Barriers to Computer Audio

[BobSherman]

I see we've managed to get to a bunch of recommendations and even an old argument or two prior to the OP ever answering the question about what his own preferences are.

 

 

Well Jud he has not been able to respond but I did just receive this video from him after reading the thread so far. I guess the responses were not as helpful as hoped for.

 

When he feel up to it hopefully he will post about is current audio system if any, and his expectations moving forward and hopefully some sane people will be able to provide some useful advise.

 

[video=youtube;yZG-_7W7jzk]

[BobSherman]

Have you ever gotten dropouts in the music using wireless?

 

 

And data corruption. Not the best idea . I would not recommend using wireless or USB drives.

 

A NAS is a better investment. Synology is a good choice. Would be a good also for the OP to get more storage than he thinks he needs. You never have enough storage. A two drive Synology as mentioned in an earlier post would work well.

 

As Jud mentioned a powerful CPU and a decent amount of memory is a good idea if you think you might want to use something like HQ Player and up-sample files to DSD. If not up-sampling a lower power system would work fine. Of course a DSD DAC might be something you purchase down the road. When the urge hits to buy a DAC take a good look at the Schiit multibit DACs. Not DSD, but from what everyone has been saying they are amazing.

 

A Win 10 laptop would be good choice. Software ad-ons like Audiophile Optimizer and Fidelizer are things that can be looked at down the road to improve the OS for better sonic performance.

 

Good luck

Bob

[BobSherman]

It's killing me to know what everyone is doing that has wireless so unreliable. I don't remember a single drop out due to wireless in the last 5-6 years ever. One weekends I easily stream 20GB of audio over the wireless.

 

Wireless is brain dead simple to setup and be reliable and I'm doing it with vanilla hardware. The most expensive piece is a Dlink POE AP that cost me $80 and is N300.

 

Also what is this with data corruption? You rip your music to the NAS once. You read many times. It's just a read operation. DATA CANNOT be corrupted by a failed read operation.

 

I prefer wired networks. Currently use fiber.

 

The person when mentioned the USB HDs and his router has been complaining about data corruption for the last couple of months. A less than ideal setup might have something to do with it.

[BobSherman]

Except it was a failing external drive on my mac mini connected via Firewire 800, but please feel free to cary on with your delusional nonsense.

 

 

Glad you found your problem. Now if you found a bit of civility you might become human.

[BobSherman]

I don't really think you are in a terribly great position to be critical of other people's impatience, given your rather shocking rudeness, creepy stalking behavior, and inability to keep simple facts straight.

 

 

You just cannot control your nasty attitude and have to make everything about yourself. You really think it is ok to bully people here, it is not!

 

Please try and stop ruing people's experience here with your foolishness.

 

All you do is bully Sandy but it would behoove you to stop bullying me! We understand you have limited experience and hence limited advanced audio knowledge, so your perspective is skewed... But do not limit others conversations!

 

BTW: When you were having issues, all I tried to explain to you is that to best utilize ZFS you should use six or more hard drives you will get better use of the storage space, and you had a nasty comment.

 

Try acting like an adult, as it seems like a teenager has hacked your account and is posting.

 

Try and leave this thread on topic.

[BobSherman]

+1

 

Also: I've found Seagate drives to be noisier than WD.

 

 

I personally would not trust Seagate from a reliability standpoint either. YMMV

[BobSherman]

It wasn't designed for audio, it was designed for keyboards and mice, and possibly storage devices, printer interfaces and scanners. Because of the way it works, it is not really suited for continuous streaming applications because the computer can interrupt the stream for what it considers "higher priority" interrupts. So the downstream music processing devices such as DACs must be designed to take charge of the propriatizing of data in order not to interrupt the music stream. This is not ideal, and in some instances specific drivers must be written for each DAC used (MS Windows). It can work, and can be made to work quite well, but it's easier to use an interface more suited to audio such as optical or coaxial SPDIF or FireWire which has faster continuous throughput and was designed for audio and video.

 

 

And how do you best get theses interfaces from computer to DAC? IMO firewire is pretty much dead, so what are you using to connect to your computer?

[BobSherman]

+1

 

I had four Seagate drives fail in a two week period. I use WD Red and Black drives now.

 

 

I agree. I also use allot of Hitachi drives and have been very happy.

[BobSherman]

OK, at least now I know what this is really about.

 

 

Huh? Are you really that paranoid? I just made an observation. lol smh... Please enough already.

[BobSherman]

I never said that I didn't use Firewire, I was merely answering the question about why people were saying that USB isn't great for audio. If I had a Mac Mini as my directly connected computer music source, I would, without a doubt, use Toslink (optical), but I use a Windows laptop for that chore and the only I/O on that computer even remotely suitable for direct connection to my DAC is USB. It's troublesome and not very reliable and requires a driver from the DAC manufacturer, but there it is. Increasingly, I'm using WiFi to stream my 24/96 music files (and my iTunes rips) from my Mac directly to my Logitech Squeezebox Touch and then to my DAC via Toslink. It's much more reliable than the Win laptop. If I didn't have a bunch of 24/192 files to which I like to listen, I would retire the laptop from audio duty altogether.

 

The reason I asked is because even though USB was not originally thought of as a high-end audio interface it has become one. At this point it is pretty much the de facto standard. It is not perfect but it does work very well. Either internal USB or external converters (to SPDIF or AES/EBU) are pretty much used by almost everybody here currently.

 

Moving forward other interfaces do look promising but they at this point are still a bit limited in availability and often proprietary in implementation. Maybe not quite ready for prime time yet? Down the road these will get better and easy-to-use and mate with our systems. But for now USB in my opinion is not as bad as some want to make it out to be.

 

Regards

Bob

[BobSherman]

Is there any evidence (tests, measurements, etc.) available that shows this?

 

 

People listen to music please stop trashing every thread. Thank you