jabbr

Is this like a reality distortion field?

Simply when I want to listen to a particular CD, I type the title or group into my phone and the music starts playing. I don’t need to get up and search through a wall of CD cases ...

Don’t know and don’t have one. Designed and sold by Solid-Run which does have a surprising track record in audiophile products perhaps behind the scenes. I believe they use the Allegro design suite so perhaps the 3D is better than you predict? However, this board doesn’t have an audio output so are you suggesting the USB output has high noise? (It certainly might) — that said it has a couple(!) Of 10G fiber slots so I’m assuming it meets 10GBase-X standards which are reasonable strict —- have to hit that 10G eye pattern

If we are going with coffee flavored NUCs then this has more caffeine http://macchiatobin.net/product/macchiatobin-single-shot/

Hearing “what’s there” Is the point of pretty much everything here. The questions and debates are over the best way to do that. Let me break this down into two broad camps: 1) Your ears are the ultimate arbiter of sound. You are looking to hear what the mastering engineer mastered or what was present in the live performance. The best equipment is what creates this experience with the most transparency. You are the judge of what’s best. 2) The digital file is a precise sequence of numbers that precisely defines a waveform. Measurements measure the fidelity of the reproduced analog waveform to the digital signal as recorded. Perhaps the DAC built into your laptop or your CD boom box isn’t the best method for either 1) or 2) at least for many people, but suit yourself.

Hopefully quiet, if it’s starts crackling, then you might have problems 😂

Since you have the source CD you can rip to FLAC which is losseless (or AIFF or WAV or Apple Losseless). Your iPhone and iPod will play Apple Losseless (ALAC) and I presume that other phones will play FLAC. You can even place DSD files on your phone and play them with apps. In any case if you personally can't hear the difference between MP3 and e.g. FLAC then don't worry, but otherwise its I suppose an inconvenience for you to re-rip.

Like other hobbies such as wine, there is a range of prices, and though price does not always correlate with quality, there are retail stores and vendors where indeed spending can indeed be high. That said there are also systems and equipment in the hundreds to low thousands which are very reasonable. If you don't hear a difference between, say, MP3 and, say, SACD, then don't worry and be happy. On the other hand if you do hear a difference, then there are many reasonably priced products to fit whatever budget you many have.

Of course. I mean an FMC is conceptually a switch. Using SGMII protocol and SERDES along with SFP modules, the media is converted perhaps from copper to optical, or singlemode to multimode and between various optional frequencies. The switch itself doesn’t contain any of this because the electronics/PHY are in the SFP module. This is all conceptual and there are always specific implementation details which are your product. For me, conceptually, it all makes sense if everything is either a switch, router or endpoint.

An FMC is, in fact, a very simple switch with 2 ports: one SFP and one RJ-45.

The opticalModule is, in fact, a switch? No?

If you were actually only in love with the music, then you wouldn’t be opposed to using new technology that eases the process of listening. Perhaps you’d like Spotify or YouTube like the millennials, or in my case I have a collection of thousands of discs I’ve accumulated over the years, and keep them in my home library (NAS) and can access them wherever I choose to sit in my house. Or I can load them onto my phone for when I’m out of f the house. If you actually were just in love with the music why would you want to get up and look for a specific CD? or record? My favorite vinyls would be horribly scratched and worn by now. If you were actually only in love with the music a carousel changer would be horribly limited.

Do you understand? (I don’t post on those sites but perhaps you should consider that your thinking displays a certain pattern)

There are two entirely different questions which are being conflated here: 1) what is the maximum dynamic range that can be recorded vs 2) what is the maximum dynamic range than can be perceived Those are two significantly different discussions. Folks who are purely interested in perception need to understand the intricacies of recording eg noise shaping — @esldude can say if he intends this thread to discuss perception?

Theres no question a microwave could cook your brain if you stick your head inside but does it give your cat cancer 🤷🏻‍♂️ Just like visible light waves (higher energy BTW as @wgscott shows) when organized into a laser could blast a rocket in the air, or cook an ant if focused with a lens, the fact that microwaves could be formed into anti-personnel weapons doesn’t mean that cell towers cause cancer ... but then there’s broccoli