GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Didital Things
In the Thread: A CD player of today… 20 years after TL0

Post Subject: Take two buffers and call me in the morning!Posted by scooter on: 12/9/2013

I'll take two of those decoud!
It makes all the sense in the world but just doesn't seem to work that way.
Al Moulton from Goodwins sat me down with that $5k Alpha DAC when it came out c.5 years ago and basically gave me the keys to that big room for an hour or so. He noted when the Alpha was partnered with Goodwin's optimized PC (which I think came with the Lynx card, SSD, lots of RAM, register tweaks, etc.) he thought it sounded very good vs. $7k traditional CD solutions in stock and was a pleasure to use. He also opined more expensive dedicaed CD solutions were more pleasing from a sonics perspective.
I though Al was right on the mark then and I still do. Who knows why. I love the computer audio idea but never got great sound that way. Still trying!
The Alpha guys issued some type of input buffer box a few years ago so I suppose that is some recognition by them of an "issue." Of course there are other endless buffer solutions available...
Anology alert - A guy who lives in my building has a phd in math and is paid to build the fastest supercomputers in he world. He uses graphics cards. He noted graphics cards perform so well because they are optimized to perform limited tasks (vs. the versatile CPU). And they are cheap. He also noted that IBMs supercomputers always beat his because IBM basically custom built everything, bringing optimization to another level.
The cost differential between the IBM supercomputers and graphics card supercomputers must be staggering...

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