ralphpnj wrote: > As you keep on repeating "Is this not the 'Audiophiles' section?" and is > not the Mac Mini (not a Windows laptop) the only audiophile approved way > to listen to computer based digital audio? So why on earth are you even > bringing up the subject?
I do not believe that Mac or Windows based laptop storage is going to deliver the finest sound quality, but there is relevance to this thread topic. It isn't clear to me what angers you so much about the proliferation of the laptop as media server though. USB DACs are popular for good reason and hooking up a laptop is easy. These DACs continue to get better from both ends and in every way in between. I'd like to discuss the Antipodes DX or other "digital transport" devices. I'd like to discuss their findings on power supply design, for example. I'm attracted to the front end where one could have a physical SACD transport and then something like the Antipodes for audiophile quality ripping and storage. Each would send PCM or DSD to a DAC which may or may not also function as a pre-amp. ANTIPODES' FOUNDER MARK JENKINS: "The parts are not necessarily special apart from the power supply design. It is a bit like a high-end speaker the parts may not be special but how the parts work together as a system is where the value is added. "People talk about linear power supplies as if one is much the same as another. With a server most common linear power supply designs dont sound any better than a cheap switch-mode power supply, in fact the most common designs sound worse because of where the noise is placed (in a frequency sense). And most transformer designs sound terrible if they are placed inside the server. Our actual transformer and power supply design are a critical part of the DX. "The motherboard derives from a standard board that happens to have the mix of the chips we like, with some minor changes to onboard power supply. But the big difference with the motherboard is the way it is tuned. All chipsets generate electronic noise that will interfere in some way with the signal carrying the digital data, and the level and frequency of the noise has an audible effect on the analog output of any DAC. It is easily heard it just does not fit with the simplistic accepted digital theory of how these things work. "So the key to the design is how we tune the chip-set speeds across the whole server from power supply through to output card, and the fundamental technology capability comes from the motherboard manufacturer that we work with. The insights into where we manage and place the noise for best sound are our speciality. The effect on the final outcome is very significant and swapping the standard setup of the motherboard into the DX brings the sound quality down several notches. "The motherboard itself uses a quad-core Atom and 4GB of DDR3 RAM. But other chipset choices on the motherboard are also important. With RAM, we get people that are worried that we should use more than 4GB, but they think that more RAM is needed because they are used to bloat-ware servers (not Linux) where you need a lot of RAM because of all the activity. We could easily run our servers with 1GB of RAM given the low level of activity during playback, but the added RAM means we can cache more of the playlist in RAM for playback directly from RAM and manage the transfer from disk to RAM in a better and more consistent way, which does improve sound. Exactly how the files are placed into RAM and read out of RAM to the audio output is very important to the sound quality. In reality, in normal use, you wont hear any difference between using 2GB and 4GB, but the extra is useful if playing during say a library rescan or ripping. "The DX currently uses Samsung SSDs with 3D V-NAND technology, but we are always testing new drives that come onto the market. Each server is tuned to work with the particular drives used as each can generate a slightly different noise spectrum. "We prefer to use open source software and believe in the eco-system of SqueezeBox Server and VortexBox as the best way forward (now that Logitech is out of it). It might not fit the rock star mentality in high-end audio, but there are a number of audio firms that have got stuck in narrow technology silos by insisting on doing something on their own. "In the end open source software is better for the customer. The software capability of our servers continues to get better, and be widely supported, with or without us. All of our customisation is at the script level. There is a lot of customisation involved, but by keeping it at the script level it can remain proprietary in a Linux license environment." INTERESTING! Cary Audio 306 SACD Pro | Cary Audio SLP-05 | Cary Audio SA-200.2 | Focal Diablo Utopia III __Acoustic treatment: DIY Cylinder Bass traps | "Rule of Thirds" for speaker & sweet spot position __Speaker Cables: Analysis Plus Big Silver Oval | Shunyata Venom series power cords and power conditioning ------------------------------------------------------------------------ jh901's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=18175 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=96407
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