Newbie - trying to build and configure system

[G-pac]

Hey all-

 

Been lurking and researching for months now and putting off the actual build/configure steps as a result of finding so much info ad so many conflicting opinions. I have searched and searched and am getting too much disparate info and need your collective help to drill down so I can make some decisions.

 

I have listed my major system components in my sig line. I am building this system piece-by-piece and now that I have a solid power source (Audio Control), I am looking to buy a DAC and speakers.

 

I am working with a local installer who is recommending the PSB Perfect Wave DAC and I am inclined to agree with this suggestion.

 

A number of questions have come up since we started researching this component that he is unsure of b/c my system is all Apple/MAC.

 

GOAL: I am trying to build a quality 2 channel audio system that I can access my sizable music library built largely in iTunes (through purchase and ripping of my DC collection) in highest resolution format possible since sound quality is a major factor to me.

 

I am trying to determine a few key things and may be going about it all wrong.

 

My basic/primary questions are:

1) How can I upgrade my 3500+ songs in iTunes to Plus? I had this option a few months ago and was waiting to upgrade and now that I am ready I do not see the option in iTunes.

 

2) How should I convert and/or save my upgraded iTunes library (Plus) to a NAS?

 

3) Do I need Pure Music/Amarra if I am purchasing a DAC?

 

The next (secondary) questions I have are:

1) Trying to decide on a NAS and the front runners are Synology, Dropo, Onnto, and Promise SmartStor (based mostly on what I have read/found on this site). Any suggestions on the best way to make an informed decision on this based on independent testing/reviews? Results I have found seem to be largely anecdotal at best.

 

Any suggestions from any of you that have gone down this path already are appreciated. I am ready to pull the trigger and purchase the equipment, I just feel that there is so much info available and I have not been able to distill it down to actionable levels. I am now totally indecisive and frustrated.

 

Many thanks.

 

G-pac

 

 

[jnoneiliv1]

G-pac,

 

Hold the Presses, I think there's a problem with the story on page 1!

 

First, I think you've come to the right place and you are going to get some great advice in this forum, (probably not from me), but certainly from others more knowledgeable.

 

I'm excited by your project to build a CA system from the ground up, but already concerned you might be getting some bad advice, or getting off on the wrong foot, or spending money you needn't, (I'm hoping the other CA folks will confirm or debunk me.)

 

The Apple/MAC family of hardware, OS, and software (Itunes) is a fantastic place to start when building a system. I see no reason to question your decision to build around the Apple/Mac platform as you've got that in place and now can just work around the Pro's of that, instead of worrying about the Pro's and Con's of PC versus Mac, etc.

 

That your local installer is NOT familiar with MAC, concerns me greatly, and I'm a bit perplexed by the PSB (PS Audio?) Perfectwave DAC decision, and I am thinking it might not really be the best decision. Your MAC can function as a POWERFULLY flexible music server platform able to access music from NAS storage, streaming sources like the Internet, even a ripping station to read CD's to HD, then play from HD. (And, I just can't describe how much fun it is to use the Ipad to browse a music library, the convenience is awesome.) The only thing you can't do with it is plug a CD player directly into it and centrally control that as well, but most good DACs will allow this.

 

I am thinking that the Perfectwave is providing a lot of redundant functionality to the MAC based music server and your money would be better spent on finding the best "sounding" DAC, or other criteria. Not that the PS Audio Perfect Wave isn't the DAC for you, I'm just thinking it's a bit of an odd choice for a MAC based system and I am dubious since your installer does not know MAC. But, I'm not the one to suggest the best DAC for a MAC, and I think you'll get some really good recommendations from this forum. For the money you've allocated for the PerfectWave, you can afford some awesome DAC's.

 

As to your question about Itunes Plus, I'm equally confused. When you ripped your CD's using Itunes, which format did you rip to? AAC, AIFF, etc. I would think you "should" have ripped to AIFF for best sound quality, portability, etc. See the CA ripping guide here at CA for a really good ripping strategy and discussion of Pro's and Con's of formats. Or you might have used Apple lossless.

 

In any case, if you ripped to a compressed format, or lower bit rate format, there is NO upgrade possible (without ripping again, or the upgrade won't do much for you.). Or if you did convert the format, you won't recapture any loss in fidelity of the previous format. So, I'd either not worry about upgrading, as it can't be done, or report your current file format more definitively for analysis by the good folks here.

 

And, finally, I'm not a big fan of any Audio specific NAS. In most things audio, I have to concede I don't have the experience or equipment to hear the difference, and others will know better, but with the NAS, I'm very confident that good IT know how is all that is necessary to choose a good NAS, and you don't need an "audio" NAS. (Of course a NAS with a noisy fan, etc. may not be good for audio, so please don't shoot me for being provocative.)

 

The first thing to consider about NAS's is that there really are very few hard drive manufacturer's, it's a short list of Seagate, Western Digital, and maybe that's it and the hardware used by the NAS to care and feed for these disks is equally ubiquitous. The only real difference in the NAS is the software. For a gigabit Ethernet connected NAS, I really don't think the performance differences in NAS's matter in the least, and ease of use, cost, reliability, and features is much more important.

 

I've run big IT environments, 1000's of PC's, 100's of servers, and I searched hi and low to try to find out which of the current Seagate or Western digital disks have better reliability, and I am convinced there is no way to find out,don't bother. I prefer Seagate disks, and you'll want something 6 months older than bleeding edge, but still you should expect that out of 10 disks you buy, one will be bad within the week. That's not a good statistic, but it's a good strategy.

 

I use the Netgear Duo NAS, and I like it very much. It's cheap, but runs a nice Linux Kernel and is easy to run and support. It supports MAC files systems and any other protocol you might need. It's not the fastest or quietest, but so far the software is flawless and in my opinion the adminstration tools are just "right".

 

All that being said, I think ANY of the NAS highly regarded or reviewed by audiophiles should work great and you might get more help from the forums if audio folks know and like the NAS.

 

With all things disk related, I think the strategy is to go cheap and highly redundant. Use simple mirroring in the NAS, AND keep another disk running somewhere and make manual backups to the backup disk. The mirroring will copy any accidental deletes or corruption that occurs to your library, so you'll need to keep another copy somewhere else that you backup weekly so you can recover your library. Multiple cheap NAS are better than one expensive NAS. That I strongly believe.

 

Wheww, rip the keyboard from my fingers, that's too much drivel. Hopefully, others will concur or debunk me, and you'll see some consensus in advice. CA is an awesome forum and once you see several comments going in the same direction, you can be pretty sure, you're getting good advice.

 

Cheers,

 

Jamie

 

 

[G-pac]

Jamie- thank you so much for the detailed and thoughtful response. Based on your reply, I am clearly in the right place for quality advice and input and your IT credentials are certainly impressive. I am a defense contractor (non-technical, think PMP) and my wife is a very senior EE with Lockheed. She has the more technical "Apple/MAC chops" but we are both a little overwhelmed with the options we have identified during our initial research. Your input is exactly what we were/are hoping for to help us narrow down our options/choices.

 

As for the PS Audio (not PSB, sorry) Perfect Wave DAC (PWD), I thought I would need a way to access my iTunes library (and photos/vids at some point in the future) from a NAS, and my CDs from a dedicated Emotiva or Oppo transport in my rack. From your reply, maybe I am going about this incorrectly. With my iMac and NAS (and time capsule/router) located upstairs in my office and my rack/theater downstairs (roughly 80-90 foot cable run), I thought that I needed a DAC that could also serve as a music server. I had not considered using a Mac for this.

 

- **How would I set this up? In addition to my iMac 27", my wife and I also have 2-3 other older Macbooks (a pro and a non-pro) that could be put to better use than they are now, collecting dust. We have an iPad dedicated to the theater also so this would be a desirable setup if I can get it to work without any sacrifice to music fidelity/quality.**

 

With regard to the iTunes Plus question, I was only concerned with upgrading my purchased iTunes files that were purchased prior to the change to 256 file types (from 128 I think) by Apple in the 2009-10 timeframe. I never paid much attention to file formats/settings when I ripped many of my CDs into my iTunes library over 5 years ago and want to go back and rip them again correctly this time using the correct software and settings. Essentially starting from scratch with y CD collection transfer to iTunes.

 

Our NAS will be initially set up to store my wife's and my iTunes libraries as a merged single library. We then plan to move ALL of our other media over to it once we get it working correctly. We agree, not a dedicated music NAS.

 

I will keep your suggestions in mind regarding disk price versus volume (redundant) when making the final decision to order drives for the NAS. Are you OK with me sending you our list of finalists and the supporting analysis?

 

Again, thank you for taking so much time. I look forward to any of your additional insights and lessons learned.

 

I am wondering if I posted this in the wrong forum since the responses have been so limited. I did not think it would get enough attention in the General Forum, and thought that the NAS was really more of a storage/server issue, my primary concern at this point.

 

Cheers-

G-Pac

 

 

 

 

[jnoneiliv1]

I'm glad I might help. I think there are a lot more posts over the holidays than typical. There are a group of people who regularly answer questions on CA who really keep the quality up and I think they are probably just overwhelmed due to the spike in questions in the last couple weeks.

 

It sounds like you may really be onto something with your MAC's. The Macbook Pro is generally regarded as an excellent music player. There really was something to the "Pro" in these machines and Apple did have recording artists and engineers in mind when designing these laptops. You'll want to make sure it is of the Intel CPU vintage and upgrade to the latest OSX version, I believe 10.5. The MacBook Pro can run almost any DAC since it has Firewire, TOS, and USB outputs. There are a bunch of high end Pro Audio DACs that use Firewire, but with the newer Asynchronous USB DACs you have a lot more choices, and the Optical connection is interesting for complete galvanic isolation, if that's a problem.

 

Itunes running on OSX 10.5 on a MacBook Pro is considered by many true audiophiles as a good platform for high end audio. (I think I'm reading the consensus correctly.). And they are tough critics. The Amarra adon's are a typical upgrade to the Itune's player for potential sound quality upgrade.

 

There are a few tricks to using multiple Itune's players, with one Itunes Library, and I'm a bit fuzzy on some of the details, but it can be done.

 

You would essentially use your iMac27" as the Itunes "Server" and your other MacBooks as Itunes "Players".

 

Itunes will ALWAYS want to manage a "special" directory that holds album art, purchased music, and other Itunes specific files. To get multiple Itune's players to share the same Itunes folder you need to use the Itunes "Server" functionality. (We should confirm this, as this has been a weak area of Itunes that is improving frequently.)

 

You will want to rip any new music to a set of folders that Itune's does NOT copy into the Itunes "special" folder. When you add music to the Itunes library you have the option to have Itunes just catalog the music from other folders, add album artwork, manage in playlists, etc. OR have Itunes actually import or copy the music files into ITS folder structure. You may not have a choice with the purchased music, but you definitely don't want Itunes to move around any files you rip, etc.

 

Your Itunes "Players", your MacBook's, will access your music files on the NAS directly (hopefully connected by Gigabit Ethernet), but the players will get the location of purchased music, playlists, and other music organization information from the Itunes Server. Apple has loosened things up considerably, but you need the Itunes Server to help share your purchased music to the other computers in a way that Apple can be sure you haven't given the purchased music to all your friends. This might actually be possible with the new Itunes music files, I'm not sure.

 

I would suggest you setup your CD ripping station on the 27" iMAC, you can have a less expensive DAC connected to the 27" for listening in the office, and then you'll have a high end DAC connected to the MacBook Pro in your home theater.

 

You can use your other MacBooks or even use some Airport Express ($100) units to stream music wirelessly around the house.

 

You will be able to operate your MacBook Pro from your Ipad using the Itunes Remote application on the Ipad.

 

If you just take care of about a half dozen details, I think you will be amazed at how convenient your MAC setup will work, and with audio fidelity to rival even the best dedicated CD players.

 

1. Make sure the NAS supports the MAC filesystem protocol nicely. (Most do). There is a little bug, or potential problem with Itune's and your MAC's staying connected to your NAS through a restart. Typically you will connect your MAC's to the NAS folders using the finder, then leave the MAC's on, such that Itune's can see the NAS folders. Sometimes Itunes may not connect automatically to the NAS folders when you restart your machines.

2. Organize your music into a good folder structure. (See the CA Ripping Guide on his site.)

3. Configure your Itunes Server and Itunes Players on other computers to leave your music in the folders you manually created. (One setting in Itune's.)

4. Configure your IMac to be the Itunes Server, and your laptops as players.

5. Make sure to set your bit rate and volume controls properly in Itunes, the MAC Audio panel, and MAC midi panels. These settings are everywhere repeated the same on forums and DAC makers websites.

 

And yes, please post your finalists for your NAS units and any other selections. Hopefully we'll get some other folks joining in to verify the strategy.

 

I don't know anything about upgrading Itunes purchased music. Apple has improved the portability of their proprietary music formats greatly, but I still find it hard to even find out what bit rate they are using for a particular recording I might buy and I am befuddled at their apparent attachment to low res formats. Of course, I'm not sure I would hear the difference with my gear, but I'm hesitant to purchase a lot of music and continue to buy CD's and rip them.

 

Cheers,

 

Jamie

 

 

 

 

 

[Audio_ELF]

No doubt the PS Audio Perfect Wave DAC is a great device, however there are multiple ways of including it in a computer audio system.

 

When demonstrted, was the installer demonstrating it with or without the "bridge" add on? With the bridge you will probably want to install a NAS (or dedicated computer) running UPnP server. This connects via Ethernet direct to the PWD + Bridge not requiring a computer (except optionally for control) and for ripping your CDs. Your installer should be able to recommend a suitable NAS (tested with the PWD) and you would just use whatever software you are comfortable with on your Mac to rip your CDs to a specified location on the NAS.

 

Without the Bridge, you'll require an alternative interface from computer (Mac or Windows) as the PWDs USB interface is not upto the quality of the res of the device.

 

Eloise

 

[realhifi]

Unless you want to do this all yourself I would find a good A/V person or company and give them some latitude in getting this all running and sounding great. I agree with Elf about the Mac thing...if this person doesn't know their way around Apple computers then they may not be the right person for the job. Your list and comments are extensive and you can certainly find your way through this whole computer audio thing by reading and then rereading and then reading some more opinions about the whole business but as you may have noticed, there is no consensus on this whole topic and man oh man, do people have opinions! Seriously, I would call a few A/V people in your area and ask a few pointed questions, go and see what they themselves are doing and listen...then pick one and don't second guesse them the whole way. In other words actually pay someone for their expertise! If they are good you will end up with something you will be delighted with and the cost of having them do this will repay itself every time you have a new question about your system.