Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site
In the Forum: Didital Things
In the Thread: High Quality Music Server / CD player
Post Subject: Quality & Quantity of Music...Oxymorons...Fibre OpticsPosted by scooter on: 9/19/2008
Gentlemen:
Thank you for taking the time to consider my post on music servers. You always get more than you bargain for at the Good Sound Club...
* As Romy notes, a key issue in the listening experience is expanding the quantity and quality of media available. The music server does not directly address these issues:
- The quality and quantity of music in my collection is just as limited as it was last week; it just resides on a server now
- However, I am able to easily access a larger quantity of music via the internet on my main system. This is not an ideal solution as the music is not of mind-boggling quality, but some stations sound pretty good on my main system
* Regarding playback, I misspoke in my original post of an "Audiophile music server." Upon further reflection, this is an oxymoron, if not a moronic phrase. I think it is highly unlikely that a dedicated audiophile CD player will be beat by a home-brewed or commercially available music server:
- The microcomputer used for a music server is unable to perform specialized application roles at top-tier levels. The microcomputer's operating system and hardware are too generalist, too buggy, too noisy and have too much stuff going on in the background
- The apparently simple task of moving 1s and 0s from a hard drive to a DAC is still a challenge in 2008 (interference, jitter, data loss, etc.). Part of this is due to the limitations of a generalist computer system being utilized in a specialized application
- The specialized knowledge, engineering, parts selection, testing and assembly of a dedicated audiophile CD player guarantees a streamlined and efficient integration of hardware and software
That said, my Apple music server still sounds pretty good and I enjoy listening to some internet stations on my system which I would have ignored in the past.
Regards,
Scooter
PS Upon further listening and research, it is clear that the $10 composite fiber optic cable I am using is a bit short on bandwidth and that the Toslink-Mini adapter is probably introducing some additional jitter and data loss. I found the following quality quartz cable but it only comes in 1.5m lengths, which is way too short for me:
http://www.vandenhul.com/p_B42.aspx
So I found someone from NY who promised to make a good quality 5m quartz optical cable (Toslink-to-Toslink mini); more details when/if that arrives.
Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site