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In Reply to: The verdict is in! posted by jmall on November 10, 2006 at 13:58:47:
Any bets on a future, spin-off marriage of this sort?More and more it looks like companies such as VRS, Wavelength, Twindac et al. have stolen a march on the future of high-end digital in the home. For how much longer will people be suckered into paying $40k for a Zanden or Esoteric when you can get custom audio modders like Coherent Systems of the UK to design an external master clock system for your ultra-fi digital jukebox and cover much of the same ground for a fraction of the price? I think that a position like AMR's CD-77 (Abbingdon Music Research - the company that Thorsten Loesch left us for) proposed optimised PC compatability is a very shrewd move for 'traditional' digital audio at this time.
Looks like digital companies, if they're not already, will have to get proficient at trick, quiet PC building in which to stuff their proprietary guts. There's danger in this path though and it could turn out to be a zero-sum game if the reputation of cards like the Lynx series is anything to go by.
Would love to be a fly-on-the-wall of a high-end digital audio company as they hammer out their future, ever changing business plans.
Big J.
Follow Ups:
Big J;Have you read any of the Crop Circle books. Man I tell you, it would be cool hanging out in the UK looking for this stuff to happen...
Anyways... from my point of view I think it is best to optimize what we are best at. Sure I could deign PC's to do this kinda work. I have over 2 million in the field that I deigned. But why?
Leave that to companies who do that best. If I where to design a PC, then there's backup issues, general working problems, memory, disks... yadayadayada.
Why not optimize what we do best and leave the computers to companies who make the them for a living.
That is what I am doing and no the dog isn't giving up the secrets like Duke does for Bush's :)
I have browsed a couple and seen some festival films. There is some VERY interesting footage about - some of which beggars belief...Re. PCs - I hear you. So I guess my next question is what about a PC architecture utilsed purely as a high-end jukebox? Does this assuage your concerns?
Off to bed - knackered after a long, first day's shoot.
Big J.
BigJ,Well there is very little required for this stuff. On the MAC side anything will work out of the box. Seven minutes is my best time for complete setup and working (including registration & updates).
PC if you want to do it this way...
High CD end drive is nice but not required.
USB 2.0 and watch for cheap controllers and internal hubs are a no.no.
HD Drive any good quiet sata
Motherboard MINI or NANO ITX fanless system (LogicSupply.com) that is at least 800MHZ and 512 memory.
WIFIBest bet is get a couple of Firewire drives for your server. On for the library and one for the backup.
It's a good idea to have bluetooth for remote stuff.
I have not played around with touch screens but most of the new ones have USB controllers and emulate Keyboards and Mouses. Pretty cool thing and something I would love to pick up soon.
PC software either Foobar or J River for best results. Use either ASIO4ALL or ASIO2K to bypass kmixer. Some like Winamp but get the latest version as some people have experienced interruptions in the output using earlier version.
Hi Big J.Do you have a link for Coherent Systems? I'd like to read about what they are doing.
If a person was to use a PC to play music off of the hard drive and use a high quality on-board DAC like those on the Lynx cards, why would one use an external master clock? (I can see the need if a person were feeding an external DAC.)
Try this link and speak to Paul. The external master clock they used does not yet appear on the site - it was used with an Esoteric player at the recent London Hifi show and apparently Paul is the one to ask about it.Not sure what it would do for a PC but then most of this is new to me.
Big J.
I don't think that someone who can spend $40k on a CD player is the kind of person that will be suckered into it. That person probably already knows what he/she wants and then decides that it is worth the cost.Still, it will be interesting to see what the future brings. Its fun watching it all unfold.
We are always drooling over glossy magazing photos of systems out there that have pricetags into the 100's of thousands of dollars. The art on the wall is worth 100's of thousands. The house is worth millions. The plants in the room - $10,000 each. The couch is $10,000. The interconnects are $10,000 each. The amp is $50,000. The source is $25,000. The butler makes $60,000 a year.And how many times is there NARY an acoustic treatment panel to be seen in the room? How many times is all of this "rich mans bling" installed on the premise that if you THROW a HUGE pile of MONEY at anything you can completely avoid engineering realities? In fact, how many "high-buck" rooms seem to have a higher emphasis on fashion, layout and aesthetics than acoustics?
Personally, I think anyone who spends over $100,000 on an audio system and has spent ZERO DOLLARS on ENGINEERED acoustic treatments, and acoustical engineering *IS* an idiot - or rich idiot as the case may be.
Even if you throw $1,000,000 worth of equipment into a room, there is no way that equipment can adjust for the room it has been placed in, unless said systems comes with a)a measurement mic and a set of instructions or b)a professional installation by someone who knows acoustics. What is the first thing they do when building a studio? But $100,000 amps? No. They hire an studio designer.
Most audiophiles, imho, are akin to a farmer who won a lottery and buys a 1,000,000 McClaren F1 sports car to drive up and down the gravel main street of his small town of 500 people. If you buy the car and don't spend any money on the track, you'll never know the performance capabilities of the car. Never. He can even do a/b comparisions with different $5000 sets of racing tires all day and all night. He's still driving on gravel.
I'd be willing to bet a $25,000 system with $25,000 of acoustical engineering and $10,000 worth of room treatments (total $60K) would crush the million dollar system with no engineering any day of the week.
An audio system that costs $100,000 to $1,000,000 should be an engineered solution, and not a bunch of "bling" tossed into a room. Then again, if someone with that much money thinks that is all they need to do, then that's fine for them...
...if they don't mind looking about as smart as our beloved farmer driving his McClaren F1 down main street in a cloud of dust.
A couple years back a friend was asking for my help with his system. He had bought similar equipment to mine (same speakers, frontend, preamp; we met through our speaker builder) and after hearing my system asked if I would come over and help him achieve similar results. I gave up immediately after he insisted that a couch had to remain against a side wall (wife's orders) and that he didn't want to treat the window on the opposite side wall. There was no hope to make things balanced and sound good. Room balance/treatment is as or more important than equipment.
Presto,I understand what you're saying and there is no denying the importance of room acoustics. But when you put aside the make believe world in those glossy photos and the humanly-natural touch of class envy, I think that there are "regular" people who work hard (work smart?), make good money, and know what they want. They might even understand the importance of room acoustics but choose not to live inside of an acoustics laboratory. Imagine that. The nerve of some people! :> )
For me the stereo is more than the quest for perfect sound. It's an emotional attachment too. If the room doesn't have the right vibe for me then I won't be in there very much. Not having the stereo playing music is more of a waste of money than poor room acoustics in my mind. But your point is well taken.
Having babbled on about all of that, I think that it's possible to choose and arrange your furniture in a way that is acoustically musical and still has a personal vibe that makes you want to be in there all of the time. There's no accounting for my taste though. :> )
Quiet earth:You know, in many ways we're being submersed in mediocrity caused by a lust for all things cheap and all things fast. We want it all, we want it now, and we want it for $1 - and companies are doing it! They're selling us cheap fast garbage for $1, and as a society, we're buying it. Lossy music and the love of the MP3 and file sharing is a prime example.
But I can think of a notable exception:
If you go to a modern movie house, there are all kinds of changes that differ from a old-school theatre. There are no longer two sloping "aisle ways" but they actually added 2 sets of STAIRS cutting through the seats. Imagine - they decided to add the liability of (sometimes intoxicated) moviegoers climbing up and down stairs in the dark because they needed to vastly increase the angle of the seating area. This was to accomodate the new "comfy seats" and to ensure that nobody would ever again have to concern themselves with the heads of the people in the next row. And the walls, floors, ceilings, and seats are all BLACK - because black offers no reflection of light and the least amount of distraction to the silver screen. How about the curved screen... a lot more complex and costly to implement, no doubt.
Why?
Because FUNCTION was important than FORM in the eyes of the creators of these new theatres. It was all about maximizing the experience of watching a movie - it had to be better than renting the DVD and staying home. It had to be better then joe-sixpack's 43" widescreen and Sony "Home theatre in a box". It had to be worth $13.50 per person!!
Now, if function can trump form in a public movie house, for me - it can trump it at home too. That does not mean I want a room that looks like the inside of a space capsule or an anechoic chamber. It just means that I won't apologize to anyone who thinks acoustic panels or bass traps are not "aesthetically pleasing" in my audio room.
I hear you loud and clear buddy. My biggest fear is that in our quest to get it all fast and cheap we will put everyone out of business that provides a place for us to come explore it. You know, our friendly neighborhood stereo store? 30 day home trial isn't my idea of shopping.Nothin' like shooting ourselves in the virtual foot.
Have a great weekend man! Play some jammin' tunes for me. :> )
QE
Quiet Earth:You know those people that seem to always be whining about the good old days, and how the value of quality is being replaced with lust for quantity... yadi yadi yada...
Well, I'm one of those people.
My girlfriend says I'm the world's youngest grumpy old man.
Now get off my lawn. ( :D )
But then, I guess, those who can might be less likely to even read the sorts of reviews online journals are aimed at - or is that some freakish strain of inverted snobbery I'm purveying?!I can't help feeling that if I could spend that much, having been a 'bottom-feeder' most of my life, I might be more concerned about seeing if I could get the same for half the outlay. In fact, maybe I would just pay someone, like a reviewer, to put a system together for me...
Big J.
Just because you can pony up the rude cash for a CD player doesn't mean that you aren't interested in getting the best bang for your buck. You might even be a coupon cutting, part time DIYer that's done all of his homework.FWIW, I'm still not convinced that the computer route is necessarily the best value, but that's just me. It mostly has to do with my listening habbits. But nothing is set in stone and someday I might just break free of my inverted freekish ways!
BTW, I really like that picture that you include with your signature big J.
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