CD Player or Music Server. What's Your Choice?

BeeBop · « **on:** 5 Feb 2005, 05:01 pm »

James Tanner (VP Sales for Bryston) started an interesting thread in the Bryston Owners' Circle by asking for feedback about a potential Bryston Transport or CD Player. Commentary seemed to fall into two camps - those who felt that it was a good idea, and those who felt that CD Players were going to be superceded by music servers. What do you think?

bubba966 · « **Reply #1 on:** 5 Feb 2005, 05:17 pm »

Quote from: BeeBop

CD Player or Music Server. What's Your Choice?

How 'bout neither?

BeeBop · « **Reply #2 on:** 5 Feb 2005, 05:25 pm »

OK. I'll bite. What's YOUR choce?

bubba966 · « **Reply #3 on:** 5 Feb 2005, 05:25 pm »

Laserdisc

ted_b · « **Reply #4 on:** 5 Feb 2005, 06:04 pm »

A hard-drive based music server just makes so much sense, it has to be part of the future of music listening. It reduces the noise and errors inherent in jitter, real-time error-correction of a spinning platter (yeah, HD's spin, but only for buffer caching), power supply noise (assuming a music server has a decent outboard ps) and the subsequent rfi and EMI. It provides a better dashboard to pick and choose music selections, and can be pound for pound, cheaper than its high-end transport counterpart.

The downside, currently, is the manual effort required (ripping, lossless compression, manual storage) to get to the starting line. Freeware like EAC, FLAC, Foobar and the like have made this process a little easier, but it's still in the world of pc-nerdizm. Once VRS-like servers are delivered at a value-price, it will take off. Unfortunately, building a business case to be the next VRS is a tough one; computer storage, speed and software change substantially every 6 months, and unless you have a supply chain setup like Dell's, you will wallow in inefficiency and low profits. These are my opinions only, but I think either the Big Guys will produce a good music server, or it will remain the domain of the hobbyist for some time.

JLM · « **Reply #5 on:** 6 Feb 2005, 03:08 am »

Now that HP has released a HT/PC the near term possibilities for a high end audio PC seems improved.

I like the simplicity of one box players, but before I'd drop $1500 - 2000 into one, I'd go separate transport/DAC with the idea of moving into a server in the not to distant future.

JoshK · « **Reply #6 on:** 6 Feb 2005, 03:10 am »

To me the squeeze box + audio file (pun intended or not?) server seems like a very attractive solution which I might go myself.

Hantra · « **Reply #7 on:** 6 Feb 2005, 03:33 am »

I'll tell you one thing. I heard Carl's front-end today, and his sound card retails for like $350 or so. It's probably as good as any $5K player I've ever heard, and startlingly close to the Lynx card.

Unless Bryston has some new tricks up their sleeve that no one else has thought about, perhaps they should look for a hard disk based system.

Al Garay · « **Reply #8 on:** 6 Feb 2005, 03:41 am »

The SlimDevices Squeezebox is not just attractive, but darn convenient (love the remote control)and cheap too ($199 for wired ~$279 wireless). I also like using PlexTools Professional software tool, came with my new Plextor 716 burner, easy and reasonably fast to create FLAC files. The squeezebox plugs right into my DAC (Mensa DI/O).

Now, I want a good solution to connect the DVD player using DVI or HDMI to my TV and have a complete PCHT system. Need a long 25 foot DVI cable ... unless I move my PC closer.

I think I'm going to sell my NAD DVD player.

Al

JoshK · « **Reply #9 on:** 6 Feb 2005, 03:57 am »

I am this close >< to going squeezebox myself. Seems like a killer setup. I am in the midst of building a Raid5 file server with wireless access in the basement. This seems like the best way to go, as far as I have researched. My first task is to rip all my LPs.

Al Garay · « **Reply #10 on:** 6 Feb 2005, 04:34 am »

You probably already know about good quality RAID controllers, but in case you are still looking, I highly recommend the LSI Logic MegaRAID based controllers. I recently bought the SATA 4-way for a file server and it works great with Seagate Barracuda SATA drives.

http://www.lsilogic.com/products/megaraid/sata_150_4.html

You can get good deals in www.newegg.com. For my main work servers I use HP rackmount servers with SCSI based hot-swappable drives but that's way overkill for home use. SATA is very fast screams on all our development workstations. But you probably already know that.

I'm trying to build my home PC and still using couple of old IDE Barracuda drives.

Al

JoshK · « **Reply #11 on:** 6 Feb 2005, 04:40 am »

IMO, Raid 5 is the way to go with audio server.

viggen · « **Reply #12 on:** 6 Feb 2005, 09:53 am »

A disk-LESS digital technology is the way to go. Although, I am getting very good sound out of the multispin cd rom.

Adarsh · « **Reply #13 on:** 6 Feb 2005, 11:49 am »

I've been dabbling with this idea for a while too.

Currently I'm using a laptop with a 16 Bit Sound Card playing MP3s ripped according to the uber standard. I haven't been able to tell the difference with my CD Player. Can someone please tell me if there is a difference in the sound quality of audio from a CD Deck Player and a CD being played on a laptop?

I find it to be more convenient playing from a computer because one can select/search music instantaneously.

nickspicks · « **Reply #14 on:** 6 Feb 2005, 12:48 pm »

I like the "music server" concept as well, and i'm moving my entire Grateful Dead collection to that medium (its extensive). A terrabyte should cover it.

Check out the Turtle Beach "Audo Advantage Micro".
Its a USB "dongle" soundcard with a toslink output. Feed that into an anti-jitter device like a DIP or something, and you've got yourself a very fine sounding source for short money. Great for 16bit any way.

lcrim · « **Reply #15 on:** 6 Feb 2005, 01:45 pm »

I've been trying to justify the cost of a decent DAC like a Scott Nixon Chibi Saru or a used Ack Dack plus a cheap IDE HDD based PC with a low end card that has a bit perfect digital out versus a cheaper CD player like the NAD bee and I keep coming back to all the time and labor spent ripping and the cheap player comes out ahead.
I'm also into analog which is very labor intensive as well, so I'm not really being consistent. I don't know what a $5000 player sounds like but I keep reminding myself that whatever I choose, it won't play SACD or DVD, only Redbook. Preamps only have so many inputs, I realize that most of this site is CD oriented but as mentioned above, I've got analog frontends in both systems and for background music when I'm working, I love the directv music channels plus thats how I do sound for my HDTVs and therefore I need a DVD player as well. Setting up a PC that could do DVDs and ripped CD playback would be an option but a complex one. I keep coming back to what Ted said above, its a lot of work but I could probably be talked into it.

Adarsh · « **Reply #16 on:** 6 Feb 2005, 02:14 pm »

So how good can ripped MP3s (Uber Standard) really sound? We have all these people in this forum talking about reaching the "nirvana" if you will of sound quality. What about for someone like me? I rip all my stuff to compressed audio and have never -honestly- noticed the difference people claim with their $1K systems.

It looks sometimes like this is just a money spending outlet.
I dont mean to be hurtful, but we've all read that article by Ernst

-A

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #17 on:** 6 Feb 2005, 02:26 pm »

I can sure hear the difference- at least when I know it's there.

No, I haven't tried a true DBT, but I have done single blind tests. My rig isn't as resolving as a lot of guys, but most people who've participated in my tests can tell Redbook from 128 nearly 100%, RBCD vs 256 maybe 50%- 90% (highly dependant on material), but with 320 vs RBCD the value drops off quite a bit with most rock (maybe 50/50). However, with very fuzzed out, distorted guitar, as well as music of cello, piano, harpsichord or massed strings, even 320/VBR is pretty easy to tell from RBCD.

Is this an inherent flaw of MP3? I can't say that definitively. I know I'm not an expert with compressed CODECs, and all my tests used either Music Match Jukebox, Nero or EAC. There's supposed to be better encoders than I've tried, and many tricks to better sound.

Utimately, though, it's not worth it to me. I have a DVD burner, and HD space is dirt cheap. Seagate sells 400 GB drives, and Maxtor has at least 300 GB models. Given the ability to get well over a Terabyte of HD space in a desktop, I don't see the appeal of MP3 for me personally. No, I don't have an iPod or any portable MP3 player.

Adarsh · « **Reply #18 on:** 6 Feb 2005, 02:33 pm »

I guess it's like they say, "What you dont know, wont hurt you"

I've held back from using Lossless Compression because of the disk space problem. I'm also frequently on the move so I can't carry around lots of external drives or CDs.

I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Just can figure out which is best.

-A

Carlman · « **Reply #19 on:** 6 Feb 2005, 02:47 pm »

Quote from: lcrim

I've been trying to justify the cost of a decent DAC like a Scott Nixon Chibi Saru or a used Ack Dack plus a cheap IDE HDD based PC with a low end card that has a bit perfect digital out versus a cheaper CD player like the NAD bee and I keep coming back to all the time and labor spent ripping and the cheap player comes out ahead.
I'm also into analog which is very labor intensive as well, so I'm not really being consistent. I don't know what a $5000 player sounds like but I keep reminding myself that what ...

I have given this system some thought and organization and found it to be less work than a cd player. You only rip once.

The value is insane. I paid about $600 for my used PC and (based on memory) it's as good or better than a BAT D5. The Lynx card adds a little more refinement and provides a more convincing 'voice' to the musical elements.

After hearing and seeing 2 audio PC's, I think gear like the HP will eventually be the norm and cd players will dwindle. As soon as the interface gets non-computer-ish, that market will explode. If they were really smart, they'd standardize the interface and brand it.... I would think Mac would be the most likely so I'm surprised HP is doing it first.

-C