The GAS Man

Bill - You have been so generous with your time in responding to questions and comments here. While I have been considering getting a Metrum set up to compare with my Eastern Electric Mini DAC, my interest peaked when you mentioned that you have a Truth preamp. I have one on order from Ed Schilling now for a couple of months. My question to you is how the PDX stacks up using it as a preamp over the Truth? They both use some type of optics in their operation.

So Nicholas029, in what ways do you hear Pure Music as being better? Don't leave us hanging.

The authorization thing was a pain for me also. Several times after my normal password didn't work, I requested my password be sent to me by e-mail. It was the same friggin' password I had been trying to authorize with. On my third pass of not getting authorization, in frustration, I typed my password in as "F*** You". Lo and behold, my authorization was approved!

Chris or Anyone; I have a Mac Mini doing service as a music server via FireWire into an Apogee Mini DAC. For the last month it has been making noise through the system that sounds similar to a dial-up modem. I tried a better FireWire cable thinking the Mini was sending out airborne RF. THere also was not any noise using the TosLink but I didn't like that compared to the FireWire. I tried my girl friend's Mac notebook and ran the FireWire out to the DAC. There was no noise at all...silence. Also, the music sounded so much better with more meat on the bones for the imaging with better delineation and separation. It was so much more organic and natural sounding. So I ask the guys at the Apple Store about it and they look at me in confusiuon and seem dumbstruck. Am I looking at a motherboard replacement here or is it something simple that someone may recognize the answer to?

Hey Chris, I just wanted to update you and all who come here to get the latest about how things have been going. I had been having some troubles getting my Reference Recordings HRx files loaded onto my Mac Mini while I was trying out the Mini DAC from Apogee Digital. Anyway, I had mentioned how I was able to change the sample rate converter on the fly and how when it changed the new SRC was indicated on the display of the Mini DAC. Your comment to this was I had to exit iTunes before the SRC rate would change. Well, I had been listening to the HRx recordings the night before. I came back the next day and turned on the Mac Mini, opened iTunes and listened to conventional 44K recordings. The display on the Mini DAC indicated 176K and I was getting great sound. So, I tried the other settings:44.1, 88.2, 96, 176.4, and 192 each time exiting iTunes then re-launching it. All of the settings played great music without any distortion or problems and the selected SRC was indicated on the Mini DAC display. So then I tried switching the SRC in Audio Midi on the fly without closing iTunes. Same result. Same great sound. So I just wanted to pass this along as an FYI. Cheers, John

Now that I have been able to successfully load the Reference Recordings HRx files on the Mac Mini, I have been able to evaluate the Apogee Firewire Mini DAC. It has USB, optical, SPDIF, and Firewire input connections. As I have been told Firewire is the best connection to use going into a DAC equipped with that capability, I wanted to get opinions on if that is truly the case. I have been able to change the sample rate in the Mac's Audio Midi on the fly using the latest iTunes update that was installed last week. When the sample rate is changed the sound stops, the Mac Mini scratches its' head, and then resumes the music without having to close iTunes. I can verify the sample rate output did indeed change by the front panel LEDs on the Apogee Mini DAC. The question that comes to my mind is when listening to the Reference Recording HRx recordings, 176 is supposed to be the ideal sample rate to listen at. However, when I listen to the 44, 88, 96, 176, and 192 sample rates, I detect no differences at all. Should I be listening using one of the other output configurations? Even though I am able to change sample rate on the fly in the Mac, should I be closing iTunes when changing it anyway? It sure doesn't sound inferior at all from the previous rate when changing on the fly. Does the sample rate even make a difference when using Firewire anyway? Thanks to all. John

I could not copy individual tracks and paste them to the desktop. However, what I did find is that after the disk is loaded, do not let the drive time out and stop spinning. When you double click on each track, iTunes will show it copying but you will not see any progress on the bar graph at the top. Then the error message will come up that it could not read or write to the disk. The drive will not spool up the disk to start copying and that is the problem. So in order to copy the disk successfully you have to double click on each track while the disk drive is still spinning and have iTunes open. Then it will copy but you need to do this for each track. Thanks. Problem solved. John

It takes a few times before it will recognize it, but it did come up on the desktop. I was able to select it and indeed the individual tracks came up as separate folders. But I wasn't able to do anything with them from there. I wasn't able to copy them, iTunes didn't know it was there, I went in to utilities and wasn't able to do anything and the DVD player in Applications saw nothing. I hope I have given you some clues that will help reach across the miles.

Chris or Anyone Else; I am not able to load the Reference Recording HRx discs onto my Mac Mini. I have the newest version but it doesn't have the super drive. It always comes back with a message that it is unable to read it. Any suggestions? Thanks much. John