[John Ashman]

John,

That Mac Mini is working out I guess ? [/list:u]
Chris[/list:u]

Yeah, if only they could get OS 10.4 debugged.  All of my Macs now actually LOCK UP.  What the hell?  I never had lock ups (well, almost never) with 10.3.  Well, they're already about to release major fix #3, so hopeful that gets it.

[ScottMayo]

FWIW, I'm 100% HD based (with backups in CD, CD-R and/or HDs), except for customer demonstrations.  I have 6000+ songs in Apple Lossless on my Firewire drive attached to a wireless Mac Mini feeding a Sherbourn 2/75 amp and a pair of NHT iC4 inceilings for work and 1500+ songs in AAC on my iBook (wirelessly feeding an Airport Express) and duplicated on my iPod for the house.  

And we just started selling Sonos instead of any kind of CD changer.  

Maybe no one's talking about it because we don't want to take the steely barbs of the "serious" audiophile crowd?  

Ah.. this isn't what I call computer audio. At least, it's not at attempt to take the outputs of a standard soundcard into a stereo. I'm all for doing a lossless transfer of CDs to a hard disk (tucked in a closet somewhere) and then playing that though a decent DAC. That's a far cry from throwing a PC into a listening room and using the soundcard outputs for anything worthwhile. That's a non-starter.

Given that everyone's got 100mb ethernet and rivers of bandwidth these days, I keep hoping we'll see lots of digital music recorded at better than 48kHz samples for more than 2 channels. Instead we've got mp3s. The industry is going in the wrong direction.

[RooX]

Well its nice to see so many active posters with ideas/opinions on the topic.

I know the thought of it has me giddy to get rid of my expensive hunk of aluminum that is my cd player.  

Assuming someone has a streaming solution such as a Roku or a SB2, does anything in the computer system itself effect the output?  I cant see why it should, digital stream is a digital stream, but i have no experience with this application of it.

[zybar]

Ah.. this isn't what I call computer audio. At least, it's not at attempt to take the outputs of a standard soundcard into a stereo. I'm all for doing a lossless transfer of CDs to a hard disk (tucked in a closet somewhere) and then playing that though a decent DAC. That's a far cry from throwing a PC into a listening room and using the soundcard outputs for anything worthwhile. That's a non-starter.

Given that everyone's got 100mb ethernet and rivers of bandwidth these days, I keep hoping we'll see lots ...

Scott,

Just ordered my SB2 and will be comparing it to my Empirical Audio modified Sony S-7700 later this week.

While I know that I can further modify the S-7700 to improve it, it is a pretty damn good transport in its current state (preferred it over many standalone transports costing $2-4k).

George

[maxwalrath]

George, can't wait to hear your opinions.

[JoshK]

well Redhat Linux 9.0 is kicking my ass....can't get the damn NIC to install. I can see the damn driver but it says "no such device".  'Bout ready to throw in the towel and build the file server using Windows 2k.  

Maybe I need a more modern distro, maybe I'm daft?  Anyway, when its up, i'll be stylin the SB2.     Then I fully intend to open a thread in the lab about modding the SB2 opensource style.  For those of use with a soldering iron and the nerve to use it, no sending the SB2 to someone else, its time to share info.

[mizzuno]

well Redhat Linux 9.0 is kicking my ass....can't get the damn NIC to install. I can see the damn driver but it says "no such device".  'Bout ready to throw in the towel and build the file server using Windows 2k.  

Maybe I need a more modern distro, maybe I'm daft?  Anyway, when its up, i'll be stylin the SB2.     Then I fully intend to open a thread in the lab about modding the SB2 opensource style.  For those of use with a soldering iron and the nerve to use it, no sending the SB2 to someone else, its time to share info.

Let me guess, the driver is for a dell box, which prob means its a broadcom NIC in which case you will have to add an alias line so it will use the tigon drivers.

[JoshK]

No this is a self built box, I have tried 2 different NICs, both 3com and D-link and neither RH9.0 would recognize.  D-Link said to use the sk98lin.o but I couldn't get that to work.  For 1) insmod is not recognized as a command, and the driver installation gave no further hints.  It may be that I haven't installed the appropriate package but I'll be damned if I didn't try most everything.

Re-reading your post, I might have misunderstood you.  Not sure if this driver was for a dell box or otherwise.  If you are a linux-pro could you look at sk98lin.o for me and see if it is the case?  

I am a total linux newb and am fumbling my way around.

[mizzuno]

No this is a self built box, I have tried 2 different NICs, both 3com and D-link and neither RH9.0 would recognize.  D-Link said to use the sk98lin.o but I couldn't get that to work.  For 1) insmod is not recognized as a command, and the driver installation gave no further hints.  It may be that I haven't installed the appropriate package but I'll be damned if I didn't try most everything.

Re-reading your post, I might have misunderstood you.  Not sure if this driver was for a dell box or otherwise.  If  ...

Well first things first, what kernel version are you running(type "umode -a"), I currently run redhat AS on my production servers but i find suse Linux 9.3 to be much better in terms of off the shelf compatibility and setup, the YAST setup in SUSE makes life much easier.

[mizzuno]

If you prefer redhat i would suggest fedora core 4, which is the consumer branch of redhat. Redhat 9 is Kernel version 2.4 i believe. The 2.6 kernel has many updates not the least of which is better driver compatibility.

BTW use the 3com NIC as long as its not the SOHO 100.

[ScottMayo]

Assuming someone has a streaming solution such as a Roku or a SB2, does anything in the computer system itself effect the output?  I cant see why it should, digital stream is a digital stream, but i have no experience with this application of it.

The only way it can make the slightest difference is by failing to deliver the bits fast enough over the network. Zero chance of that unless the computer is very busy with something else; don't ask it to run a game while delivering bits to your stereo. Likewise, don't load the network down with a lot of traffic - an audio stream takes a tiny fraction of the bandwidth of a 100mb ethernet, but a busy enough network will cause enough delay to cause gaps in the sound.

I get weird connectivity problems with wireless and don't plan to use it when I get my Roku. Dedicated wire is the way to go.

[gongos]

You can read about my switch to the Empirical Audio Off Ramp here:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=20003&highlight=

I won't be using a cd again.

[JoshK]

Scott,

Which Roku do you plan to get?  I have been thinking about the photobridge, with the current hacks it can be used as a HTPC frontend running off of a HTPC backend using myth.  Except for DVD playback it may be the bomb for HTPC.

[ScottMayo]

Scott,

Which Roku do you plan to get?  I have been thinking about the photobridge, with the current hacks it can be used as a HTPC frontend running off of a HTPC backend using myth.  Except for DVD playback it may be the bomb for HTPC.

I was looking at Photobridge, plus a Buffalo disk server. The idea is to rip all my CDs at CD quality (hence I need a lot of disk) and have access to them in the bedroom (the not-so-great stereo, using a Roku) and while at computers (the really really bad stereos, via sound cards) while keeping the original disks in a jukebox in the Good Music Room. It's be great if the Roku proved to have really good sound quality (and since I'd be using its optical out, it should) - then I might someday replace the jukebox in the music room with a 2nd Roku.

Price is the only stopping point. A Buffalo server and a pair of Rokus inches towards a grand.

Someday, of course, CDs will go bye-bye - music stores will be online or will be stores that take and fill your favorite digital media card with your purchases. We need this to happen because it's the only way we're going to get away from redbook audio. I mean, I want 24 bit audio per channel, 6 channels, 200k samples/sec, and they just don't make disks like that.   Plus, who really wants a *motor* in their audio chain?