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I’m 50, went SB and am now back to using a CDP.Convenience, cost, access to internet audio streaming channels, and sound quality from modded SB’s are all no-brainer advantages and cannot be denied. (BTW the sound quality advantages come from the superior ability of the PC to read a disc over CDPs.)Shoot-out reviews with high-end CDP’s won’t happen as those vendors have too much to lose and would give up their financial support to the reviewing organizations.I went back to CDP because of the setup and maintenance frustrations:1.) Everyone says it’s easy (that irked me to no end), but only for an IT guy or a young geek. I’m an engineer but can barely keep my PC running between viruses, my incompetence, and sharing the home network. It was only by the grace of a fellow ACer who spent hours with me over the phone that I got it to work the first time. 2.) Kept having home network issues, tried a wired connection (make sure you read the SB instructions and get the right cable), but still had issues.3.) My modded SB would get a headache with some of the internet streaming channels that would take the whole thing down.4.) Once I got into a SB menu and it took days to “find my way out”.5.) It would take weeks for me to fumble into a solution and was never quite sure how it happened in the first place or how I eventually “fixed” it.6.) With SB only, you must rip to listen, even if it’s a disc you’d only rarely want to listen to. Not that big a deal, but it makes navigation that much tougher as the collection would get to be 3 or 4 times as big. So IMO the smaller drives in the Olives aren’t as much of a limitation as would first appear.7.) I hated being days without music and not knowing if I could ever get it back.I’ll go back to a music server as soon as they become friendly enough while keeping sound quality up and cost down. Olive should be close to what I want, but recent support horror stories and the need for internet/home network connection for streaming has kept me away. Stock prices for the Olives are OK, but to get the sound quality I crave the cost/reliability of mods make me worry. Being able to use the Olive as a CDP takes care of frustration #6.So sadly I spent the same to give up internet streaming, sound quality, and convenience of SB to go with a used CDP because I dreaded not knowing when the next glitch would pop up and if I’d get my music back.
Shoot-out reviews with high-end CDP’s won’t happen as those vendors have too much to lose and would give up their financial support to the reviewing organizations.
In summary, I think that Stereophile and UHF recognize that this is the new wave of transports, and has very solid merit in the audiophile community, and both agree that these transports need to be taken seriously.
Just for the record, I have had no server problems at all. No dropouts either. Nothing, nadda, squat.
I have a funny feeling there's going to be some "official" writing done about SB projects in the not-so-distant future.
My decision is made, and I'll be doing the full bore Bolder mods to my SB 3. Gold Bybees and Ultimate PS, the whole nine yards feeding a modded Burson Buffer, so I can run additional outs to my sub.
So sadly I spent the same to give up internet streaming, sound quality, and convenience of SB to go with a used CDP because I dreaded not knowing when the next glitch would pop up and if I’d get my music back.
That the sb _doesn't_ have its own storage and _doesn't_ require a tv in order to listen to music are two of its biggest benefits, IMHO.
Agreed. I love not having to have a hard drive in my listening room nor a TV - but have the flexibility to do the laptop thing if I choose. I also like not being limited to 1 hard drive - not to mention being able to stream my entire music collection over the web to a work PC or wherever I am.I guess it's all in priorities. I'm not even close to having my collection fully ripped yet and I'm already pushing a 400GB drive capacity pretty hard. Having just one disk to me is a serious drawback.
I've heard people on the slim forum say that you _can_ use multiple disks with slimserver. I haven't looked into it because I'm only at 180g now, and it looks like it'll take me a couple years to fill a 500g drive. If you need to use multiple drives, I'm sure someone there can help you do it. Does it seem to you as if sonos has kind of disappeared, as well?
The one advantage I see to the individual HD based systems is that it takes the network out of the equation - but as I said, that also limits internet radio, streaming to remote locations etc. so it's kind of a tradeoff.
Yeah, though it ultimately depends on what one's goals are. I like keeping things simple so for me, something like the Avox will be the better solution.
Also, as a first step, I'm trying a Y-cable out of the SB going to my amp on one side and to a digital EQ on the other to feed my sub before I add any additional potential noise sources to the system. Gregg Straley is currently making this custom Y-cable for me and he's trying some new tricks with this cable that if they prove to be good, will soon be offered on his site.
I don't think the modded SB can properly drive a Y cable setup to feed both amp and subwoofer plate amp. Is there going to be a gain stage in this Y cable setup you speak of?
