High End, and Rack Mountable

I have used plastic washers on all of the components which, to me, doesn't seem like a big deal.

I never understood why any rack mounted components would turn up for sale with scratches around the mounting holes.

No offense, but HELLO - we are talking about faceplates DESIGNED to be mounted on a rack?!

Re vibrations, this is an interesting thought, but I am not so concerned about this. Stehno, given that Audio Research and others are sold with rack mountable faceplates, do you think they had more of an "audiophile" rack in mind? Or were these faceplates all the rage cosmetically, but never intended to actually be mounted to a rack?

Whart - yes, heat is a concern and certainly for amps and tubes. At this point, I have kept my Mark Levinson amp out of the rack - it sits closer to the speakers. And for my SP11, I searched and scraped around ebay to find the rare rack mountable Audio Research ventilation units so I have one above the preamps power supply and one above the preamp itself which I think is fine. I also leave the rear door open a bit.

Kublakhan

I have checked out the Sweetwater device and THANK YOU - yes, that is more or less exactly what I have been looking for.

Now hmmmmm.....I wonder if that SPDIF output (?) can go straight into a rack mountable, Audio Research DAC III.......

another rack mountable shelf for a turntable......

...will try later to post some photos, but to me it is the best way to go.

Kublakhan

Thanks for the suggestions.

So far, I feel most comfortable with the Sweetwater device, both for the appearance as well as the apparent build quality and design features which seem to make it an obvious choice for audio.

But here are a few questions:

If this is a pricier, higher powered machine, is that a total waste if I am mainly going to use it for iTunes and music storage?

What interface would you connect to Creation Station, and from what output, in order to stream bit for bit perfect WAV files to an external DAC, say the ARC DAC III to match the rest of my system? And why wouldnt it be able to do this on its own?!

Otherwise, I think it looks great, seems to be well built, and is apparently designed well for audio applications, albeit more like RAM intensive studio and recording applications?

Best

Cwlondon

Re "Sound Card"

Maybe I don't get it but I always assumed a "sound card" had an "interface" which somehow interfaced with the data on a hard drive and delivered a stream of bits to said "sound card", which also a DAC of higher or lower quality (typically lower) which would convert the bitstream data to an analogue signal, and finally output that analogue signal into, for example, RCA jacks or a female stereo mini jack.

So I still am not quite clear why I need a "sound card" other than the fact that I need some sort of interface to create a user friendly connection (optical?) between the WAV files which live on the hard drive and my external DAC.

It continues to puzzle me as to why such a connection would not be part of the premium priced Creation Station in the first place, unless it is simply a mismatched convention between "pro audio" and audiophile audio.

I spoke to Sweetwater who are normally pretty helpful and had the sensation that they thought I might be insane.

So any additional explanation greatly appreciated.

cwlondon