Mac-based Music Server - Is this system as good as I can get?

[Thunktank]

Hi all, totally new to this forum and here is my first post. (this thread seemed the most appropriate)

 

I stumbled across this forum while hunting for a new CD transport. I am currently using a Shanling CD-T 100C as a transport and sending digital signal to a Musical Fidelity Tri Vista DAC through a quality Coax (optical Tosling definitely sounds inferior in this setup). The analogue signal is out to a Musical Fidelity Tri Vista 300 Amp through Vandamme cable to a pair of Anthony Gallo Reference II speakers. It all sounds pretty sweet to me except on quiet passages where the CD can be heard spinning in the shanling (top loader).

 

So you can imagine how excited I was to find I could send a bit perfect data stream to a wireless device, connect that device to my DAC, then control the whole lot from a two way remote with an Iphone or my PDA running "NetRemote".

 

Then I read this thread and the wind is out of my sails, If I am reading this thread correctly the AirPort is not up to the job as it has a limited word length/sample rate, and no coax connection.

BUMMER!

 

I have a newish PC with three separate raid controllers so loads of spare capacity for additional drives, most of the rooms have CAT5 network points, in addition I have a reliable 802.11n wireless network running, talk about all dressed up and no place to go. I appreciate I could put a small format PC/Mac in my listening room but I would prefer not to, more potential to introduce unwanted noise and my electricity bills climbing even higher. I will probably purchase an AirPort to try out in the kitchen or some other room where quality is not as much of an issue.

 

Oops this post has rambled on a little

 

The questions I am asking are:-

 

Is there anything on the horizon that will do what the Airport does but to audiophile standards?

If not then should we not be banding together to make our wishes known to Apple?

 

Having read this and other threads on this excellent forum it looks to me like there are lots of people after the same thing.

 

Since writing the above I have had a browse round the forums and found the "Empirical Audio" products, which goes someway to answering my first question. Surely Apple could produce a product like the "Empirical Audio Off-Ramp WiFi" for less than $1200 and still make a healthy profit.

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi thunktank - Welcome to the site!

 

You may be interested in the Transporter from Slim Devices / Logitech. This will wirelessly transport 24/96, but will limit you to using the Slim Devices software interface. Here is a link http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_transporter.html

 

You are definitely right that there are lots of other people after the same thing! The Airport Express could support higher resolutions according to those in the know, but the device has been limited for some reason :-(

 

[Thunktank]

Thanks for the welcome and the link to the "Tansporter".

I have spent a large portion of today investigating Computer audio and my conclusion is.........I need to spend a lot more time thinking about exactly what I want from a media network, then spend even more time finding the components.

 

I love the idea of a wireless two way remote from which I can control the audio in every room, it ticks so many boxes. I only need one audiophile set up for my listening room, the rest of the house will be more constrained by budget.

 

I was just a little disapointed that things where not as simple or as cheap as I first thought (isn't that always the way). It would have been so nice to spend £60 on an Airport Express connect it via coax to my existing DAC, sit back and enjoy.

 

However I am still very excited about the prospect of a high quality audio network all controlled form a hanheld device. I will just have to curb my childish "I want it now" feelings and spend more time doing the research. At least my job will be made a lot easier due the existence of this excellent site and it's many contributers.

 

 

Thanks

Paul N.

 

[rs350z]

i have read many articles about how the usb connection is inferior to toslink or coax for music. i have also read reviews on usb dacs that were rated unfavorably compared to their non-usb products. my 2 cents worth: get an audiophile dac that uses the typical connections toslink,coax, glass, aes and then use a jitter device that is directly hooked up to the mac or airport express using the toslink cable and then go out of the jitter device with a quality coax, aes, or glass cable to the dac. by doing this, you will clean up the signal before getting to the dac and you are not limited to which dac you want to buy. there are many jitter devices out there in the market (according to reviews/articles, the best seems to be the genesis but i haven't heard them all). i have some a couple different makes of jitter devices and even the cheapest 1 improves the music quality greatly.

 

as for hard drives, if you purchase music, the best way to store your data is on some sort of network raid device or the network drobo unit. in the previous threads and in many real life situations, if you are using JBOD's to store your stuff and you lose a drive, you are sunk. if you use time machine, you are doubling the amount of storage needed to backup your data. if you purchase a raid 5 network setup (buffalo for example), and you have 4 1 tb drives inside, you actually have 3tb of capacity whereas in the time machine, you would have 2tb of capacity.

 

for remote control of itunes on a mac, the iphone or itouch works great with remote buddy software.

 

[proftournesol]

I've never understood why people back up their iTunes music collection on an external HDD as that is what an iPod is for (or 2 or 3 iPods)

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hey Michael - I sense some sarcasm in you words there (I hope). A couple terabytes of music will cost a lot of money in iPod dollars and a major inconvenience :-)

 

[proftournesol]

no, I mean it! it depends on how much music you have though - terrabytes I can certainly understand, but as many people have less music on their HD than their iPod will hold, it doesn't make sense to me for them to back up their music elsewhere when it is already on their iPod and they can buy appropriate software to transfer it back to their HDD for much less money than a HDD. For the record I back up my lossless files onto an external HDD (using Time Machine) but not my lossy music as this goes onto the iPod.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Ok I got ya now Michael.

 

Agreed.