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Topic: DAE Firmware quality

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Posted by oxric on 11-01-2011
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I have been looking forward to build my own dedicated passively cooled, Windows based source, with external power supplies and SSD drive, based on an HFX Classic case, or even better, the HFX Mini Metal, sometime towards the summer of next year. See below:

http://www.hfx.at/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=121:hfxr-classic&catid=51:heatsink-cases&Itemid=1

http://www.hfx.at/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=134:hfxr-mini-metal-&catid=51:heatsink-cases&Itemid=1

The HFX case is unfortunately rather difficult to work with, and requires a fair amount of time to put together properly. However, a new UK venture seems to have taken on board most of the criteria that I had set myself and come up with an off-the-shelf solution. Please see below:

http://www.itemaudio.co.uk/windows_audio_transport.html

I am however daunted by the size of those two cases, and the price is on the high side for what's on offer. I am sure the size of that behemoth is not justified, even though it makes passive cooling easier to achieve, or I would have seriously considered getting one of these. In any case, this is the way to go and eventually someone, maybe Item Audio themselves with their next generation "Transport", will bring something like this but in a considerably smaller form factor to market.

Best regards
Rakesh 

Posted by Romy the Cat on 11-01-2011
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 oxric wrote:
I have been looking forward to build my own ….. sometime towards the summer of next year.
Do not think about it now. The introduction of new things in computer world is so rapid that the six months that you have ahead of you might make your today’s exploration irrelevant. During the summer of next year it might be many new options become available, new products or new ideas. It is not to mention that if you are planning to move to a new home then your objectives for silent source might be altered. You might locate your computer in deferent room of you might have large enough room of the layout of the room that the silence of your DAW will have no prominence at all. 

So, I would advise to look into the market of offerable when you will be ready to proceed with the project.

The Cat

Posted by oxric on 11-01-2011
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I got the third link in my post above wrong and have now edited. But here is the correct link again to the off-the-shelf solution that caught my attention:

http://www.itemaudio.co.uk/windows_audio_transport.html



 Romy the Cat wrote:
The introduction of new things in computer world is so rapid that the six months that you have ahead of you might make your today’s exploration irrelevant. ...

So, I would advise to look into the market of offerable when you will be ready to proceed with the project.

The Cat


Yes, very true but my hope is that in the summer of next year I will be building my own. However, I was surprised to find that Item Audio seems to have incorporated quite a few of the design ideas and minimalist operating system that I was hoping to implement myself. It may well be that Item Audio themselves or some other party decides to bring a less costly solution to market in a smaller case and then I will not have to do it myself.

Best regards
Rakesh


Posted by Romy the Cat on 11-01-2011
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Yes, it is a different link but I am sure what it is. They claim it as audio transport but they claim an optional CD hardware and software. What does it mean “optional”. If it is a regular DAW machine then it is fine, there are plenty of them out there. The linear PS is “interesting” but not necessary positive thing.  There is no data that I am familiar with that claim that in DAW machine analog PS is preferable then switching. I do not know what kind Interfaces they use. I would stay with Lynx or RME, perhaps including this own interne DACs, I would not use “smaller” names. The biggest thing is their definition of “transport”. A transport is something that needs to play disks and nowadays it will be CD, DVD, BleuRay, SACD and different raw files from network (16, 24 and 64 bit). It is highly advisable that the file from drivers and the hard media (CD and etc…) would be play with the SAME player. You do not want to have 6 different players on your box to play different sources. Also, you do not want to go into property configuration of multiple devises to accept one or another sources. The most important the dist reading drive shall deliver good performance. So, far I did not see it from computer transports.

The Cat

Posted by oxric on 11-01-2011
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 oxric wrote:


However, a new UK venture seems to have taken on board most of the criteria that I had set myself and come up with an off-the-shelf solution. Please see below:

http://www.itemaudio.co.uk/windows_audio_transport.html

I am however daunted by the size of those two cases, and the price is on the high side for what's on offer. I am sure the size of that behemoth is not justified, even though it makes passive cooling easier to achieve, or I would have seriously considered getting one of these. In any case, this is the way to go and eventually someone, maybe Item Audio themselves with their next generation "Transport", will bring something like this but in a considerably smaller form factor to market.

Best regards
Rakesh
 


Funny world this, that Item Audio seems to already have been thinking of addressing precisely the concerns I mentioned above. Mark Welsh, who I think might be the owner/director and designer at Item Audio returned my call earlier today, and said that his company was coming up with an announcement with regard to case size, modular upgradeable power supplies and prices but I will leave the company to make their own public announcement in about two weeks' time. Suffice to say that the points I raised above would be more than fully addressed.

By the way I might add that one can specify an optical drive inside the case that would also be separately powered from the power supply. It sounds to me as if Item Audio is aware of the shortcomings that optical drives and hard disk drives may have but just make a choice to lessen the evil as far as practicable without resorting to designing such a devices from the ground up, I imagine an economically unviable task for just about any company I can think of in audio presently. 

And although Item Audio normally specifies a USB card that it recommends, it is quite willing to make use of my Lynx AES16 PCI sound card and even try to modify it so it can be powered individually, as well as the higher capacity SSd cards that I have lying around. Irrespective of whether I do go ahead with any of this, I find this company's willingness to try and accomodate a potential customer's requirements in this manner very professional and laudable indeed. 

Best regards
Rakesh


Posted by Romy the Cat on 11-01-2011
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I do not know what you are trying to do, why do you need the Lynx card, why is need to be modified and what does it mean “powered individually”, the people looks like sell power supply and they push the notion of individual power but no one said that it is good for sound.  My biggest misunderstanding of this entire thread is that they and you talk about transport but I do not see any efforts on the Item Audio side to good make PC based transport. To talk about hard drive, sound card, and the rest DAW context does not require a lot of brain – buy a regular PC, put in good sound card and you have a well performing machine. The linear PS is controversial in my view and no one to the best of my knowledge makes PC-based universal transports. The PC-based universal transports is what I care and I do not care about their power supplies, even if they are beneficial.

Posted by oxric on 11-01-2011
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 Romy the Cat wrote:


I do not know what you are trying to do, why do you need the Lynx card, why is need to be modified and what does it mean “powered individually”, the people looks like sell power supply and they push the notion of individual power but no one said that it is good for sound.  My biggest misunderstanding of this entire thread is that they and you talk about transport but I do not see any efforts on the Item Audio side to good make PC based transport. To talk about hard drive, sound card, and the rest DAW context does not require a lot of brain – buy a regular PC, put in good sound card and you have a well performing machine. The linear PS is controversial in my view and no one to the best of my knowledge makes PC-based universal transports. The PC-based universal transports is what I care and I do not care about their power supplies, even if they are beneficial.


The Lynx sound card is something I have used before and it works well enough for me to try and keep it! It obviates the need to waste money on a new sound card when this one can do the job just as well.

As for the power supply, I see some benefit to having the power supply requirement kept as low as possible and the supply itself placed in a separate case. This is what I was hoping to achieve myself in any case. So as far as I am concerned, it's good Item Audio offers this and you are of course welcome to think differently. I personally do not think they have anything of interest to offer you, and I am relieved this is so.

The company calls the unit a Transport and does explain how it would fit in within someone's playback. That should dispel any semantic ambiguity and inappropriateness. I believe the idea is that it takes over the function of a cd player as a transport in the context of a 'standard' system to be used with an external dac except that here you have access to an optical drive that can cope with other media than redbook, including high res material that's becoming more easily available nowadays. I think you simply missed out the part where it says that one can specify an optical drive of one's choice. As this would be in most cases a blu-ray drive, this does make it a universal transport...

Best regards
Rakesh

 


Posted by miab on 11-01-2011
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Reading the title of the original post I was under the impression that a new product was out or discovered that was a computer based optical drive system with storage as it's secondary function but it looks like just another storage based system with optical added (if you want) as secondary. It took many many companies with extremely large research budget to advance the optical red book transport over 15 to 20 years. This when there was money to be made so enthusiasm was high. Today with optical media sales in downspin ( I think vinyl has even out sold CD's these days) I find the enthusiasm to bring proper optical reading to computers is always an after thought. I do think it is a solution that needs profit. I'm not saying it's not possible though but not on the scale of companies. Today the music server (not transport) is the latest thing. The audiophile community creates some unfounded myths about what's best when it is basically a modern cheap computer in fancy case with passive cooling and some cards with a little attention paid.

 BTW Rakesh you might look into storing your server somewhere else in your house (so noise and power supplies don't matter too much) and using a small access device on your rack to stream into your favorite dac. You can call it a transport as well Smile

Posted by item on 11-02-2011
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Part of the reason we call our computers 'transports' is to encourage people to think of the number-crunching part of an audio system in the same already familiar terms as a CD player - because all the same things matter: CD transports vary according to the quality of their clocking, board design, EM and RF rejection, (crucially) power supplies and distribution, and vibration control. Computer transports are no different: it's helpful to forget about where the music is stored, and consider very carefully the local playback environment.

Although digital storage and transmission is practically robust, a bitstream is highly susceptible to jitter and cable-borne rail noise (upstream and downstream) when streamed in real-time to voltage-amplifying devices like DACs and amplifiers.

There's some debate about whether a Sonos, Squeezebox, Olive, et al is a 'Server' . . . I would say not!

We make no bones about out the 'open source' nature of the DAT1, and actively encourage users to build something similar themselves by publishing instructions on how to do so, with or without our help. There's a lot of shared DNA with the CICS project.

It's a standard (but carefully selected) Atom motherboard. It runs Windows. So far so standard. But from thereon in, everything we do is with the aim of reducing interrupts, lowering rail noise and generally optimising for audio - which takes us into the fabrication of bespoke passive heatsinks, deep cryo-treatment, dedicated PCI cards for USB output (http://sotm-audio.com/sotm/products/tX-USB.htm), SATA filters, Stillpoints fabric, bespoke high-quality DC looms, external fully linear power supplies, etc. It's then possible to have a computer that sounds better than a high quality CD transport, even with Red Book material (see December 2011 HiFi World).

In an ideal world, the D-A stage would not share proximity or a power supply with the computer at all, so we make clear that the DAT1 is a transport only, designed for an off-board DAC optimised for USB, Firewire or some flavour of SPDIF.

The power supply and cases are the expensive part: the base machine (without PSU) is less than £1000, which isn't much more than the value of the parts.

Posted by Romy the Cat on 11-02-2011
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 item wrote:
Part of the reason we call our computers 'transports' is to encourage people to think of the number-crunching part of an audio system in the same already familiar terms as a CD player - because all the same things matter: CD transports vary according to the quality of their clocking, board design, EM and RF rejection, (crucially) power supplies and distribution, and vibration control. Computer transports are no different: it's helpful to forget about where the music is stored, and consider very carefully the local playback environment.

Item, it is incorrect, the definition of 'transports' is something the read disks. My vacuum cleaner use the same underlying principles as your devise and “all the same things matter”: electricity, board design, current-carrying conductors, magnetic fields, Faraday effect. So, why don’t you call your devise a “vacuum cleaner”? In reality what you do looks has absolutely nothing to do with media transport. You do PC-based file players, so call it this way. Uses DAW - digital audio workstation term used for such machines in the pro audio industry. I do not object what you do but I very much object how you call your DAW machines as 'transports' – it is misleading as I do look for PC-based transports and what you do has as much use in my field as a vacuum cleaner in a field cancer treatment.

 item wrote:
It's then possible to have a computer that sounds better than a high quality CD transport, even with Red Book material (see December 2011 HiFi World).

I do not read the HiFi World. The people who work they are as much idiots as single-minded everywhere else. Do you make a claim that your devise is able to read CD disk and output it to a DAC with resulting Sound better then a CD transport of my choice? If you insist that it is the fact then what other formats your transport is able to read?

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

Posted by item on 11-02-2011
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Digital: “Binary data”
Trans: “across, beyond, to the other side”
-Port: “transferring or carrying”

You'll note the conspicuous absence of reference to 'spinning disks'. By strict definition, a digital transport only processes data and delivers it to a converter. Anything you add to that (CDs, vacuum cleaners, elderly aunts, etc) is your own business.

You could argue that it's becoming irrelevant whether the file data is sourced from CD, network-attached storage, local drive, or memory stick - but the local playback environment impacts significantly on the performance of the system.

A DAW is primarily a recording device - you 'Work' at a DAW, recording, mixing and monitoring. Different kettle of worms.

HFi World made the claim that the DAT1 sounds better playing the same track than their reference Cyrus CD Transport. The DAT1 plays any file, disk (apart form SACD), video or audio stream at any resolution and bit-depth. It's a computer. It prefers its disks ripped, though . . .

It's popular to call these glorified computers 'streamers' (which is OK), and 'servers' - which I take issue with, as the DAC is not a client in any sense I would recognise as meaningful.

Heck, that's a lot of hair-splitting about words - sorry!

Posted by Romy the Cat on 11-02-2011
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Item,

I agree that a digital transport only processes data (actually not processes but read would be more accurate definition but I do understand that reading implies a lot of processing) and delivers it to a converter but in real world in order files to be there in some kind of format they need to be inserted in there.  The migration of files from file provider to consumers is still mostly happen by optical disk of multiple formats. Industry most of the time does not allow distribution of uncompressed raw filers and most of the downloads out there (unfortunately) are rips from optical disks. Sure there are some exceptions but they are very rare and have own issuers. So, in one way of another there is in most of the cases a process of disk reading – would it be in end user house or at EMI download facility where the disc is read by optical transport and uploaded to their server for further distribution.

That is why what I refer to “transport” I refer to the very primary duty – to read an optical disk and the ability to create more advanced sound out of it. As a persons who am familiar with the best optical disk readers out there (something called “transport”) I am very interested to find a PC based transport that would deliver sound competitive to best conventional transports. So far I was not able to find any, despite to many assurances. I did not see your things and I do not know what you do, this is why I was asking.

If the HFi World made the claim that your DAT1 sounds better playing the same track than their reference Cyrus CD Transport then it mean one of the following:

1)    That you bought more advertising in HFi World then Cyrus
2)    The HFi World editor when he matched the performance of your “transports” to an idiocy of a specific reviewer did a good job.

It shell be the their choice: your DAT1 in fact might be better then this Cyrus CD Transport but what file your DAT1 played? It did not play optical driver in real time – you have no such an option - it played a file. So, how the file was ripped from disk and peace to HH for your DAT1 devise. What transport or CD-rom read the file, what software it was?

Rgs, Romy the Cat

Posted by oxric on 11-02-2011
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For me the issue you take with the appellation of the Item Audio Transport is one purely of semantics. For the record,  you say it is not a ‘cd transport.’ Well, the company does not make such a claim. They describe it as a digital transport, use inverted commas and then go on to explain exactly what it does and the options available. Onkyo call their ND-S1 docking station and Linn some of their players a digital transport. As anyone with a modicum of intelligence, I would just look up these companies’ website if I have any lingering doubt as to what exactly they do. This semantic discussion serves no purpose especially given that the owner of this forum has so little claim to being an authority in matters of linguistics.

Is there such a thing as a widely accepted definition of a digital transport? I do not think there is one. That’s why some companies use the word 'transport' when the unit fulfils the sort of function that a cd transport commonly fills, a cd transport maybe being safely defined as follows:

A CD Transport is a device which spins a CD, scans the optical data on the disc using a laser, decodes the data into one or more streams of numbers and codes this data into one or more digital audio formats. A Transport cannot drive a conventional power amplifier directly as it requires an external Digital-to-Analogue Converter (DAC) to do this.

You can see that there are two parts to this generally accepted definition, one positive and the other negative. Firstly, it spins dics and reads the noughts and 1s. This data is then coded in one or more digital formats. By analogy, an Item Audio equipped with an optional blu-ray drive would serve precisely this function. It would spin a disc, extract the data and code it so that it is available for the next stage in the chain. Regarding the negative part of the definition above, it suggests that a cd transport is one characterised by the lack of an onboard DAC. So this as well appears to be a characteristic of the Item Audio unit. I do not find any of their description misleading and would not take issue with their calling it a ‘transport’, although I would have preferred more time devoted to explaining how they address issues regarding the extraction of the digital data and coding it.

It appears to me that you are looking for a transport whose only function is to extract the data from multiple media discs, which would make it a universal transport. I think it is highly unlikely for there to be such a device uniquely devoted to reading discs available anywhere commercially. I am sure this function is fraught with difficulties but I do not see anyone investing resources in developing such a device from the grounds up in terms of both hardware and software.



 Romy the Cat wrote:

Item,

If the HFi World made the claim that your DAT1 sounds better playing the same track than their reference Cyrus CD Transport then it mean one of the following:

1)    That you bought more advertising in HFi World then Cyrus
2)    The HFi World editor when he matched the performance of your “transports” to an idiocy of a specific reviewer did a good job.

It shell be the their choice: your DAT1 in fact might be better then this Cyrus CD Transport but what file your DAT1 played? It did not play optical driver in real time – you have no such an option - it played a file. So, how the file was ripped from disk and peace to HH for your DAT1 devise. What transport or CD-rom read the file, what software it was?

Rgs, Romy the Cat


Reviewer bashing Romy? Without knowing who it is and what was said? I myself have stopped buying Hifi World a couple of years ago but from flicking through the magazines in my WHsmith I know that they seem to have devoted quite a lot of reviews to digital playback and in my personal view, it is one of the more honest publications out there. You will find that the reference points of the main editor are quite a few vintage speakers, digital players, and turntables which are not available commercially, which he uses in his everyday playback. A breath of fresh air compared to Stereophile, Absolute Sounds and Hi-Fi+ for instance. In fact, I am going to renew my subscription today!

Best regards
Rakesh

Posted by item on 11-02-2011
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 Romy the Cat wrote:

That is why what I refer to “transport” I refer to the very primary duty – to read an optical disk and the ability to create more advanced sound out of it. As a persons who am familiar with the best optical disk readers out there (something called “transport”) I am very interested to find a PC based transport that would deliver sound competitive to best conventional transports. So far I was not able to find any, despite to many assurances. I did not see your things and I do not know what you do, this is why I was asking.

If the HFi World made the claim that your DAT1 sounds better playing the same track than their reference Cyrus CD Transport then it mean one of the following:

1)    That you bought more advertising in HFi World then Cyrus
2)    The HFi World editor when he matched the performance of your “transports” to an idiocy of a specific reviewer did a good job.

It shell be the their choice: your DAT1 in fact might be better then this Cyrus CD Transport but what file your DAT1 played? It did not play optical driver in real time – you have no such an option - it played a file. So, how the file was ripped from disk and peace to HH for your DAT1 devise. What transport or CD-rom read the file, what software it was?

Rgs, Romy the Cat


If you want to spin a CD during playback, for nostalgic reasons, then a CD player is fine. The only reason to do so, however, is to extract stored data. Computers have better ways to do this that don't invoke all the mechanical headaches of an optical drive. Keeping the whole process in solid state is very fast, very clean and sounds very good.

Computers have many brilliant ways to ruin everything else from thereon in, which is why there is such a difference between a standard PC box and a Linn Klimax DS. If you've auditioned widely, you'll know that - despite losing the optical mech - most computers don't sound great compared with a CD transport. It's taken us a long time to surpass that benchmark, and be prepared to offer something for review.

The editor took something of a risk in passing this judgment because they are quite involved with Cyrus, whereas we have never taken any advertising in their publication. He simply called it as he heard it. We offer free trials for anyone to do the same.

The DAT1 will play audio CDs, from a spinning optical drive, in realtime - but why would anyone want to? Far better to conduct a controlled, null-checked, rip with EAC or dBpoweramp, and play precisely the same zeros-and-ones from local, DC-filtered solid state storage.

Posted by Romy the Cat on 11-02-2011
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 oxric wrote:
By analogy, an Item Audio equipped with an optional blu-ray drive would serve precisely this function. It would spin a disc, extract the data and code it so that it is available for the next stage in the chain.

Yes it might but it needs to do it in real time. I do not think at this point Item Audio “transport” performs this rudimental transport duty.

 oxric wrote:
Reviewer bashing Romy? Without knowing who it is and what was said?

Why do I need to know who and under which circumstance said anything? Any persons who practice audio not for own benefits but for interests of “others” as far as I’m concern might go fuck himself. I understand that you do not “get” it yet but you do see me insisting that you obliged to get anything, do you. Please do not response to it.

The Cat

Posted by Romy the Cat on 11-02-2011
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 item wrote:
If you want to spin a CD during playback, for nostalgic reasons, then a CD player is fine. The only reason to do so, however, is to extract stored data. Computers have better ways to do this that don't invoke all the mechanical headaches of an optical drive. Keeping the whole process in solid state is very fast, very clean and sounds very good.

It has absolutely nothing to do with nostalgic reasons. Again, if you do not get it: music today is being released in solid state format. None of the major labels do it yet and it is questionably if it even happens. There are objective reasons why it might be problematic if is ever do happen. Yes, keeping the whole process in solid state is very good but with very minor exception that do not even make a dent in market share it does not exists.


 item wrote:
If you've auditioned widely, you'll know that - despite losing the optical mech - most computers don't sound great compared with a CD transport. It's taken us a long time to surpass that benchmark, and be prepared to offer something for review.

I do not mind you to use my site to make lightweight marketing statements. Computers long surpassed any CD transports when they play raw uncompressed files. Computers, in my view, are nowhere when they read the CDs and store data to drives. That is why I was asking: how the files that your computer read was made? Did it come from CD? How this CD was read, which transport did it?

 item wrote:
The editor took something of a risk in passing this judgment because they are quite involved with Cyrus, whereas we have never taken any advertising in their publication. He simply called it as he heard it. We offer free trials for anyone to do the same.

Who care what your editor said. He is an idiot by being editor of that publication, regardless who he is.

 item wrote:
The DAT1 will play audio CDs, from a spinning optical drive, in realtime - but why would anyone want to? Far better to conduct a controlled, null-checked, rip with EAC or dBpoweramp, and play precisely the same zeros-and-ones from local, DC-filtered solid state storage.

The problem is that it never “precisely the same”. A good quality CD transport will wipe out all your theories. If you did not explored this subject then I think you have no business to do the claims like “why would anyone want to”.

The Cat

Posted by item on 11-02-2011
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 Romy the Cat wrote:

 oxric wrote:
By analogy, an Item Audio equipped with an optional blu-ray drive would serve precisely this function. It would spin a disc, extract the data and code it so that it is available for the next stage in the chain.

Yes it might but it needs to do it in real time. I do not think at this point Item Audio “transport” performs this rudimental transport duty.

It does.


Posted by Romy the Cat on 11-02-2011
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 item wrote:
 Romy the Cat wrote:

 oxric wrote:
By analogy, an Item Audio equipped with an optional blu-ray drive would serve precisely this function. It would spin a disc, extract the data and code it so that it is available for the next stage in the chain.

Yes it might but it needs to do it in real time. I do not think at this point Item Audio “transport” performs this rudimental transport duty.

It does.

Well, ANY computer CD-ROM play any CD and it shell not be anything special to do it. Also any CD-ROM plays CDs horribly, regardless of what is inside to computer. In your devise you reportedly make some efforts to make computer to act as a good DAW but you admit that CD-transport part was not your primary objective and your can throw a CD-ROM in as an option. So, here is my question that I have been asking from beginning: what did you make with your devise differently that make your machine to read CD better than other computers? Again, I use the work transport in a very basic, uncontaminated and non-confusing fashion.

Posted by item on 11-02-2011
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I'm not sure I'm clear what you're saying . . . if we're talking about using a CD mechanism to read files in real-time, during playback, we're entering a world of pain. Engineered solutions to the problems thus presented are expensive and specialised - and entirely not in our remit.

If we're talking about using a CD mechanism to rip files, leisurely - perhaps  apart from the playback environment - then the challenges are as much software as hardware, and are entirely - simply - to do with bit-integrity. Best practice here is already engineered into the computer: it knows how to move bits very reliably from A to B. Some drives are better suited to this job than others, but in our experience most are - perfectly - good enough for this task, as a null test will prove beyond question. I don't therefore recommend - or specify - anything expensive.

During the HiFi World test, a mixture of FLAC, WAV and AIFFs ripped from CD using Max and EAC on a variety of drives were compared with CDs and hi-res downloads from HD Tracks.

Given that the same file played from computer storage can sound better than from any disc-based transport, I don't see any role for an optical drive beyond moving data once, slowly, from CD to SSD or HD.

Apologies if the post above came across as 'lightweight marketing'. I was only trying to make the point that CD transports, which probably peaked at the turn of the millennium, are hard for any computer to better with respect to 16/44.1 playback . . . because by default the computer has so many deleterious components.

Posted by Romy the Cat on 11-02-2011
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Item, regardless if you use CD mechanism to read files in real-time or if you rip files leisurely, with 84 times of read the same spot and to verify the data consistency, the result is very much the same:  Sound the I was able to get from computer drive (real-time or ripped) was no where even close to what I was able to get from real-time none-buffering transports. I know a lot of people, not only you who do opposite claims but I do not take them serious. I have over 35-40 CD-ROMs and was trying with EAC to read a CD and to get from the ripped file any acceptable sound. It was not bad but it was NEVER as good direct read from my transport. So, I am OK with what your magazine people are claiming but this is what they do for living – to make public claims in order to shape or misguide sales opportunities. In reality your magazine people are insubstantial fool who themselves do not understed what they claim, but it is beyond the subject.

I do not know what your unit does sonically and it looks like from the perspective of “transport” even you do not know what it does. All the I am telling you that if I buy your unit as “transport” and the see the sonic performance that nay other CD-Rom delivered so far then I would return it to you as I would consider it as false advertising. Your machine is basically is a large a larges iPad but not transport. I admit that my definition of “transport” is very narrow but so the definition of anybody else. If you are willing to name your devise “The transport” then I guess you can do it but it does greatly mislead anybody. Call it better as Pterodactyl as it has as much relation to the flying reptiles of Triassic period as it has to digital transports.

Posted by item on 11-02-2011
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Romy: you found your CD transport sounded better than a CD-ROM drive, is that right? That seems reasonable. But you've not stated what computer the CD-ROM drive was attached to . . .

In an audio computer, the CD-ROM drive is really, really irrelevant: it shouldn't even be powered during playback; the computer and its software and storage medium and clock and power supply - in toto: the transport - that's what makes a large difference.

CD transports are generally better than PCs. But a well-designed PC transport is better than a good CD transport (assuming we've moved on past a discussion of ripping!)

Posted by Romy the Cat on 11-02-2011
fiogf49gjkf0d
Item,

you are not getting the point that ripping implied the initial read of CD by CD-ROM drive and their possess looks like kills the quality of the file you made on your “super PC”. If you imply that your PC plays a file that was not made from the same CD then you compare apples and oranges. Making claims that “well-designed PC transport is better than a good CD transport” is a ridicules claim if your CD-ROM and your CD transport use different source. Again take the same CD, play it at your CD passport. Then rip the same CD to your super-duper PC and play it into the dame DAC. If you find that your PC outperform you CD transport then… trash your CD transport and get the one that sound better, not the one that your magazine editor told your that that it “sounds good”.

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

Posted by item on 11-02-2011
fiogf49gjkf0d
The data ripped to the hard disk is - absolutely precisely - the same as the data on the CD.

It is not possible 'kill the quality of a CD' by creating a bit-for-bit exact copy of it elsewhere - any more than you can 'kill the quality of a photograph' by moving it from a camera to a hard drive.

So they were comparing apples with apples: a CD transport playing Track A on DAC B; then a computer transport playing the same Track A on DAC B.

Posted by Romy the Cat on 11-02-2011
fiogf49gjkf0d

 item wrote:
The data ripped to the hard disk is - absolutely precisely - the same as the data on the CD.

Not necessarily. The data on CD is very much not the same as stream I uncompressed let say wave file. It was what I ment when I mention some lightweightness of rederick. Read how CD reading take place and how the continue digital stream get constructed.

 item wrote:
So they were comparing apples with apples: a CD transport playing Track A on DAC B; then a computer transport playing the same Track A on DAC B.

It was exactly what I was experimenting for many times since 2005 and I came to exactly opposite finding. I am not able to make neither LP, tape or CD to copy in digital that would sound like original source. I am able to do it with FM – I can record it and to play undistinguishable but no other souses that I have. But what do I know – I do not run the Hi-Fi review but from another hands I so not sell to anybody my concussions... You do.

Posted by item on 11-02-2011
fiogf49gjkf0d
It's a very novel sensation for me to be arguing that 'bits are bits'! But its very simple to prove categorically that the binary data on the disc is identical to the ripped version.

More importantly, where there are errors, they are punctiliar and rare. In other words, it's hard to imagine how they could combine systemically to change the 'character' of the file. This idea is exactly like saying 'my digital photograph changes colour when I move it to a different partition'. In a very unusual scenario, you might lose a pixel, or corrupt a file header, but it will never turn sepia!

The behaviour of the optical drive will make a characteristic difference to the 'colour' of the playback. We can look to the hardware - and even software - but we can't blame the data.

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