Nglazer,
That's just dead wrong. All you need to do it download iTunes and use AIFF or Apple Loseless files though a good DAC (just buy an AppleTV for $99 to run it through your home stereo via Toslink). Done.
I doubt many people in this day and age, especiallly audiophiles are not familiar with iTunes for use with iPods or iPhones. That's all you need.
AppleTV (or the like), into a DAC. If you have a wireless network at home (don't even tell me 99.9% of those on here do not given the socio-economic makeup of people in this hobby) the AppleTV will easliy sign on to the network, find your open iTunes library, and play it like you are using your iPod. It's that easy. |
digital players will be dead when it is impossible to buy them. until then, they are not dead. |
Nglazer, I hear you. I'm also getting mad with all the stupid system errors but that's why I bought Mac. From this point on everything went without any problems. Computer works like swiss watch and now I understand how bad the Windows is. Since many people prefer dedicated server and MacMini is not that expensive it is better and safer way to go.
I agree with you that hard disk based music server, instead of computer would be easier and better for many people but it is too expensive and not flexible. Separate DAC allows me to upgrade it in the future. The same goes for external hard drive.
I'm far from recommending this route to everybody. I would always advice against it to elderly, computer illiterate people, including my mother. To her CDP is way too complicated. |
Macdactexas,
I have had an iPod and have been using iTunes since the day Apple came out with a Windows - capable iPod. I use a Classic with a Wadia i170 into my W4S DAC2. I am highly computer literate and easily could go the route you suggest. But my experience with Toslink has been poor and I have not read much that was good about AppleTV or equivalent for truly high end sound. I have not heard of for a computer audio route to compare to my RAM modded CEC TL-1X transport, via a Stealth Sextet digicable, to W4S DAC2: 2 components and a cable, top of the line sound, works every time. No kernel streaming, ASIO, WASAPI, crashes, dropouts, ripping, burning, downloading, backup, viruses, incomprehensible or nonexistent instructions, firmware, infirmware, et al. When computer audio routinely gets rid of those impediments, sign me up.
I may yet try a Mac Mini just to prove myself wrong, which I would love to do and I will be the first to admit it, but I doubt that will happen.
Neal |
Are Disc Players Dead? No, they just smell funny... |
Slipknot1, that was just a classic response, and oh so correct. |
I agree with Macdactexas 100%. I did the server thing about a year ago and got a bryston dace kimber cable USB and ripped lossless. The sound was not near what my cd player, now I have a s7i and I think on my system a server would be hard pressed to play better than that. I am a computer guy by trade so I really wished the pc worked out I am tired of scratched disks and switching etc. But the detail was just not there. |
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Programmergeek, I see the s7i sells for about $6k. Did you put that much money towards a killer DAC? You may not be making a fair comparison. I'm sure that with $6k some of the guys here that know what they're doing could put together a DAC and digital player combo that could equal the s7i.
. |
Commercially they are dead. More or less. Based on the huge amount of available CD's most Audiophiles will stay with their units but the younger generation will go to downstream (or already does). It was not possible to keep the quality of music as a Standard, now it is reduced to Entertainment. No one cares about quality (this started in the mid 90's based on cost reduction...) And high quality downstream is a nice marketing gag, but it is just another tool to earn some money.
In a few years the only real High End will be analog, not because of the quality, more or less based on visual movement. The Audiophile has something to touch, he sees something moving, the turntables can be ultra expensive and he can show his visitors that he is a serious guy. The rest of the world uses a server. |
Many interesting and thought provoking comments here. I tend to agree with Nglazer here. I just don't have confidence in what's available today and worry that it might be obsolete in the near future. When large ss hard drives become more affordable, when formats become more standardized and easily backwards compatible, and reliability is proven, I'll jump in.
One thing that nobody seemed to mention is that if one wants to move their disc storage to either a server or a cloud, you'll still need a disc player to do it. |
It took me a lifetime to accumulate all of my vinyl, and many years to accumulate the CD's. I'm getting up there in age, and I'm not about to start monkeying around, trial and error, trying to find the best way to use a computer for listening pleasure. It will take me forever to download all of that music, and I don't have the time. It may be the way of the future, and the top of the digital mountain, but I'll stick around down the the lowlands with my antiquated discs. The music is excellent enough for me where I don't need to make such a time consuming change to get a little bit better sound. If I were younger, yeah, I'd be there. |
I echo your thoughts Abuck. |
Abucktwoeighty, It is not time consuming at all. Instead of putting CD int CDP insert it into computer and play while you rip. Do only disk that you listen to and eventually you'll go thru all of them. |
LP's are another story... |
"LP's are another story..." - that's true, and it has to be done right. Early digitized music was A/D converted using jittery clock. This jitter appears as noise and cannot be removed ever. The only remedy is to A/D it again if analog master still exist. Good A/D hardware might be pricey. |
No, not yet...and oh, by the way, please - I'd like one of everything else too. |
Kijanki:
I have not had a hard drive fail either, but I use very expensive SCSI drives for my servers. The popular and cheap SATA drives have a poor reliability record. Just look at the selection of reviews on NewEgg for any of them.
Even though I have not had a drive failure, migrating data from older SCSI drives is still a major pain. Newer drives are much faster and have different connectors, so getting data off an older SCSI drive is problematic from a system integration point of view. And I did have a lot of data stored on Jazz media, now you cannot find a playback/read device for these unless you get some used junk off EBay.
I have not heard of any media that has a real, proven 100 year lifespan. You are luckiy if you can get most consumer burned media to play back properly in more than one playback device.
Online backups are an option but even the fastest wideband is gonna take quite a while to download 1 Terabyte in data. |
Ladies, gentlemen, and other harddrive users, do remember that there are only 2 kinds of HDs--those that have failed and those that will. That's supposed to remind you do create backups of your data as others have mentioned they do.
And no, discplayers are NOT dead. I suspect there are FAR more users of discplayers than computer-music-servers among musiclovers.
. |
Dhl93449 - Taiyo Yuden guarantees 100 years. The issue is dye. Long lasting phthalocyanine dye (Mitsui Gold, Mitsui Silver) is more expensive than cyanine dye and can last 200 years on gold but is more sensitive to light and laser power variations. Cyanine dye is by itself unstable and has to be stabilized. I'm not sure what Taiyo Yuden uses but they invented CD-R technology and are known to be very reliable and long lasting. I went thru perhaps 500 Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs and never had bad one or one that failed. I have many about 15 years old CD-Rs working fine.
As for hard drives - I might be very lucky but I had only one disk failure at work and one at home (laptop) in last 25 years. Currently I'm running 6 hard disks at home and 2 at work for many years without any problems. In addition to these 6 drives I have two backups - just in case. Very often people who have failures are more likely to write but even then my drives (Fantom G-Force) have pretty good review. As soon as prices of SS drives drop down more I'm getting one for music storage. |
I had 5 hard drives fail in 5 years. |
"I had 5 hard drives fail in 5 years."
We have whole bunch of computers at work, perhaps 30, and one or two failures over 20 years. We end up replacing computers earlier (10 years or so) because they're getting outdated - that might be the reason. What is the brand that gave you 5 failures in five years? |
I use a Drobo for a network drive. Just plugged into my router. It backs itself up, very cool, and I can hot swap any 2 of the 5 drives that fail without any loss of data.
It works!! |
10-04-11: Jeffreybehr
Do remember that there are only 2 kinds of HDs--those that have failed and those that will. Very well put. My perception has been that hard drive longevity is pretty much unpredictable, and any correlation between the likelihood of failure and the brand of the drive will vary over the years. Around 10 or 12 years ago IBM manufactured a widely used series of drives called the Deskstars, which failed so frequently that they were widely referred to as the IBM Deathstars. I had one of them, and it lasted about 5 months. Shortly afterwards IBM got out of the business, selling that division to Hitachi. BTW, IMO one of the ultimate examples of the famous saying popularized by Mark Twain, that there are "lies, damn lies, and statistics," are the MTBF (mean time between failure) specs that are often provided by hard drive manufacturers. Those numbers are commonly on the order of a million hours or so, which is about 114 years. But what the number really means is that if a very large number of drives are run at the same time, then on average one of those drives will fail for each million cumulative hours of operation of all the drives. In other words, the statistic doesn't take into account the failure rate increase that will occur as the drives get older. Regards, -- Al |
Al, I lost a bunch of drives too, that's why I paid up for the Drobo after much research, and loss of some priceless digital video footage of our chidren (thank God we found the actual digital tapes), and of course then having to re-load hundreds and hundreds, probably thousands to be honest, of CD's.
Look into it. I have had drives fail in the Drobo, it just tells me it failed, I buy and replace that drive, no loss of info.
Very, Very cool. |
Hi Mac,
Yes, a Drobo is definitely a neat approach. Keep in mind, though, that neither it nor anything else is 100% fail-safe, and so it doesn't eliminate the need for a separate second backup for really important stuff. For instance, if the power supply or the controller circuits in the Drobo were to go berserk, all of its drives could conceivably be corrupted or damaged simultaneously.
Best regards,
-- Al |
These above examples concerning hard drives and computers really seem to validate Nglazer`s main point, this is still very much a work in progress with a ways to go yet. |
Sorry Al, I that's such a small possiblity, I don't worry about that, not a realistic sceneario. |
Hi Mac, I wouldn't be so sure. On the NewEgg.com page for this Drobo model, click on the "Feedback" tab, which currently shows 114 user comments. Sort them by "lowest rated," and read the comments by the 20 people, out of those 114, who gave it the lowest possible rating, with many of them reporting data loss. Best regards, -- Al |
4/5 is not a terrible overall rating. That was the original model, which I had, and it worked flawlessly.
I currently have the newer 5 bay NS (network only) model, and it's even better. Software has improved, and though I have yet to lose a drive, I've read nothing but stellar reviews on no data loss on those as well.
I used to have a RAID array, but it was a pain to maintain. |
Kijanki, I believe HP uses Hitachi. |
That's true, all drives eventually fail, except drives that are not in use - backup. Just in case I keep second backup at my work. Both backups are protected from mechanical damage and static electricity (one is in the fireproof safe).
Total cost of it was less than $200. One can argue that both backups can fail in some strange event. If it is nuclear explosion I'm not worrying, but if it is anything else I still have CDs - music is not lost, only some amount of labor. It wasn't a lot of work to start with since I ripped what I was listening.
Al, I agree about statistics. When president of my company walks his dog outside, they both have three legs (statistically). Also tattoos are major cause of motorcycle accidents. |
Kijanki ... good ending to your post , LOL . |
