[Miguel Barone]

About the listening experience ... i think about one important detail.
We need to know what to hear, we need some "educated" ear and we need to hear music with real instruments that express the natural frequences and harmonics.

To talk about an extreme, it's more difficult to hear differences on hip-hop, maybe you can hear differences on basic bass / treble questions, but harmonics, soundstage, decay, dynamics, tonal balance, ...

At the top of that, everyone listens differently.

Only my opinion.

 

[golfbravobravo]

48 TB is hardly common or modest.

Many, many laptops still only ship with 0.5 TB hard drives. Most "gamer" towers ship with 2 TB. Anecdotally many of the people on this thread "own" less than 20,000 tracks which will fit into 2 TB quite handily, and many of them listen primarily to streaming services and may "own" little to no music. Cf. all the references to Roon, RasPi, Tidal vs Quobuz, music recommendations on Spotify, etc.

A prebuilt 40+ TB NAS is over US$3,000, building it yourself won't save much money: a 12-bay NAS is >$1,500 and a dozen 4TB drives is also >$1,500. Nowhere near chump change when you're agonizing over spending $200 on a Schiit stack.

I would guess you are in the top 1% of readers of this thread in terms of in-house storage.

Personally I have a 4 TB internal HD for my music, along with two other 4 TB external drives to back up to, and a collection of "only" 160,000 tracks. On my finances it's a big deal when I step up to the next size drive, because I have to buy 3 of them.

Cheers!
.

I was responding to your comment about storage capacity being inadequate, rather than that my setup was commonplace. As one can buy an 8Tb drive for less than $150 nowadays (and I make no judgement about how easy or otherwise it is to justify that amount on one's hobby) storage is not, or should not, be a stopper.

If one is prepared to get one's hands dirty, storage systems can also be relatively inexpensive. But that does take a bunch of work!

Cheers

 

[ScubaMan2017]

@Jason Stoddard, in the Vali 2 I think you have created the lowest cost great amp. I have tried several Schiit amps, most of them more expensive, but I always go back to the Vali. Bravo, sir!

It really is good, isn't it. I was going to get carried away and buy some tubes. Meh... Schiit's stock tube gets the job done.

 

[ToTo Man]

I have three copies of my entire music and dvd collection backed up on multiple 6TB drives at the moment (WD Blues, formally called Greens). I investigated upgrading to 8TB or 10TB drives a year ago but read reports of higher than normal incidences of drive failure (apparently the 8TB and larger capacities are filled with helium gas, and if the gas starts to leak you are in trouble!).

 

[golfbravobravo]

Thanks for the heads-up about the email! I don't subscribe by email to this thread, so I didn't see that. Note to self - don't put square brackets around rants...

As for the subscription lifestyle, I am very wary about that. I am a freelancer and things are very much feast-or-famine. $10/mo for Roon + $20/mo for Tidal + $10/mo for online backup (and those are all in US$, so _much_ more expensive in CAD$) + all the other subs they want from you (SetApp, Adobe, Prime, etc. etc. etc.) and all it takes is one bad month when my card is maxed out and everything bounces and I'm up Schiit creek (PS There's a Canadian TV sitcom called Schitt's Creek which is pretty funny).

So, no, subscriptions don't work for me. I'm getting on towards retirement age, and once I'm on a fixed income, putting aside a significant % of it for subscriptions that may increase without warning does not strike me as a sustainable plan for the future.

I get the freelancer hesitancy having done consultancy for the last 12 years or so! I tried watching Creek as I love the lead (whose name escapes me) in Christopher Guest's movies, but I didn't get beyond the first few. The sub thing can get quite alarming. I Jody's web sites and the odd dollar here and there for plugins etc. adds up very rapidly! We decided on a personal level to chop cable a few years ago, and a landline. We did splurge on fibre here in NC and that has made things like external backups possible.

But your observations RE: the interaction with Roon and Tidal are very interesting. I see there's a lifetime option for Roon which might be a good deal if they stay in business for more than another 4 years. The chances of that? Who knows.

The digital landscape is littered with spunky startups that got swallowed up and put to bed. Already there's rumours swirling that Tidal's losses may lead to bankruptcy, that Spotify is being headhunted, that Google is trying to take over that space, and, and, and. I have no confidence that any of those streaming services will be with us in 5 years (except for Google, who stream at a max of 320 kbps., and even then they're famous for sunsetting their services).

Here's to frisson!

Cheers.
.

As an ex-valley guy who likes to support startups, I too, have a litany of products and services that no longer exist and/or work. I just moved to a new notebook this week and moving apps reiterated that lessons once more! The worst are the hardware guys who cease to exist or remove an essential cloud service. I had the Revolve home automation hub and Google bought them and just abandoned the entire user base. They did at least, after a big ruckus, give us our money back.

I committed to Roon and went with the lifetime for a couple of reasons: a) it seemed like the best of breed (note, best - not even close to perfect!) b) to force myself to stick with it and get over the inevitable teething issues. I'm moderately happy now, but Roon's mind set takes a while to get.

I did NOT like Tidal the first time I tried it, and am still not 100%, but for the hi-fi service it largely delivers. I'm binging on Gordon Goodwin's 'Big Phat Band' right now, and a number of others that are easy to try but that I would not have plunked hard cash down for. I have been very disappointed with some (expensive) albums even though they are hi-res Flac. I recently bought Rattle's Berlin Beethoven Cycle and it is a major, major disappointment.

Cheers

 

[US Blues]

Well, I can only tell you how I do it )

I deliver the digital stream via wireless to a [RaspberryPi] DAC, Freya, Vidar, Double Impact pipeline. My Oppo sits, largely unused, in the media room to play BR discs.

As to storage, I think you must have an outdated view: my computer that stores music - amongst many other things - has 48 terabytes online and is quite modest by modern day systems.

Cheers

I appreciate your response, and yet it does little to answer my question. For one I am not at all a computer geek, so vague references to fruit pies, online storage, and streaming without any detailed information creates additional confusion for me, it does not take me any closer to understanding the process you employ or suggest.

Furthermore, one thing I have found in reading the Schiit forums here on Head Fi is that people seem to be struggling often with interfacing their computer to an audio system, which leaves me wondering about the wisdom of the operation. And on top of all that @Baldr has declared a number of things in our audio world to sound like "ass," and I for one trust his ear implicitly.

So again, I appreciate your response and perhaps one day the technical end of streaming will be explained in a manner useful to a potential new adopter.

 

[golfbravobravo]

I appreciate your response, and yet it does little to answer my question. For one I am not at all a computer geek, so vague references to fruit pies, online storage, and streaming without any detailed information creates additional confusion for me, it does not take me any closer to understanding the process you employ or suggest.

Furthermore, one thing I have found in reading the Schiit forums here on Head Fi is that people seem to be struggling often with interfacing their computer to an audio system, which leaves me wondering about the wisdom of the operation. And on top of all that @Baldr has declared a number of things in our audio world to sound like "ass," and I for one trust his ear implicitly.

So again, I appreciate your response and perhaps one day the technical end of streaming will be explained in a manner useful to a potential new adopter.

I'd argue that it's not necessary to understand any of the technology to stream. One word: Roon! Seriously, as with all things audio, you can spend money and have it "just work", or you can do what many of us here do, experiment and learn which is both interesting (to me) and more cost effective. I wasn't suggesting that as a route for all, especially for anyone who is NOT interesting in the geekier aspects of computers and audio thereon.

But it sounds as though you are not really interested in streaming, given your @Baldr quote. For anyone who is, I'd be happy to expand and [USER]@CaptDeadpool[/USER] has posted a number of detailed workups of the Pi DAC setup.

Cheers

 

[golfbravobravo]

I don't think the serial number helps, but the model number appears to end in F_X (where "_" is wildcard), the label colour is a clue too
(Google Image "wd red", official pics have pretend serial number 12345678)

I suspect that WD wised top to the fact that some of us were buying their enterprise drives in enclosures [for significantly less that the bare drive price] to shuck the drives and they now seem to be white labelling them. It seems hit or miss right now, but I suspect that the marked reds will evaporate.

 

[Ableza]

the WD My Book Duos have only red drives

Now THAT is very good to know. Thank you!

 

[US Blues]

I'd argue that it's not necessary to understand any of the technology to stream. One word: Roon! Seriously, as with all things audio, you can spend money and have it "just work", or you can do what many of us here do, experiment and learn which is both interesting (to me) and more cost effective. I wasn't suggesting that as a route for all, especially for anyone who is NOT interesting in the geekier aspects of computers and audio thereon.

But it sounds as though you are not really interested in streaming, given your @Baldr quote. For anyone who is, I'd be happy to expand and [USER]@CaptDeadpool[/USER] has posted a number of detailed workups of the Pi DAC setup.

Cheers

I was interested in learning about it, I'll ask elsewhere.

Peace

 

[Ableza]

I am happy to not be one of those pedantic engineers who thinks the only truth is in the numbers and who thinks the only viable variable confirmation is through "blind testing." I am happy to trust my own perceptions and I enjoy the music because of it. All audio is subjective - if it sounds good do it.

 

[golfbravobravo]

I was interested in learning about it, I'll ask elsewhere.

Peace

Well, then you simply need to search in this forum for CaptainDeadpool's previous posts. As I pointed out.

 

[Robert Padgett]

I appreciate your response, and yet it does little to answer my question. For one I am not at all a computer geek, so vague references to fruit pies, online storage, and streaming without any detailed information creates additional confusion for me, it does not take me any closer to understanding the process you employ or suggest.

Furthermore, one thing I have found in reading the Schiit forums here on Head-Fi is that people seem to be struggling often with interfacing their computer to an audio system, which leaves me wondering about the wisdom of the operation. And on top of all that @Baldr has declared a number of things in our audio world to sound like "ass," and I for one trust his ear implicitly.

So again, I appreciate your response and perhaps one day the technical end of streaming will be explained in a manner useful to a potential new adopter.

Mister Blues-- I will try to explain my network solution in very simple to understand way--from one Non-Geek to another.
I have all the music on a server computer--in my case an Intel NUC with external hard drives attached (3-total 10Tb in storage)
I put together two Raspberry Pi Single Board Computers ($35 each) and they are attached via ethernet to the server.
The music travels to each endpoint over the ethernet in HTTP, which is a data stream. On the RasPi computers are HATs, which convert the stream to digital data a DAC can understand. I use one each of the Allo DigiOne SPIDF HAT and another HiFiBerry SPDIF HAT. I recommend the HiFiBerry ar $25, which functions the same as the Allo which is twice the price.
The SPDIF signal feeds the DAC, the DAC makes an analog signal which is amplified for either Headphones or Speakers.
I use the Linux OS on both the server and RasPi computers and utilize the OpenSSH as my "network".
Each end-point must Sign-in to the server, and once signed into this private network, either endpoint can play any music file on the server.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to PM me... Networking is sometimes called the "black art" of computing and I was quite intimidated by protocols, and net addresses, and netmasks and firewalls, etc.
The system I have described is easy, functional, and believe it or not, is a protocol used on big mainframes, to single board computers. So you too can be a "networking expert".
Hope this is more helpful

 

[Robert Wortman]

Statistical double blind is extremely hard to apply to anything that is only differentiable by a very small part of the population. That's why it is so difficult to test and bring to market mutation-specific drugs. Standard statistical measurements are only useful to reveal gross, population-wide differences, not subtle, long-tail differences.

A statistically valid test can be applied to a single person. Medical tests are a different matter as you can't both treat and not treat the same person over and over until you get a statistically valid sample. You can, for example, easily prove whether a given individual can foretell the results of a coin flip. In the same way, you can easily test whether a single person can hear the difference between audio gizmo A and audio gizmo B.

 

[D2Girls]

......or Pioneer stable platter....

I’ve owned the Pioneer PD-S95 transport! Very rare, very massive and possibly the beefiest CD player I’ve ever seen aside from a Sony SCD-1 SACD player. I had to let it go because I found it lean in the bass.