Computer Audio Asylum

RE: Technology?

108.169.2.66

This Post Has Been Edited by the Author

In Reply to: RE: Technology? posted by Bob_C on June 18, 2015 at 11:28:53

Bob,

I appreciate you very much taking this down a notch in tone.

In that spirit, I should just let it go: with the point of saying keeping an open mind & trying different approaches is of benefit no matter what level anyone wants to go to.

""""just disconcerting when someone keeps insisting that a certain concept is better than another just because they are not able to achieve positive results does not mean others cannot.""

This isn't about a failure to achieve positive results. I have achieved very positive results: i believe that everyone has. I have never said or argued that one can't achieve very good sound from PCs. I trust you, and I trust Carcass elucidation of his results. I know that MercMan & Abe have achieved very good sound as well.
However, I have said that one cannot achieve SOTA results with PCs. And I have tried, (likely quite unsuccessfully), to point out that the commercial conventional computer has as it's PRIME elemental, and philosophical goal to be something other than a high performance digital file playback device. (The people that design computers, are the kind of people who say that everything sounds the same, and $20,000 speakers are snake oil).
A SOTA audio device can never be something that is mass produced and it is absolutely, contingent on quality of hardware. The fundamental design of commercial computers is superior software performance and multiple program interaction.

Optimization in each discipline is going to yield "better" performance in each area.

"""insisting that a certain concept is better"

I am not doing that for anything but SOTA playback. The network player approach that the SQUEEZEBOX encompasses is not going to be as good as a computer set up. Now matter how I optimized my SBT, - I couldn't get it as good as the (relatively unoptimized) Mac Mini.

By saying that I do not believe SOTA sound is achievable with a computer, it is entirely my opinion, based on my experiences. If someone extrapolates that to interpret that I am saying that their approach sucks, or that computer playback sucks: then they are simply wrong. I do think that manufacturer's "approaches" differ according to their goals. A $400 Sony CD player is gonna have different goals than a Zanden. I have not heard MercMan's setup, maybe it would best the Sonore or the Aurender. If it did, I couldn't afford it anyway. Sadly, - I couldn't afford the APL with the VRDS Neo transport anyway. I am reasonably sure that MercMan's MAC setup is 3 times the cost of the Sonore or Aurender.

I don't think that it's any secret that (opposed to the old days of AA), that there's very many people here interested in SOTA playback. At the end of the day, we're all just playing music, goodness. To quote Bill Murray in the Razor's Edge, "it just doesn't matter."

Some insight into approach from the Aurender folks I believe...
"We built this device as a pure player. It doesn't have a PC motherboard so it doesn't perform functions like ripping or managing your library. Those sacrifices equate to a cleaner more natural sound as I'm sure you'll hear. I wanted to improve on my old Windows-based system and found that I couldn't. Most manufacturers, myself included, were using the same set of workarounds. We had great linear power supplies feeding commodity pico power supplies to make the connections to the PC. Those added noise. We were using PC motherboards with tons of regulators and overkill specs also adding noise. Many folks use SOtM filters (SATA, USB) to try to take that noise back out. But filters don't get all of the noise. A couple of years ago, I was watching a video about 3D printing and how it was an additive manufacturing process. They made the statement that an additive approach is less wasteful and overall better than a subtractive build. That's when it hit me.
"We're all building these monstrous PCs, then try our best to kill everything off and reduce it down to an audio player. We're tweaking the registry, killing services, adding filters all to remove things that shouldn't be there in the first place. They're there because they come in the box by default. What if we built the audio player from the ground up? That's what I did this time. This was a little long-winded but I wanted to convey that what we're doing is different. We're not a UPnP streamer which requires a relatively complex setup and an active connection between the renderer, controller & library. (I tried that for a few months and found that the typical audiophile would be overly frustrated with the complexity. Plus, the best board I could find, from ABC-PCB, didn't sound all that amazing.) We're not a PC-based server/player with all the issues that come with PC hardware and operating systems. We're a network player. We're simple to use. We don't need filters because we're not adding much noise ('none' wouldn't be true) in the first place. We don't need to kill services or throttle extra CPU cores because they're not there to begin with.""

"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.'"

Follow Ups: