To Mac or to PC

[cfmsp]

 

 

a Firewire to ASE/EBU converter WITHOUT Dac seems limited to the choices mentioned already.

 

I did a quick search at gearslutz, and ran across a thread which also had little else to point to other than the Weiss or TC Konnekt products.

 

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/remote-possibilities-acoustic-music-location-recording/351071-eternal-question-aes-ebu-interface-laptop-macbook-pro-2.html

 

There are, of course, many good pro audioproducts that will convert Firewire to AES/EBU that also include a DAC. Perhaps they'd even make you happier than your current DAC, although from the sounds of it, you're not considering a change at this time Not sure that you mentioned what you're using now.

 

Best of luck,

Clay

 

[cfmsp]

 

"Sonic Studio Model 3 (not sure if they still advertise this)"

 

Technically, this was introduced as the Amarra Model Three, but is not longer listed on their site as available hardware. It would be more expensive than the Weiss, in any event, due to being based on the Metric Halo ULN-8.

 

The Sonic Studio 302 is the closest thing Sonic have to a cost competitive solution to the question at hand, but it only supports 96KhZ, due to being based on the Metric Halo ULN-2. It likely still costs more than the street price of the ULN-2. The ULN-2 does convert Firewire to AES/EBU, BUT also includes the obligatory (for pro audio) DACs - for $1500.

 

Clay

 

 

 

[rayhil]

Chris, I hope this doesn't violate the etiquette of the site, but the link below is to a wonderful article in today's New York Times that epitomizes the emotion and ads behind the PC vs MAC debate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/business/media/30ad.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=all

 

Having started this particular thread, I realize that the question itself can evoke stronger emotions than almost any other computer debate going. Facts, however, are much more difficult and subjective and all who have participated in this thread and several others have given me numerous facts to help, but not yet conclude, my decision.

 

Thanks all.

 

[Tog]

Interesting article but doesn't alter the fundamentals

 

Windows is chock full of legacy code, built on a fairly dodgy architecture and resplendent with a truly ugly interface that can only improve by taking design cues from the OSX desktop for Windows 7.

 

OSX has the benefits from little legacy gunk following the twin breaks with Mac OS and now Snow Leopard's detachment from PPC. Its Darwin foundations are rock solid with both video and sound built into the architecture from day 1. You would have to be near sighted to fail to appreciate the time that has been spent on an interface that is a pleasure to use.

 

I'm sure that Windows 7 will be a huge improvement but so would being able to run OSX on my work HP laptop.

 

However, no amount of twiddling will alter the fact that since Microsoft doesn't design the hardware the PCs that Windows 7 will be installed upon will continue to be most ugly, poorly designed landfill.

 

When I first got my hands on a Macintosh in 1985 as a young cub it made the PC equivalent look like a Pterodactyl pushing a supermarket trolley.

 

For the life of me I can't see that much has changed since then.

 

 

Yours, unapologetically, tog

 

 

[icebreaker]

vs. Born to Run? Good one, "Boss". ;^)

 

 

 

[rayhil]

Before I tell my story and ask a big favor, I want to commend Chris for this site and the several dedicated and helpful folks who frequently post here and offer massive amounts of free advice and commentary on this great hobby. I also want to thank those who have made themselves available off-line and provided me more advice and thought as I venture into computer audio.

 

Now, if you will all indulge me, a bit of background. I began reading posts here early in the summer and got the bug to add computer audio as my main music source. The reason for this is somewhat unique – I’m totally blind and I’m tired of putting tiny braille labels on CDs and, more importantly and like many of you, I’m tired of standing before a thousand CDs deciding what I’d like to hear. Furthermore, my “tiny braille labels” abbreviate artist and album and provide no other information like good tags do in a music library. These facts began my investigation. I read many existing threads and got a great deal of information. To see how things might work, I put the Windows version of ITunes on a PC and (completely ignoring sound quality which I didn’t even try and address), I was pleasantly surprised how well this product worked for me.

 

Then, I started this thread. Your comments and many other threads gave me lots more to chew on. I took Clay’s advice to heart and have narrowed my DAC choices to Wavelength (Proton or Brick), Metric Halo ULM-2 or a Weiss DAC2. I realize there’s quite a price range here and I’m hoping I can compare at some point, but expecting that this is unlikely, I’ll choose based upon other factors. Given the rapidly changing nature of this field, I’ve decided by choice and by budget that I’m not ready to jump in with a Berkley, a Lynx card and a full machine to handle the card.

 

However, these DAC choices still leave me with the question of which machine, a Mac or a PC. Contrary to a few off-line guesses that have been made, I’m actually a long time Mac-hater and, in my view, for very good reasons (Tog, please don’t take this personally, but you shouldn’t even try and defend Macs or criticize Windows on this score). Apple’s view of people without vision had been that Mac’s aren’t for them; at best, Apple paid utterly meaningless lip service regarding accessibility for the blind. I’ll give Microsoft (and more importantly many third party developers and state governments) a plug in noting that third party software has been capable of high quality speech output for Windows providing screen access for many years; this is because Microsoft has at least provided the background for making screen access software possible, even though they did a horrible job with their own access programs. Personally, I use a product called JAWS from Freedom Scientific. It is an excellent program and through its numerous iterations has provided me with access to dozens of PCs over the years. Recently, however, Apple has gotten truly serious about providing screen access through Voiceover. I’ve played with it a bit and it actually looks fairly good, once you learn the Mac, as opposed to the Windows, screen. For everyone’s benefit, think of a screen reading package like reading through a straw, you only hear the active Window.

 

There is part of me that likes the plug and play nature of a Macbook Pro to a DAC to my audio system. This approach is also supported by the fact that ITunes is part of the Mac package and, as such, I believe Voiceover will be well integrated (a claim which Apple makes in its sales pitches on the Web). But, there’s another part of me that hates to change platforms, screen reading programs, etc. I haven’t tried JAWS with MediaMonkey or similar products on my Windows Machines, but if I lean toward a PC I’ll run these tests given the sound criticisms of ITunes in the Windows environment. Furthermore, Apple hasn’t helped their cause with me based upon the following email exchange.

 

My question to Apple through their accessibility address: “If I wish to use an audio device for music playback, specifically a high quality digital to analogue converter, from the USB or FireWire port; can I still have voiceover reading the screen through the Mac’s speakers.”

 

Apple’s answer: “This may be possible but it would require third party software. It's not a feature of Mac OS X. I'm not aware of any particular software package that can do this if one exists.”

 

So much for helping a customer. Not surprisingly, however, Clay’s post of this afternoon:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/New-Audio-Midi-Setup-Snow-Leopard

makes it appear that one of my major as yet unanswered questions can be resolved favorably.

 

My ask of one of the great “Mac-ites” of this group, could you turn on Voiceover on your Mac while it is connected to a DAC, follow Clay’s instructions and see if you can get speech out of the Mac and music out of the port into the DAC and your music system. I’m concerned that if this doesn’t work, I’ll have too many conflicts and could potentially damage downstream equipment like the much earlier “blown tweeters” threads here.

 

Any tests that one or more of you can run are most appreciated.

 

Once I resolve my machine choice, I’m still pondering the NAS versus attached storage question and the question of ripping software (having read that Dbpoweramp’s FLAC rip with their tagging is the best of class). If I choose the Mac and ITunes, however, this would mean converting to AIF. But, unless you all have unlimited time, those questions are for other days.

 

Thanks again and sorry for the very long post.

 

 

[cfmsp]

 

Thanks for the kind words. I'm honored to have helped you, even if only a bit.

 

Per your request, I just tried Voiceover for the first time ever.

 

Getting specifically to the heart of the matter, when I selected the pulldown to indicate that I wanted to select the ULN2 as output device, voiceover did NOT indicate what the options are, only that there were '5 items in the table'. There was no actual voiceover within that new menu, no matter what I tried.

 

I have no idea if there are options within Voiceover that would increase it's coverage. Nor do I know if the voiceover might be lacking due to this being a new feature.

 

With more clues about what to try, I'd be more than happen to help you in any way possible. I'm sure we could put together an applescript that would select your device as the sound output whenever invoked.

 

All the best,

Clay

 

 

 

[cfmsp]

 

Rayhil,

 

I looked into the sound preferences panel and discovered that you can set the DAC as output device there using voiceover.

 

I also listened more carefully and discovered the control-option-shift-up arrow command.

 

I still could not select the output device from the new Audio Midi Setup screen.

 

Do you listen to high resolution files?

 

I also haven't yet found a way to get voiceover to work when changing sample rate / bit rate from the standard 44.1kHz, which is the default.

 

Seems like Amarra mini would be a good choice for auto changing of the sample rate up to 96Khz, or perhaps scripting.

 

I'll keep trying, especially if you give me more advice on what to try.

 

Clay

 

 

 

 

[cfmsp]

rayhil,

 

I just re-read your long post and realized that I missed the actual point of your question.

 

I thought you were wondering if you would be able to make selections in Audio Midi Setup with voiceover, thus my previous responses.

 

I tried what you requested, and it seems that the Voiceover sound is NOT considered a system alert, rather, the voiceover output is directed to the same output as selected for everything else.

 

Have you considered ideas like using a laptop to control a headless mac mini?

 

I accept private message if you'd rather discuss this off line.

 

NEW EDIT: rather than create yet another post, I'll add edits here.

 

Rayhil, I'm fairly certain we can find a solution that will allow you to separate the Voiceover audio from music files. I was just able to do exactly that using Airfoil - routing the music via Airtunes to Apple TV and on to my DAC, while containing the Voiceover audio to the computer speakers. However, this downsamples hi res music to ALAC at 16k/44.1 and runs it through TOslink of the Apple TV.

 

I'm sure we can find another audio hijacking tool (like Audio hijack Pro) to separate the two audio streams and route them the way that you want. It's getting late here, but I'll look into this tomorrow.

 

Clay

 

 

 

[souptin]

Quote from their website:

 

http://www.cycling74.com/products/soundflower

 

"Soundflower

 

Free Inter-application Audio Routing Utility for Mac OS X

 

Soundflower is a Mac OS X (10.2 and later) system extension that allows applications to pass audio to other applications. Soundflower is easy to use, it simply presents itself as an audio device, allowing any audio application to send and receive audio with no other support needed. Soundflower is free, open-source, and runs on Mac Intel and PPC computers. Visit the Soundflower download page to try it out.

How To Use Soundflower

 

Soundflower presents itself as one of two audio devices (2ch / 16ch). The 2-channel device is sufficient for most situations."

(and so on)

 

[cfmsp]

 

Souptin,

 

Soundflower is a possibility. It's what Airfoil uses - I already have a copy. It's designed for inter-application routing with no user interface to speak of, it presents itself as a(nother) possible system input/output which other apps can select as either their input or output.

 

Jack (Just an Audio Connection Kit) might also work.

 

I wont have time to check it out until tonight. I'm fairly certain there's a way to get something to work for Rayhil.

 

Clay

 

 

[vortecjr]

I'll start by saying Im not sure if I am achieving what your looking for so I might need more feedback. Also, this is not to compete with Clay and any Apple solution. I have XP so that is what I will talk about.

 

In the control panel under speech I set voice to Microsoft Sam (its horrible I know, but its a test). Then in the same screen I did a preview voice with a set of head phones (no speakers on this machine).

 

In the control panel under sound and audio devices and in the voices tab I set voice playback to Realtec (my on board audio device).

 

In Media Monkey (you like itunes, but this is a test) I set playback to through my L22 card.

 

Then I played some music and redid the voice test in the speech menu with the head phones and both work a the same time!

 

Am I on the right track?

 

Regards

 

Jesus R

 

 

[rayhil]

Clay/Souptin, You guys are amazing at how quickly you respond and with your willingness to apparently avoid sleep to try and help. Chris, could you please give Clay my contact info as I'm on the road and, given the machine I'm on, can't post my email address. Clay, won't be home until late this evening, but would love to try off line. This is not urgent but, rather, a work in process so please don't avoid other responsibilities to try and provide immediate answers. For those still reading this extremely narrow thread, let me try and explain further per Clay's questions.

 

My first goal is to see if ITunes will be accessible with Voiceover so that music can be playing and I can still get speech output so, for example, I could switch tracks. In its simplest terms, this is a core requirement because it means I'll have access to my library while playing music. It sounds like Clay has been able to acomplish this goal which, if we're not missing each other's boats, means he's getting speech (not quite sure from which speakers) while ITunes is running.

 

My second goal is to have music routed to the port containing the DAC, while having Voiceover's output coing through the computer speakers. Think of these speakers as a sighted person's version of a screen. This separation of Voiceover and music output would avoid both conflicts and speech and music being simultaneously sent to the port with the DAC. I'd like to do this to avoid many possible concerns that would be raised by both audio streams going to the music system.

 

Third, and related to the second, I'd like to be able to change sample rates for various types of playback. While at this point I don't have hirez files, it's a major goal of mine. I recognize I'd need to shut down ITunes to change, or add Amarra, but either of these is acceptable.

 

Fourth, Clay, I'm certainly willing to try a laptop and a headless Macmini combination but I fear that getting Voiceover on the laptop (which is very easy) to work well with the apps needed for the sharing features might be quite a challenge. For that reason and to slightly manage costs, it is one of the reasons for thinking the route of using the Macbook Pro with external storage as the server/storage + managing my music directly from that machine.

 

Hope this is clear and I really appreciate all the help.

 

[rayhil]

Jesus, thanks for the reply. Yes, in the Windows environment you are clearly on the right track. I'll give you a shout off-line in the next few days (I'm on the road now) on this issue. The next step would be for me to try JAWS with a connected DAC. I think I can try this from home in a bit of a strange way, but your test is much appreciated. The question will become whether JAWS is rerouting the sound output if another audio device or port is chosen. Thanks.

 

[vortecjr]

I can also try Itune on the same machine later today and see what happens...

 

I want to add that Clay/Souptin apple tests and another recent post about Guitar playback gave me the ideas on how to proceed as I was not really sure.

 

Regards

 

Jesus R

 

[cfmsp]

 

"My first goal is to see if ITunes will be accessible with Voiceover so that music can be playing and I can still get speech output so, for example, I could switch tracks."

 

This works well on the Mac, per my test.

 

"My second goal is to have music routed to the port containing the DAC, while having Voiceover's output going through the computer speakers."

 

I'm reasonably confident we can find a shareware app that will allow this.

 

"Third, and related to the second, I'd like to be able to change sample rates for various types of playback."

 

As stated previously, I've not yet been able to change rates with Voiceover in Audio Midi Setup, although I'm still a novice. A script might be necessary (or purchase of Amarra)

 

"Fourth, I'm certainly willing to try a laptop and a headless Macmini combination but I fear that getting Voiceover on the laptop (which is very easy) to work well with the apps needed for the sharing features might be quite a challenge."

 

Good point. I didn't try this. I used a Macbook Pro myself, until the display died and became 'headless' (after I couldn't fix it, and so left it off when I put the laptop back together again). It was only then that I learned the joy of using a Macbook Air to control music (on dedicated server) while surfing the internet.

 

More this evening,

Clay

 

 

[audiozorro]

I thought I was through with this post but my recent weekend experience could make me an Apple hater. First project was to add memory to my MacBook Pro. Simple enough, remove the battery, unscrew the lid to the memory compartment, and add memory. Well I was able to remove two of the three screws until my 00 Philips screwdriver broke. I then proceeded to use other tools to remove the last screw to no avail. Finally, I had to drill out the remaining screw, all the while wondering if my laptop would be toes up before it was all done. Had my Mac been destroyed it would have been the last Mac in my family. What should have been a 5 minute easy job turned into a task involving several hours. I believe others have stated undue effort involved to upgrade Mac Minis. Of course I know that Apple expects their customers to bring in their Apple equipment for all upgrades and repairs. But with the price of memory at $15 per gigabyte, who wants to pay Apple prices for parts and labor, not to mention the time of traveling to and from the Apple store, waiting for your appointment time and waiting for the repair/upgrade to be done. So once again Macs prove themselves to be the expensive choice and not conducive to self repairs, upgrades and tweaks.

 

Of course I’m not an Apple hater. If the new Apple Touch iPods being released in about a week were to have FW or USB digital outputs, I would buy a couple iPods in a millisecond. Who knows maybe they will make it easy for iPod users to replace the battery themselves.

 

Oh by the way I believe one of the reasons why my iTunes library is a bloody mess is because I have the “Keep iTunes music folder organized” enabled and I must have used the “Consolidate library” feature. That feature must have taken my well organized music library and turned it into a jumbled mess. Fortunately I have backups and can start over, but the other problems and limits with the iTunes database still remain.

 

 

[cfmsp]

AZ,

 

“Keep iTunes music folder organized”.

 

I think Consolidate Files was the source of your misery.

 

At least you didn't use the "Copy files to iTunes folder" feature. That can really turn your library/files into a mess if you're pulling in files already ripped. You'll have duplicates galore.

 

I'm with you on the difficulties one can experience doing your own installs. I routinely open up Macs and update things. Years ago I had a similar problem - stripped the threads trying to upgrade RAM on my daughter's iBook G3. She never did get the upgrade her machine deserved.

 

Clay

 

 

[vortecjr]

I have itunes running on the l22 card, I have a demo version of jaws running on the on board sound card. I play some music on itunes and as I navigate jaws it talks to me via the head phone. I just had to set the output in jaws to the on board audio card. I didn't really do anything speical in i-tunes though because Windows was already set to output audio via the L22 card.

 

Jaws is actually pretty cool as I can set the l22 as output and listen to windows install programs from another room....hehehe.

 

Regards

 

Jesus R

www.sonore.us

 

[cfmsp]

 

 

JR is making better progress than I am, thus far.

 

Rayhil, I'm still on the case, but need to figure out the inner workings of JACK next. I tried Audio Hijack Pro tonibhg, and unless I'm missing something, we can't reroute a portion of the audio stream to another device with it.

 

Chris sent me your contact info, but since you're traveling perhaps it's better to wait until you return?

 

Your choice.

 

clay

 

 

 

[rayhil]

All, Both Clay and Jesus have been most gracious during this latest round. They're both providing tests and results that are very informative. As they've both agreed to help off-line, I'm going to avoid posts on this particular, unique application but, of course, will share with anyone who is interested. Further, when I reach conclusions, I'll post here for all to read.

Thanks

 

[souptin]

Rather than avoiding further posts on this topic, I think it's worthy of a topic all to itself. Your situation may be unusual, but I'd bet that there's quite a few people who would be interested in your conclusions: Personally I have partial and rather variable vision, and I expect that many of our older forum users have bought themselves some extremely big monitors, if you get my meaning. Even those with 20:20 sight must frequently find their eyes aching when they scroll through the spreadsheet that forms the basic interface of iTunes and most other music players.

 

I did a few experiments with Apple's VoiceOver utility. The main problem, as previously stated, is that it doesn't allow you to choose the sound output device from within the utility, instead it uses the sound output device chosen in the main System Preferences panel, making it much harder to separate VoiceOver output from other audio capable programs. If Apple could be persuaded to add this feature things would be a lot simpler.

 

With iTunes, I think the simplest workaround is to use Airtunes streaming. This is actually quite a sweet combination - VoiceOver comments come through the laptop's built in speakers, and music comes through AEX & dac. The downside is that it limits you to redbook cd bitrates and to getting the best from the AEX toslink output. I've not found any simple way of separating iTunes and VoiceOver using a local sound ouput like usb or firewire, however it's possible to 'fool' Amarra into continuing to output to a firewire dac by changing the System Preferences sound output back to internal speakers after launching the iTunes/Amarra combination. It's not a sensible fix because Amarra will switch back as soon as you play a file with a different sample rate, or a file which its sound engine does not support, but it's interesting.

 

If you use sbooth's Play application instead of iTunes, you can choose your sound output device from within the program. As a possible bonus, some people think it is a better playback engine than iTunes (I can't hear a difference myself), and it has a slightly simpler interface which can make it easier to navigate and to understand what VoiceOver is telling you.

 

Using a laptop as a remote control for a headless mac or other computer was mentioned. I use Apple's Remote Desktop to do this, but the problem is that VoiceOver does not 'understand' that it is looking at iTunes within the Remote Desktop window, so it doesn't give any feedback. One alternative is a program called TuneConnect, from tuneconnect.org, which allows you to control a remote copy of iTunes and which does allow VoiceOver feedback. However my initial experiments haven't been all that great, I was able to start and stop playback and change volume, but I couldn't get it to list my tracks. I suspect either a firewall or network speed issue.

 

Hope some of this is helpful.