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In Reply to: RE: Of course, it is a computer, posted by Sprezza Tura on April 21, 2014 at 11:48:01
Gang,
Look at the ability a large company has over a small one. All of these are computers and what do you get for a $25 mother board, limited ram, slow hard drives and a sub par CPU?
To me the operating system has just as much to do with the sound as the computer. But overall Apple's hardware is leaps and bounds better (and yes more expensive) than anything else out there. Plus you can run any OS you want on it.
Linux to me is a mixed bag and kind of like the wild west. First none of these companies selling stuff are paying for Linux like they should for a commercial product. This is the only way Linux is going to move forward. You have to pay good engineers to write GOOD code.
OSX is good code and I have had really good luck with using it in an audio setting.
Windows is better than it use to be, but it is the most frustrating operating system and company to deal with.
So when you buy one of these servers you have to think about more than just the hardware. What about backup and other apps you may want to run and what about this that and the other.
To me I think about the one engineer who designed XYZ product. Then I think about OSX/Windows were there is thousands or millions of programmers working on those.
Which one would you want in your system?
Thanks,
Gordon
J. Gordon Rankin
Follow Ups:
Server 2012R2 installs in 6 minutes or so!
I have not had any issues with W8 or W8.1 since install.
You are a high-end audio developer surely your research in that area has led you to see that an "off-the-shelf" commercial computing device, (designed to do more than 1000) different functions, will necessarily compromise itself as an audio playback device.....
For example, the MSB devices are "computers" too, but they are different kinds of computers, designed for only one thing.
I will take my chances with someone like them. (My personal take: I don't want a built in hard drive, and I want to have internet radio).
Consumers yelling at MSB to get what they want, will more likely be heard than any hand grenades flipped into the Apple Corp campus.
Apple Corp will never give two craps about audio, EVER!
The only way to make a consumer computer, designed for something OTHER than high end audio, sound good; is to have high end audio designers turn it into something that it is not: that makes it a waste of time and money for everyone wishing to achieve SUPERIOR playback quality.
The best turntables, Universal disc players, still blow away computers, every time....
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
I disagree. Machines are nothing more (or less) than sums of their components. Well designed and built machines will be good, and crap wont.
Good quality audio performance is way down the list......
You can have a "good" machine, and still have it suck for audio....
Just like any commercial product, - we've seen both PC & Apple Corp, manufacture machines that vary in quality due to many factors, one of which is cost to make vs selling price vs value to consumer.
This is basic stuff, and obvious.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
I totally agree with that. It's just not important enough to govern audio reproduction into perfection. All the psychotically obsessed talent which has picked it up as a hobby seems to help it along pretty well though. I'm generally very satisfied with my lovely mid fi noise machine that most any poor person like me could afford.
"Machines are nothing more (or less) than sums of their components."
I beg to differ. The behavior of complex systems can not successfully broken down and understood as the operation of separate parts. There are mental models (e.g. linear approximations to reality) that allow this kind of breakdown, but these are invented by man for the purpose of doing simple (a.k.a. simplistic) analysis. If the goal is functional mediocrity this type of analysis may be appropriate, but most audiophiles are not interested in mediocrity.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
"I beg to differ"
Well, who wouldn't when the statement gets taken out of it's intended context and put into isolation like that?
"The behavior of complex systems can not successfully broken down and understood as the operation of separate parts."
For me, theorems get promoted to truths as a method of getting off the proverbial pot. Sure it's a risk but call me edgy.
Some systems can be understood well enough to control and some can't.
Digital computers theoretically can be perfect at their jobs assuming the job lies within capabilities of the proven technologies available to the developer -and the developer has a good handle on the application -and does a good job.
That's the whole point and the beauty of the digital abstraction. Because it rarely occurs does not mean it isn't possible. I've seen plenty of apparently perfect digital machines. Some, rather complex.
Sound systems via generic affordable consumer grade, modular, relatively open architecture, originally intended as general purpose office machines obviously presents some challenges.
In my opinion it's all about scope and definition. After all it's not like we are talking life support or weaposn of mass destruction. Guaranteed, all perceivable problems would have been solved long ago if higher ups thought it was useful for killing commies or whatever.
If yours isn't perfect it just means you haven't worked out the bugs yet, well that or maybe it's just the whole analog thing....That seems to be where most everybody is blowing it.
My first hand perspective differs significantly....
For example Apple Corp own and develop Logic and Garage Band, absolutely and implicitly audio recording software packages.
Logic is a very high end audio application which you perhaps would be surprised to know that a VAST number of record producers use to either record, edit, mix and master their albums with, in fact you may even have records which incorporated it during production (The same application was previously owned/developed over decades by EMAGIC, a German company) !
Furthermore although I am listening to one of my $20K+ vinyl rigs as I type, only last night I set up a friends system with an Apple Mac Mini & Audirvana software feeding into his professionally modified (upgraded) and rather expensive OPPO BDP-105, which he absolutely loves btw.
After half an hour of configuration so he can eventually import his thousands of discs and enjoy an incredibly flexibly accessible organised library of music, as I also do, he was slack jawed at the much improved sonic refinement the MacMini HD (ram actually, when using Audirvana) playback was over the same reference disc he has been listening to for more than 25 years.
We extensively compared the OPPO and HD playback and I left him absolutely overjoyed......
My current dac which has handily outperformed every other dac I have used, cost no object, including the MSB Platinum... employs as you say an 'off-the-shelf" commercial computing device' as a core aspect of its very existence and remarkable computing power (its an FPGA device FYI).
As for absolutes, the only one I acknowledge is the absolute realisation that my intelligence is only limited by my ignorance ;-)
I do agree with Sprezza here. I hope that I didn't imply, (perhaps I did), that setting up something like a fully optimized PC or a fully optimized Mini sucks. It definitely does not. I've been running a NAS system since 2003 and have made various improvements to this point: and still think that it could be greatly improved.
If i may reiterate, I was not talking about "good," - but SOTA. Based on my experience, that level of SOTA when Meitner launched his 2 box hi-rez system in 2000 is not achievable with a consumer PC or MAC. Indeed, we're seeing top tier developers/manufacturers turning away from these things. My focus about, and on, the mainboard, is/are, that replacing the power supplies, pulling the CD drives, pulling the HD drives, & fans, etc... still leaves us with a mainboard that has too much in the way of the signal path, and too many other "features" that are either noisy, or violate the integrity of the playback of the digital file. Part of it of course is the playback software, (I understand), but it also has to be hardware if something like ITunes, JPlay, Audirvana, Pure Music, all sound so different... A computer is not designed to be a music playback transport, and people who design computers, are not as good as high end audio designers. Heavily modified computers, cannot be modified enough to compare to the very best turntables, and universal/SACD players.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
While your story had a very good set up, and I understand your were making some good,points, the Oppop 105 is a notch above midfi in my opinion and is loaded with non audio circuitry and components. So the Mac Mini beating it out is certainly no surprise.
'A notch above midfi' .... I'm sure others may beg to differ, whatever your definition of midfi is (!) but upon first listening to the stock BDP-105 he had soon decided to sell his certainly considered hifi reference boat anchor, the multi-award winning critically acclaimed $8000 Marantz Flagship SA-7S1.
Digging the new found resolution & refinement of the BDP-105 he then had extensive modifications undertaken to it by Joe Rasmussen of Custom Analogue Audio, that is what we compared the essentially out of the box MacMini to, in as much as we did in fact use the 105, but as a USB dac instead of disc transport.
So we were in fact still listening to the Oppo and its 'load of non audio circuitry and components' as you state.....
Only underscoring your miscomprehension of the nature of the issue, on one hand you readily accept that the MacMini 'beat it out', but for all the wrong reasons ;-)
I was responding to Sordidmans statement that '......, Universal disc players, still blow away computers, every time.....'
My first hand experiences and that of MANY others, is contrary quite unsurprisingly !
Agree with almost all...BTW..I have found OS Mavericks to be as buggy as any recent Microsoft operating system.
Edits: 04/22/14
"I have found OS Mavericks to be as buggy as any recent Microsoft operating system."
I'm not sure whether is is praise or criticism. My Windows 7 x64 system has been quite reliable.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
..same here..but we all know about the security patches and bug fixes and user issues from Xp to Vista.
Windows 8.1 and OSX Mavericks have been pretty solid for me.
W7 is still not 100% 'solid'. However W8 and 8.1 are fine.
"The best turntables, Universal disc players, still blow away computers, every time..."
Not true. At least in my limited experience.
You are biased, dumping your high end audio gear for a TD1543 dac with silver whatever.
Fred,All of my "experiences" for the last two years are chronicled at AudioStream. I haven't personally owned a TD1543 for many years. My opinions are based on all of the equipment I have reviewed.
Given that I praise gear that I don't own, I just don't see what you are referring to.
Edits: 04/23/14
Go back to your Gordon la la days here. That was what I was talking about. Should still be on record.
If I remember correctly, you got rid of your TEAC SACD in favour of a TD1543 usb dac as being ';better'.
Yeah, sure. That was in 2006. The Wavelength DAC sounded better to me.
"Yeah, sure. That was in 2006. The Wavelength DAC sounded better to me."
In some ways Digital Audio years are like Dog Years! Allot has changed since then. And it is not just the DAC chip but analogue circuit that mattered. Even though the DAC was lower-rez, no doubt it sounded better...
think that the Sony PS1 sounds better than high end boxes!
Judgement by ear has to have a basic context. A TD!1543 chip costs less than $1, consumes loads of power and has a 13 bit or so resolution. No doubt in PS1 territory.
think that the Sony PS1 sounds better than high end boxes!
Judgement by ear has to have a basis context. A TD!1543 chip costs less than $1, consumes loads of power and has a 13 bit or so resolution. No doubt in PS1 territory.
Nt
I've been lucky, - but there's always a ton more out there........
We certainly could use more Ed Meitners out there. Certainly, there will never be an Ed Meitner coming out of either Apple Corp, or Microsoft, - while not an absolute certainty; something that I would put money down on.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
So the only way to get good software is to pay engineers? Guess you never heard of Firefox, Thunderbird, Audacity, miniMserver, foobar2000, FLAC,, etc etc etc etcThink again.
Edits: 04/22/14
Yeah, and, unfortunately, also OpenSSL.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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