[FLTWS]

I haven't gotten any E-Mail notifications in a looong time on any threads I was subscribed to, I just check in now and then and refresh subscribed threads.

 

[valiant66]

@valiant66 Haha, I see an original Sonic Impact T-amp hiding on the shelf in that photo. Those things were and probably still are the most audio fun you can have for $25.

Yep. It punches w-a-y above it's weight (only a few ounces w/o batteries, LOL...).

I was running an ancient pair of Koss speakers, but just before Christmas one of them plunged off the shelf and committed suicide - the woofer got punched out. Not worth seeking out replacement drivers for. It's my experimental rig for streaming - I have a Google Chromecast Audio plugged into it to see if streaming works for me. (So far, no. Controlling everything from a phone seems so much more awkward than reaching over and grabbing a CD. But I'm going to give it more time because I'm sure I'm coming at it with preconceptions.)

Anyway, thanks for noticing.

Cheers!
.

 

[KoshNaranek]

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As to storage, I think you must have an outdated view: my computer that stores music - amongst many other things - has 48 terabytes online and is quite modest by modern day systems.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

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 would agree that 48TB is hardly modest. My music server is 16TB and only one other person I know has one as large and I made it for him. Even my 5 drive Drobo only has 22 TB capacity and it serves to back up every computer in the house.

You are probably in the top 0.1%, not top 1%.

Regards

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

My contact who is a dealer of Cambridge Audio products tell me the drive in the CXC and in the Azure transports is a custom-made CD-only transport and is not a re-purposed DVD or BRD drive. They are made in China to Cambridge design specs and are single-speed CD-only drives.

Thanks for that info.
It's also the act of denigrating manufacturers that way on-line on this big a forum that troubles me.
We all know it's done about Schiit too, even on HeadFi.
I think it's mean, immoral and very very shortsighted and simply not according to real life.
For the record... I do not own a CA CD transport.

 

[Robert Padgett]

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.

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.
.

No mention of Amazon Unlimited which is $7.99 with Prime membership. I have felt that the access to the remastered White Album, two months ago, and the remastered YES in December made the $8 I sent to Mr. Bezos well worth it. I have read that subscription services like Pandora, Spotify, etc. were bleeding cash...Hmm maybe someone with $170 Billion in the bank might want to control that marketplace...Hmmm, who might that be?

 

[winders]

It sends bits in the from of electrical signals. Did you think I meant it mailed it a piece of paper. As long as the DAC isn't seeing data errors they are "proper" enough. The bit stream out of a cheap CD player is not likely to be any more error prone than that of a overbuilt audiophile transport. Redbook CD has robust error correction. Unless the CD is chewed up, there should be no problems.

You aren't getting it. It's not about the digital data as that gets there reliably in all but the worst cases. It's about the other crap that comes along with the digital data in the electrical signals. That will vary from transport to transport and streamer to streamer. This affects the receiver PHY in the DAC and changes what comes out the analog side.

 

[Th3Drizzl3]

I would agree that 48TB is hardly modest. My music server is 16TB and only one other person I know has one as large and I made it for him. Even my 5 drive Drobo only has 22 TB capacity and it serves to back up every computer in the house.

You are probably in the top 0.1%, not top 1%.

Regards

my main self built nas has currently 12 8tb red drives in it and my music nas has 8 of the same drives. i got them in the wd enclosures when best buy had their sale on them for 139$ each and pulled the drives =). but i def agree most people think im insane with so much storage. ill be building another box to have another backup of many of my files also im just waiting for another great deal on drives. i honestly wish i would have bought another dozen when they were so cheap. the sales guy looked at me like What when i was walking up to pay with 20 of them in the cart. you had to check serial to make sure you got reds i was only wrong with one which was the white label version and works just fine.

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

The market is way faster than us old geezers can run a discussion here.
Bryston came out with a new CD player for only 3,5K.
http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/bryston-bcd-3-cd-player/

 

[Robert Wortman]

You aren't getting it. It's not about the digital data as that gets there reliably in all but the worst cases. It's about the other crap that comes along with the digital data in the electrical signals. That will vary from transport to transport and streamer to streamer. This affects the receiver PHY in the DAC and changes what comes out the analog side.

Don't condescend. I am getting it. Absent actual data that supports this, I am skeptical that a transport that is not causing actual data errors sounds different than any other. I don't believe a competently designed disk player is going to present enough "crap" at its SPDIF output to screw up the performance of the downstream DAC. Makers of mass produced audio equipment do employ competent engineers. In my somewhat informed opinion, unless it's broken or feeding an incompetently designed DAC, all transports are functionally the same. I have fed a variety of DACs from a variety of sources including a $35 Chromecast and have not heard a difference between any of the sources. I am not all that convinced that the DAC's I've owned sound that different. Now the usual rejoinder to this is that I must be deaf. Perhaps. Funny thing though, when you put the equipment being auditioned behind a curtain, a lot of other people go deaf too.

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

Funny thing though, when you put the equipment being auditioned behind a curtain, a lot of other people go deaf too.

Thick curtains tend to do that yes...

 

[Robert Wortman]

And play them on a 2 channel system how? Tell me what I would need to buy, and how much I'll have to spend, to equal or exceed the sound of my Oppo plugged into Yggy2. In advance I can say that machines with built-in hard drives do not have the storage capacity I require. Thanks!

I have about 1000 albums ripped to FlAC that are resident on one of the three hard drives in my PC. They are also on a USB drive connected to my router so I can access them with the computer off. The computer is running Jriver Media Center as is a Raspberry Pi that is connected to the Schiit DAC. Mainly the PC streams the files into my surround system and the Pi into my two channel system. The entire collection is also converted to AAC and Mp3 for use on USB sticks in cars. It is also backed up twice in the cloud. Once on Onedrive as full FLAC and once on Google music for easy streaming access everywhere. Google converts to MP3 when it uploads and once you show it your music folder it monitors and uploads files automatically. I have another app that does the same for Onedrive as I am crap at remembering to do backups. My FLAC collection is about 450gb. A 1tb drive will hold over 2000 CD's ripped to lossless FLAC. I don't think the streamer feeding the Schiit DAC sounds any different than anything else feeding it. It is also ridiculously convenient. I can sit in my chair, make a playlist, and listen for hours. The only disks I play any more are the few SACD's that I own and the occasional movie. Oh, and the big black plastic ones.

 

[Robert Wortman]

Thick curtains tend to do that yes...

You know that I wasn't talking about speakers and heavy drapes.

 

[KoshNaranek]

my main self built nas has currently 12 8tb red drives in it and my music nas has 8 of the same drives. i got them in the wd enclosures when best buy had their sale on them for 139$ each and pulled the drives =). but i def agree most people think im insane with so much storage. ill be building another box to have another backup of many of my files also im just waiting for another great deal on drives. i honestly wish i would have bought another dozen when they were so cheap. the sales guy looked at me like What when i was walking up to pay with 20 of them in the cart. you had to check serial to make sure you got reds i was only wrong with one which was the white label version and works just fine.

What on the serial number tells you it is a red drive?

 

[Ableza]

What on the serial number tells you it is a red drive?

If I recall correctly, WD Red (NAS) drives model number ends with an X.

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

You know that I wasn't talking about speakers and heavy drapes.

Oh yes sure.. I tried a little joke to lighten up the mood.
It had no depth in the discussion whatsoever.
Please see it in that light.