Article: Audiophile Reference Music Servers

[minzyman]

Had a great conversation with Mike Ritter of Berkeley Audio Design just now. This discussion, combined with my experience at the Reference Recordings event in Oaklnd this past Spring, leads me to favor the Windows XP based Music Server format running Media Monkey thru a regular pci Lynx AES16 card into the Alpha Dac. This is the system I heard in Oakland at the BAAS event this past Spring and the sound was pretty amazing. <br />

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I asked Mike about Firewire (vs. the Lynx) and he said that his team experimented with FW and found it to add too much noise via direct link to the Dac chassis, that an intermediary box was needed resulting in still higher cost. <br />

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When asked about PCI-e he said that, as great as it is, it pumps too much data through the bus and creates significant noise, rendering PCI the better option sonically. The Lynx technician by the way wouldn't confirm/admit this. <br />

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In the end he was recommending a very quiet Win PC with perhaps an SS drive to keep things silent and minimize fan noise. <br />

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Chris, I know that you are smiling as most of this is repetition from your emails above. Yet, ironically, you are favoring the Mac OS format still. Can you explain the sound that you are hearing? Are you getting the transparency and depth of sound from both reference systems? Perhaps you could compare/contrast the two sounds for us and briefly describe the audio gear you are using. <br />

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/Lee

[audiozorro]

Thanks for sharing your findings since if I ever put $11K on my credit card for a 30-day evaluation of the 2 DACs my wife would send me packing.<br />

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I don't recall hearing that a Mac required rebooting. I thought that the Mac only required that the Audio Midi Setup be manually set and that iTunes be relaunched each time the sampling rate is changed. I know the Benchmark Media Wiki for recommends the following:<br />

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* For iTunes versions earlier then 7, we recommend setting the sample rate to match the sample rate of the media (music) being played<br />

* For iTunes versions later then 7, we recommend setting the sample rate to the highest sample rate that your device is capable of<br />

* For iTunes versions later then 7, iTunes must be launched after the sample rate is set in AudioMIDI. Any sample rate changes made in AudioMIDI while iTunes is open will not change the sample rate of iTunes until iTunes is re-launched. Consequently, it will cause CoreAudio to sample-rate convert the audio coming from iTunes. The result of CoreAudio sample-rate conversion is significant distortion. <br />

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So while you are free to continue to change the sampling rate to match the source input, with versions later than iTunes 7, the differences with just setting the sample rate to the highest sample rate that your device is capable of is minor. Either way, I can't recall hearing any significant differences with any of the DACs that I own or have evaluated, but I defer to the technical experts to argue that point and I am more than willing to follow the majority consensus.

[The Computer Audiophile]

I'll to all the posts in this one response. Here we go.<br />

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Lee - Your G4 does seem a little slow, but it wouldn't hurt to give it a shot. I do think reclocking can be a really good thing, but with the Lynx / Alpha DAC combination you'll want a really nice external clock if you go that route. It's tough to mess with success :-)<br />

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audiozorro - I hate to be blunt but I think I answered why I chose the Alpha over the Minerva for my reference desktop music server. Jitter at less than 20 picoseconds, bit perfect verification and a few other things noted in the previous responses. The advantage of using a Mac pro is totally up to the user. It may be a disadvantage to some and it may sound terrible to some people. I like everything about the OS X - ALpha DAC platform including the sonics. As far as the huge price difference goes - computers are as highly customizable as cars and houses etc... Add a solid state drive array, a 100% silent case, water cooling, a very nice looking case with a built-in touch screen, and you can even customize the case with chrome, nickel, gold and just about any plating you can imagine. Sure many of these things may not contribute to better sonics, but I like certain aesthetics in my audio components in addition to good sound. Plus, none of these enhancements hurt the sound.<br />

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<i>"So it seems to me that the key to your reference audiophile music server is the DAC and nothing else comes close in sonic importance."</i><br />

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I can't disagree with you more on this one. I believe I laid out all the reasons why each piece is important. For example, XP, MediaMonkey, Lynx AES16, legacy driver, legacy firmware AND the DAC all combine to make up the sound. Maybe I didn't explicitly state that in the article.<br />

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Lee - <i>"My issue is why should I buy a cheap Windows PC for my dedicated music server when an aging and hard to find Win XP is the only way to achieve good results?"</i><br />

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XP is certainly not the only way to achieve good results. In fact several people like the Mac better than the XP system.<br />

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I'm glad you had a chance to speak with Michael Ritter. He is a really nice guy who knows his stuff. I won't disagree with what he said, but I think we are talking about very small sonic differences and in fact some people prefer the sonic differences of the Mac PCIe combo. Either way the sound is fabulous. A friend of mine will be conducting PCI v. PCIe testing this weekend using virtually identical configurations. I'll let everyone know how it comes out.<br />

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More to come on the whole XP v. OS X v. Vista and PCI v. PCIe etc...<br />

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audiozorro - You are 100% correct. You only have to restart iTunes after Audio Midi changes. Personally I like to keep everything at its original sample rate and don't want my Mac upsampling everything to 24/96. But hey, what every sounds good to you is all that matters.

[wappinghigh]

Could somebody please explain this problem with Mac OsX in lay-mans terms! <br />

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Here is my scenario. OK. I have just installed a Lynx AES 16e card installed in a MAC Pro. I set it to output 24/192. I select the same 24/192 sample input on my DAC Great! But I have a huge variety of different track sample rates in my itunes libarary. I load a playlist. track 1 is 16/44.1, track 2 is 24/192, track 3 is 16/48, track 4 is 24/88.2, track 5 is 24/192...etc...get my drift...what happens? What sample rate am I actually hearing?<br />

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Does the card/leopard "upsample" everything to 24/192, or do I have to manually change the midi setup everytime a new track plays?<br />

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Sorry for daft question...but I just don't get it!<br />

<br />

AB

[poop]

Wappinghigh, What you have done is probably the most suitable to your listening situation. As you have suggested, when using iTunes you should be closing it, setting Audio Midi to the setting specific to the audio you will listen to, then re-launch iTunes (resetting it to follow the settings of Audio Midi). Trying to listen to music with differing sample rates in this way is impractical IMO - you are far better to set Audio Midi to 24/192 and allow Leopard to output all other sample rates accordingly. Benchmark has reported tests results of this procedure (think they can be found within their Wiki?) which suggest that whilst the audio stream is altered, the change is minimal (I know I can't hear it personally...)<br />

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Hopefully the updates to iTunes hinted at in previous posts within this thread may fix this problem! Enjoy your new Lynx BTW... I need to get a Mac Pro sorted first...

[StephanLJ]

Hi Craig<br />

<br />

That is exactly the card that is sitting in my G5. The Apple site shows no updates and the Nvidia site seems not to even know the Mac. Please keep me posted if you find something out.<br />

<br />

Stephan

[Trophoto]

Hi Stephan:<br />

<br />

I spent some time yesterday cleaning out a very dusty G5 but it did not quiet things. Down. I took a chance and booted the machine with the cover off and confirmed virtually all (if not all) the noise was coming from the Nvidia 7800 card. After doing some further research I found that many people (not necessarily audio folks) are using third party "coolers" to quiet their cards. I am going to ry one of these there are cheap $20-40 and see what happens. I will post my results but it will be several days sine I have to order the cooler and install.<br />

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Ill keep you and others interested posted.<br />

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Cheers<br />

<br />

Craig

[StephanLJ]

I came to the same conclusion, today I opend the G5, blew out the dust and stopped the cooler of the video card by hand ... silence, well almost. Is there a passive video card on the market that runs in a G5?<br />

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Greetings<br />

<br />

Stephan

[kana813]

Chris-<br />

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How do you know the Lynx AES16 card only has 20 picoseconds of jitter? <br />

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Did you measure it or are you just quoting Lynx's specs?<br />

<br />

The Berkeley Audio Design Alpha DAC has a BADA encrypted - RJ-45 <br />

input, what do you know about it's function?<br />

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<br />

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[The Computer Audiophile]

Hey Dan - I checked with sources and confirmed with a few different sources before I published the 20 picoseconds of jitter spec. <br />

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It is my understanding that the RJ45 port on the Alpha DAC is for future possibilities.<br />

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[wappinghigh]

Appologies for these, I certainly don't want to offend any audioengineers out there, and certainly not Chris...his reference music servers are awesome and this is THE most informative site but: for the consumer guy/gal next rung down (ie me!)..isn't the best bang for buck simply to stick with 24/96 for the moment (ie just use the MAC pro sound card out via USB/firewire (or SPDIF if you must!)...and spend the money making the MACpro silent (ie better fans/SS drives etc) and buying a better DAC, poweramp, speakers etc....that is until the following occurs:<br />

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1/ More 24/192 or 24/172.2 tracks actually become available. Seems to me the number available can be counted on two hands<br />

2/ the itunes sampling hitch can be sorted<br />

3/ there is actually a wider choice of 24/192 midi cards available...ie perhaps one more suitable to just stereo output, without a complex manual, sound engineer output connections and a cat-o-9 tails cable...maybe LYNX can work on a "simpler AES16e" ....or upgrade their L22 to a 24/192 L22e. (here's hoping)<br />

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Then when the above happens....simply just buy the new card and pop it into the MAC pro ..to get 24/192 when all the tech has settled down a bit...<br />

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...as for swapping back to Windows XP( or worse Vista)....eeeeekkk.....<br />

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All IMHO of course....<br />

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[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi wappinghigh - Thanks for the post and of course no offense taken. The best bang for the buck is certainly a personal decision without any right or wrong. I am pretty sure more higher resolution tracks are coming. I would just make sure you won't kick yourself for purchasing a lower resolution DAC knowing what the future holds. Will it really be the best bang for the buck if you end up purchasing two DACs in a short period of time. <br />

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You could get a FireWire DAC for any Mac and be able to play up to 24/192. Maybe this is the best choice for you at this point. Ten you'll be covered now and in the future as more higher resolution material is released.

[Trophoto]

Hi Stephan:<br />

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I dont know of a passive card fo rthe mac but I just ordered this cooler. http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.php?idx=91<br />

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It was recomended by someone at the apple discussion forums. I should have it in a few days and will post my results.<br />

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Cheers<br />

<br />

Craig

[StephanLJ]

Hi Craig, there is no chance of installing a AGP card in the late G5 so I just ordered the cooler.<br />

<br />

Thank you very much for the tip.<br />

<br />

Stephan

[StephanLJ]

Hi Chris<br />

today I ordered the Mac Pro and the Lynx card. Running out of steam for a while I will connect the Lynx to the Wadia 581iSE. The digital input goes up to 96 kHz and add the Berkeley later. As NAS I go with the Qnap Turbo.<br />

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Thank you for your kind advice, I feel much better using a Mac now. Please remember the cable.<br />

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Cheers Stephan

[The Computer Audiophile]

Very cool Stephan! You should be very happy with the Mac Pro / Lynx combination. <br />

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I haven't forgot about the cable :-)

[ggking7]

Well I did a ctrl+f for "linux" on each page of comments here and not one hit. Any other linux people here? Another question: Is there any reason to use a non-USB digital connection other than the current 24/96 limitation? Is there any reason to think this is a hard limit?

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hey ggking7 - For now Linux suffers from lack of driver support according to everyone I talk to in the industry. Personally I'd love to build a great Linux based music server. Sooner or later I'm going to have to put one together and start working out the kinks that may be holding people up. What Linux flavor are you using?<br />

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There are plenty of great reasons to use any of the connection methods. Every implementation is the same and none of them are always better than the other. So, reasons not to use USB may come down to what DAC you're looking at. USB DACs from Wavelength are as good as they get and I think you'd be very happy with any of them. There are always people who will rail against one connection method or another and there certainly are those who rail against USB. But, listening to Gordon's reasoning behind his use of USB is very compelling. As far as the 24/96 limitation goes, it is not a hard limit. USB does have the bandwidth to carry higher resolutions but I don't know of any "reputable" USB DACs that support higher resolutions. <br />

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Maybe I didn't answer your question in a straight forward Yes/No fashion, but I hope you get the point I was trying to get across. Let me know if I just confused the situation :-)

[ggking7]

What type of drivers is Linux missing? My (and most including Gordon's) USB DAC just uses the standard snd-usb-audio driver. Configuring Linux for bit-perfect playback is as simple as hooking up a USB DAC, disabling any software mixer in the player app, and pointing the player app to the hardware device directly (i.e. hw:0,0) instead of the "default" selection in order to bypass dmix.<br />

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Not trying to prove you wrong or anything, but can you tell me more about what deficiencies Linux has in this arena? It seems like the best of the three to me.<br />

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Edit: I'm using Gentoo but any should work just as well. I use mpd for the playback software. Configuring it as per the above takes a solid 10 seconds.

[JonathanCatuccio]

Media Monkey should simply not be a reference player if this is possible simply be renaming a file during playback. You're talking about blowing tweeters at high volumes.....you know that J. River won't modify a tag (for currently playing file) until playback is stopped. <br />

<br />

DC

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi DC - If one is striving for the most transparent sound quality it is my opinion, and the opinion of others I highly respect, that MediaMonkey provides this quality. In terms of convenience MediaMonkey may not be the most convenient because of this possible issue. However, as long as users know this caveat there won't be any problems. <br />

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I've spent some serious time with J River, in fact their office is literally ten minutes from here. J river has a very hard time playing Reference Recordings HRx 24/176.4 files. Therefore I have put J River on the back burner until release 13.

[minzyman]

Hi Chris,<br />

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On your XP system with the Thecus acting as your NAS drive, do you have any extra modules running on it and is it necessary to install media server module on it if there is only one computer in the house that will access the NAS drive for music?<br />

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I am building a quiet machine that will run XP (and a lynx card) and plan on running MediaMonkey to access my music. Do I need anything else installed on the NAS? <br />

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Am still kind new to this and learning, I'm sure that's obvious.<br />

Thanks.<br />

/Lee

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi ggking7 - Linux works great for USB DACs that don't require drivers, just as you said. I am actually a huge fan of Linux and want it to continue to grow. <br />

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The Lynx card I use, AES16e, has no Linux support. A common theme among those in the audio business pro/high-end is that they would like to use Linux but the equipment they use does not work without drivers. <br />

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Just my experience.

[JonathanCatuccio]

What's the problem? Your DAC can handle and so should the Lynx hardware. Does MC not offer that sample rate natively? <br />

<br />

DC

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hey DC - Importing the HRx wav files is, so far, impossible in J river Media Center. I can play up to 24/192 in the application, but I don't always get consistent results. Some times it will launch Real Player within the MC window, and I'm not a high fan of that.<br />

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Do you have any high resolution tracks you can try with your installation of J River Media Center?