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Got a Roku Soundbridge M1001 for Christmas and my first taste of PC based audio. After ripping a few cds via eac, opted to run a direct wired connection between my windows based laptop and benchmark dac. Not having to get up to change the cd is pretty cool, but need another alternative than the Roku.1st impressions sound wise are a cleaner, blacker background, but slightly less robust dynamics and depth than via my transport. The user interface is going to be a problem. It has a nice pretty display and remote, but with only a few cds ripped, scrolling with the remote is cumbersome and can’t see the display (old eyes). Something that puts the display physically closer to me would be better.
The user interface of the d-link mediabridge DSM-120 looks pretty ideal, but seems to have other issues.
http://reviews.cnet.com/D_Link_DSM_120/4505-6470_7-31561630.html?tag=pdtl-listI’m also considering using my laptop as the interface and going with a converter. Something that is bit-perfect, externally powered and supports ASIO drivers seems to be the preferred method. But as Jessica Simpson says “ I don’t know what that means, but want it”. So far, I looking at the m-audio audiophile usb, emu 0404 usb and trends audio ud-10. Any comments on these or others?
Believe what your ears say - not hearsay.
Follow Ups:
Any lessons learned, best practices are much appreciated.Don M -
I didn’t realize there was a bug issue. It’s in the Christmas return pile for sure.Bobp, Old Listener –
I have a fairly new laptop with an external hard drive that I use to surf, do work (yeah right) while listening and was hoping to use it. If running the extra apps are a problem, can probably get a 3-4 year old brick from work.The Squeezebox maybe better than the Roku, but had trouble getting the Roku to talk wirelessly. Since I’m ok having everything in the same room, a wired solution is fine.
There seems to be many USB/SPIDIF adapters, and found this comment on the Trends UD-10 “forget the 24/96 they use the PCM 2704 chips, 44.1 or 48KHZ only..”. What does that mean?
I put the emu 0404 usb on the list b/c of the external ps, but it appears to have a lot of other features. Since I’m only going to be using at a converter, does it do something the others don’t?
I’ve been focusing on the nuts and bolts and didn’t look into the user friendliness side. I’ll definitely look into the J. River Media Center interface.
Saltyfliers, this is only my experience, to my ears after two years of experimenting. Perhaps this can save you a lot of experimenting.1. I guess that you will need a standalone, dedicated laptop or desktop for this task instead of using existing laptop. Running antivirus, firewall and other apps has detrimental effect to the quality of sound. Any P4 class will do, although I would go with the latest Intel Duo because they are energy efficient (less heat =less noise). 1 gig of memory is more than enough for XP.
2. Since you have an excellent DAC already, you need only interface between PC and Benchmark. In my experience, cheap USB/SPIDIF adapter is much better in getting digital out from PC than using external USB sound card to get digital out.
3. I have added Behringer SRC Ultramatch in the chain to upsample, and reclock the signal. DSP, Jitterbug or similar devices can be also used. The improvement was much greater than the cost involved.
You are absolutely right, external power supply to USB device is a must. Regulated 5V DC power supply can be done cheaply, battery would be even better.
4. You have to choose software player capable of ASIO output and ergonomically suitable to your needs and taste. For exaple, I disliked Foobar, found it awkward to use, and settled for JRIVER Music center instead. Try several different players until you find one you are comfortable with.
> 4. You have to choose software player capable of ASIO output and
> ergonomically suitable to your needs and taste.
> For exaple, I disliked Foobar, found it awkward to use,
> and settled for JRIVER Music center instead.
> Try several different players until you find one you
> are comfortable with.I agree with Bobp. You want to choose a player that fits you. I made the same choice - J River Media Center 11 rather than Foobar.
As an audiophile, you may be focused on sound quality but there are some other issues you should work out before you plunge in.
1. Are you going to use smart playlists that pick random selections from a list determined by criteria you specify? Or are you going to pick what you play explicitly? If random selection is important, make sure the player you select has the right facilities.
2. When you pick music explicitly, how will you select it? Are you content to navigate through folders on your computer to find music files or do you want to describe you music files with tags like Artist, Album, Genre, Year and Track Name? Do you want to use other tags like Composer, Conductor, Version (or whatever you need?) J. River Media Center supports a wide variety of tags. Foobar can too after some serious setup work.
3. The UI you use to select music will be important if you have a large music collection. The display on the Roku is like looking through a periscope. ITunes shows you lists of all Artists, Albums and Genres and you select each value to get to the music you want. J. River Media Center (and Foobar) take this browser pane approach farther and let you define what tags you display in these browser panes. You may prefer to flip through images of Album covers. iTunes and J. River can display album cover instead of browser panes.
4. You also want to think about your physical layout. Where is the audio system relative to the place where you want to select music? Where will the music be stored? Do you want to play music in more than one room? The Roku (and the Slimdevices Squeezebox) allow for placing your storage computer in a different room from where you play music.
5. Ripping a large CD collection is not trivial. You need software to rip the CDs and store them in your preferred format. You may want to sacrifice speed for a secure ripping method that verifies accuracy of the music files. You need s/w to edit tags and s/w to play your music files. Lots of people recommend EAC which has a secure ripping method. It only rips CDs. Mp3Tag is a good tag editor. J. River MC does it all. That worked much better for me.
Most ripping programs connect to an online database of tag information. These databases are based on user contributions that are often inconsistent. The common databases don't handle Composer information separately from work name and artists so the online database infor is not very useful for classical music. It will be up to you to edit tag values to be consistent and in the format you want.
(You'll find recommendations for many different CD/DVD drives online. You may find that your laptop drive is somewhat slow.)
I'd suggest that you experiment with ripping, tagging and playing a small collection before you commit to one set of s/w and ripping your entire collection. J. River MC costs $ 40 but you can try it for 30 days for free. iTunes and Foobar are free.
Good luck.
Bill
Old Listener, you have outlined very important usability issues, that often are not considered when choosing a system.I'd give 10/0 to Itunes. Ten for intuitive interface and ease of use and Zero for audiophile use - Itunes does not support ASIO output.
Also, Apple database is very good, sometimes I am pleasantly surprised how some obscure recording get recognised. Ripping with Itunes with correction checkmarked is no worse than EAC.
I have compared Apple lossless playback in Itunes via asio4all and JRIVER MC11 Apple lossless playback via ASIO and MC11 is audibly superior. With WAV playback it was even more prominent.I ditched Foobar because of ease of use, for someone who like it it may be a good choice sonically.
Where applicable the Roku M1001 resamples to 48khz and there is a bug with this process. Take a look at the attached thread. It adds some distortion.If you import music at 48khz the problem can be avoided however it generally means moving from the original bit perfect recording.
As an experiment take one of your originals that you used to demo the Roku, resample it to 48khz and listen to it.
Most purists will choose the Squeezebox over the Roku. By the way the M1000 did not resample. It however has other issues. My first unit just lasted 14 months.
Don
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