Schiit Audio Releases its Unison USB Upgrade

[lmitche]

10 hours ago, baldr said:

This is a good time for me to restate my opinion that CD playback with our Unison CD Host and Input is the finest digital audio I have heard.

This implies that you can build the worlds best sounding one box CD player with analog outputs today as no USB circuits need be involved. Is that right?

 

There are many serious audiophiles that will toss their birds nest of streaming gear in a heartbeat for such a solution if it also has a decent remote.

 

BTW - Personally I am not going back to CD playback, ever. My Modius arrives on Monday.

[lmitche]

3 hours ago, beerandmusic said:

A web player that uses this "CIFS" sounds "groovy".

 

If Wikipedia is to be trusted, Samba got it's name changed to CIFS in 1996. CIFS is short for the "Common Internet File System" and runs on practically every OS of including  Linux, WIndows and OSX. Competitors are NFS and AFS, among others, often associated with Sun Computers and Carnegie Mellon University respectively.

 

Aurender runs on a custom Linux so CIFS support is no surprise since CIFS exists on all Linux distros including audiophile versions like AudioLinux, Euphony, and a ton of others. Most NAS machines use Linux and CIFS.

[lmitche]

Back on topic, my Modius DAC arrived yesterday and is burning in as I await an USB B to Micro USB adapter for it's micro USB input. Using the stock cable works, but "sounds like shit ass". Not really ass, but it can't be properly compared without using my regular USB cable.

 

I first heard the expression "sounds like ass" from Mike Moffat when @Jud, his wife Lisa and me met Mike late on a Saturday afternoon at the RMAF CanJam in 2014. Mike had just released the Yggdrasil and was pumped up. He entertained the three of us with terrific stories for close to two hours. He used this expression several times.

 

Having forgotten this, I laughed when I read one of  his recent contributions here as @baldr. I finally figured out that the owner of a company named Schiit, use of the common phrase "sounds like shit" may not be the best marketing move.

 

😁

 

[lmitche]

8 hours ago, bluesman said:

I’m afraid that’s a bit of oversimplification and distortion.  SMB (Server Message Block) is a file sharing protocol developed by IBM about 40 years ago. Samba is a set of applications that use SMB to share files in a variety of settings and systems.  CIFS is an implementation of SMB created by Microsoft. Samba and CIFS do pretty much the same thing in somewhat different ways, but they

are not identical.

Bluesman,

 

Well it's no wonder the Wikipeida author was confused. Here is what IBM has to say about this on one of their websites this morning.

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSLTBW_2.3.0/com.ibm.zos.v2r3.ioea600/smbadd001998602.htm

 

"Server Message Block (SMB) is a protocol for remote file/print access that is used by Windows clients. This protocol is also known as Common Internet File System (CIFS). The data sets supported include: sequential data sets on DASD (Direct Access Storage Device), partitioned data sets (PDS), partitioned data sets extended (PDSE) and Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM) data sets. The data set support is typically referred to as Record File System (RFS) support. To access shared directory paths and shared printers, the SMB protocol is supported through the use of TCP/IP on z/OS. Personal Computer (PC) clients on the network use the file and print sharing functions that are included in their operating systems."

 

Here is what Microsoft has to say about this:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/microsoft-smb-protocol-and-cifs-protocol-overview

 

"The Server Message Block (SMB) Protocol is a network file sharing protocol, and as implemented in Microsoft Windows is known as Microsoft SMB Protocol. The set of message packets that defines a particular version of the protocol is called a dialect. The Common Internet File System (CIFS) Protocol is a dialect of SMB. Both SMB and CIFS are also available on VMS, several versions of Unix, and other operating systems."

 

Nevertheless I am sure you are right. Were you involved in the creation of SMB or CIFS? Does the blue in your handle have several meanings?