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Need help with Dedicated music server.

I am really confused with a selection of a dedicated music Server and need some info. I currently use a Toshiba laptop/J River Mediacenter/Benchmark USB DAC. I have ordered a Berkeley Designs Alpha DAC. As you may well know the Berkeley does not support USB at this time. I need a Music Server Solution to The Berkeley Alpha DAC. I have heard that many users prefer the Mac Pro/Almarra server. But with the release of Windows 7/ Wasapi J River Server. Also your hear good things about XXHighend. Please can someone give some Impressions of each of these Music servers?

Thanks in Advance,

Johnny
chuck

Showing 2 responses by dtc

dtc's avatar
dtc
1,047 posts
 
Blindjim - I believe the HiFace is bit perfect with MC 14 on Windows 7 using WASAPI. M2Tech is still working out issues with the driver and the latest one does not work correctly, but there is an earlier beta version that provides WASAPI support in exclusive mode. Hopefully M2Tech will provide a new version soon. You do not need MC 15 to do this.
dtc's avatar
dtc
1,047 posts
 
Asynchronous USB DAC's do a great job of lowering jitter from the USB. They do this by basically controlling the clocking of the signal. Many DACs use re-clocking techniques on S/PDIF signals. So, if the USB to S/PDIF interface delivers bit perfect data to such a DAC, it seems that re-clocking in the DAC should be able to produce jitter similar to that on the various asyncrhonous USB DACs. The OP's Berkeley DAC is a high end DAC which, according to the Berkeley website has "Advanced input signal jitter rejection". So, it is quite possible that a S/PDIF or maybe a AES output from a PC coupled with the Berkeley DAC may be able to produce jitter figures as good as the aysnchronous DACs. The Berkeley DAC gets great reviews both in terms of sound and in terms of features.

Chuck/Johnny - you might want to check of the system that Goodwin's High End has put together to drive the Berkeley DAC. It uses solid states disks, has no fans and uses other means to make for a really quiet system. Last I knew it was only using XP and a 16 bit (not 24 bit) Lynx card but they may have updated it. I am not necessarily recommending that system, but it is interesting to look at what they did.
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