blind Ego (wow!) Brother Ape (wow!) Bushwhack Bonebag Blackfield Big Big Train (wow!) Chris Circa Cloverseeds Darwin's Radio (current "top 3!") Demains Dream Theater Frost* The Intersphere K2 Kino Koi Lalle Larsson Liquid Scarlet (1st album only) Magellan Magic Pie Mars Hollow Martin Orford Maze of Time Oceansize OSI Peter Gabriel Planet X (hard instrumental) Derek Sherinian (fronts Planet X, separate albums) Proto Redemption RPWL Riverside Spock's Beard Steve Thorne Subsignal (monsters! same guys as Sieges Even) Sylvan The Watch (another "top 3") Three The Third Ending Transatlantic Enjoy...

Have to agree totally with Chris. Mini is a great option and represents a fine platform for many of us, me included. Paul

Genesis - Selling England by the Pound Dreamtheater - Train of Thought Rush - 2112 Led Zeppelin - IV Creed - Human Clay Pearl Jam - 10 Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magic Porcupine Tree - In Abstentia Jeff Beck - Wired Beatles - White Album

I had to smile when I read the results of the "test" above. With no disrespect intended to the fellow involved, most people would have serious trouble discerning the difference between iTunes AAC at 256 and ALAC or AIFF on the rig he used to test - An MBP connected to Bose speakers. I know I would.

Socrates - that might be the post of the year. Well done!

Agreed great thread. I bought Pure Music right as it came out at the original discounted price. I wanted to hear what all the fuss was about with an alternative music engine. I have a very nice audio system - McIntosh pre and power, B&W 703s, tube 24/96 DAC fed by my Mini. I honestly cannot say that I like PM better than iTunes. On any given day or with different music, it's a toss up. I think iTunes is great stuff and have for years, particularly after I moved the entire household over to Macs (banishing the Vista gear to the cottage!). Lots of small improvements to be had but very sound performance in all, especially at the price point of exactly zero dollars. PH

I think most (perhaps Chris too) believe that the Mini is a more affordable alternative and less obtrusive in an audio setting. I would generally agree. I use the Mini as my dedicated server as well. But we have the Mini, 2 Macbooks and an iMac in the house. In my opinion, the iMac would make an equally graceful server. I can't imagine any real difference between any of the Mac configs for our purposes. In fact, the iMac is substantially more powerful in terms of CD ripping and about every other task associated with this hobby (and computing in general) than is this generation of Mini (both mid 2009's in my case).

After having some challenges with my my Mini, 2GB, ALAC set up and the demo software, I persisted to see if I could duplicate the positive experience many of you were having with PM. In the end, I've purchased it at the intro price "just because" and will continue to do my own informal A/B on it. It certainly "works" now and the buggy, schreechy sounds have stopped. The distortion I was hearing was caused by none other than the volume control. Above "zero" in PM caused significant distortion in my system. Keeping it at 0 or using the DIM feature to cap it at zero solved that issue outright (a case of read the manual eventually helped with that). I also ended up downloading the .02 version which helped to clarify the upsampling feature, which also seems to work exactly as advertised with my Toslink 24/96 DAC. My ears are perhaps not golden enough to discern the difference yet between straight PM redbook and upsampled PM redbook but I'll keep trying. In any case, a very minimal investment for the opportunity to further optimize our systems, thx Paul

Also, a couple of more Amazon tricks: 1. Don't stop with the Amazon supplied image. The Customer supplied images underneath are often much better, assuming anyone has submitted any, but they often do. 2. Don't stop at A.com - check out other Amazon stores like UK, etc. - often European artists and labels have better art show up in other Amazon stores, and again often with customer supplied images that are superior Have fun, Paul

I have both and would advocate for the Mini. The ATV is a great consumer level convenience device but the Mini is a real computer with lots of choices and options, and minimal (read Apple style) maintenance required and few if any hassles. My 2 cents of course...Paul

So are we thinking ALAC processing is the problem (on my 2GB Mini) causing the distortion? Unusable unfortunately if that's the case......too bad thx

2 G in my case on the Mini. Plays fine but sounds awful. Can you think of something I'm missing? I've tried both 16bit and 24bit input and output, as well as 44.1 and 96 - no go! help! thx

Folks, trying the demo just now and things so horrid - there must be something wrong with my config. I have a Macmini, ALAC media, toslink to a 24/96 tube dac. Audio midi is 44.1, 2/24 input and output. I tried both this and 96, 2/24 and they both produced distorted awful sound. I must be missing something. Can someone please weigh in with advice as to by brain-lock? thanks Paul ps: my rig sounds great with straight iTunes. Audio midi 44.1, 2/24.

Thanks for the initial thoughts Chris - we can't find a pattern yet but that doesn't mean that there isn't one behind it. We'll attack it as you suggested. Anyone else with thoughts on this one? It looks like it's the DAC not the pc, but open to all suggestions. Thanks

All, thanks for reading this. I need some hardcore technical help/ideas to solve an issue. I've found the other thread here on the site which appears related to the issue I'm having with a system I'm configuring as a present. My brother in law and I gave our other brother in law a fully baked server system for his 40th birthday. I've been doing this stuff for a number of years (currently on Mac gear but cut my teeth on XP and Vista for years before that). In short, I gave him an almost-new Acer Vista (32bit, home premium) based pc with iTunes and a large ALAC library preconfigured on the pc's internal HD (we share musical taste, so I was able to give him ALAC of everything he already owned as I own it on CD as well). I did the legwork. My other BIL bought the new DAC, a Fubar USB DAC that some of you would know and may love (with the upgraded power supply). That particilar Vista PC was surplus at my place, so I repurposed it as the gift server. I had never been doing much of anything, and had certainly never been used running music server. As such, it had not been really tested; I had no reason to think it wouldn't be fine... but nonetheless. The complete config is this Acer Vista 32 PC running iTunes 9+, ALAC (mostly) library on the internal HD, Fubar DAC with ps upgrade, analog out to his audio gear (preamp, amp, etc.). I stripped off pretty much everything not focused on making music or basic web surfing related. It is wireless and running Avast AV software. Here is what's happening. After a period of time, sometimes 20 minutes, sometimes all afternoon, the system will dissolve into "white noise". Itunes is still playing but all you hear is something that sounds like white noise. Stopping and starting the song sometimes cleans it up, but not always. Usually, he has to either quit and restart iTunes or off/on the DAC to get the system "rebooted" musically. I took over my Keces USB DAC as a control, and the same thing happened, so it's not the Fubar (at least, not on it's own). When I went over to have a look, I approached it from a Vista perspective and disabled all other audio options (analog, Realtek digital onboard, windows sounds, etc.), set it to Windows Audio System, altered/disabled power down options, etc. - everything I could think off. It's still happening. Folks - any ideas that could help us solve this mystery? Many thanks in advance, Paul