Many companies recently began to offer options for raw VAW-players – that God. I hope the CD/DVD.SACD all will die and go to hell. Playing the row files is the way to do. Even the raw 16/44 VAW is so far beyond then any crap put in disk that it is not funny.

Anyhow, Weiss juts jointed the list of the pro companies that offer the VAW-orientated DAC.

http://www.designwsound.com/public/minerva-brochure.pdf 

The Weiss new "Minerva" DAC supports firewire and it look like the dealers do promote firewire. This new Weiss might be an interesting new little machine.

Weiss is very good company generally and the do very reputed pro digital equipment. Their digital EQ pretty much universally considered the best in the industry. This Weiss ADC should be very good, I never had it but it should similar in quality to Lavry AD-122. Weiss does DACs, on commercial and one professional. It has a good reputation, although my exposure to it did not convince me to use it (despite that a friend of mine was Weiss distributor), though I did not try it in my own playback. The Weiss CD passport was pretty bad, very very bad. I have no idea or it was an accident or it was a some kind of sign. The new Daniel Weiss VAW DAC might be anything: good or bad. We will see soon what the big digital companies make for VAW-DACs. Another year and all more or less serious companies will have similar options. Let see what the times brings. For now, the Weiss Minerva looks like out there…

Romy the Cat wrote:

The Weiss new "Minerva" DAC supports firewire and it look like the dealers do promote firewire. This new Weiss might be an interesting new little machine.

What astonishes me is that industry discover a new “gold manna” the music servers but never told to people what to do with them and how to use. The list of the companies the tosses on market music servers are growing. Many companies do 24 bit dacs with obvious aim to music severs. However, the industry still does not allow people’s access to live feeds – the only sources worth of use of music servers to begin with. The industry morons not try to fill the space on the sold music servers with pre-caned tape and LP transfers but it is truly laughable…

I think the audio access to live performances is the key. I use FM but it might not be ONLY FM. Without having access to live music feeds and without being able to record the result how the hell people would know if their music servers wroth any time and efforts? It reminds me a story as a guy instating a traffic light on an island that has the only one street and not intersections…

At his RMAF 2008 Show Report the “Enjoy the Music.com’s” writer Steva-Rochlin-Goat-Killa wrote:

“It is good to see more rooms using music stored on a computer as their source. Of course vinyl notwithstanding, which can sound incredible, if you must use digital i feel that music servers and the like will soon take over the marketplace. This room had the VRS music server system."

 I read it as ask the rhetorically-ebonic question: “…and what the fuck people play on those music server”. As I said before the situation with music server in my view is ridicules - the industry pushes music servers, people keep building them but what people can do with them? Copy inferior CDs and CVD to them? Copy LP and tapes to them? Truly ridicules to promote this use of music servers as advantage.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Telstar wrote: I meant that the Lynx digital output may retain some noise from the computer, not that you get noise from the onboard soundcard (provided that you have one -You have onboard audio disabled in the bios, have you?) OK, I will look in that firewire thing sometimes, I know little about it as now. Is quality of firewire controller important? Can I use my on-board firewire? Regarding the onboard audio disabled in bios – nope, I did not do it. The WaveLab that I use for recording and for has a configuration that allows selecting which audio devise is used. The Lynx care is listed then along with Windows default sound devise – I just do not use system default sound cards. I did deactivate on my other DAW the onboard audio and I’ve seen no difference in sound.

I still do not know what audio people put in their hard drives but it looks like so called Music Servers become nowadays fashionable. The fashion is fashion but how not to take advantage of the people simplicity? The new NuForce Music Server  with price tag of $2,250 looks to me like a regular $300 PC that nowadays companies just trash or give to own employees for $15 buyout option.

http://www.nuforce.com/Product-MSR-CDP.htm

In fact they offer also free monitors….

I think the Chinese folks need to look toward to the market of US high-end Music Servers. It will be fun when the Chinese Music Servers hit US market.  All Music Servers are made by Chinese boards anyhow…  I anticipate that when it happens the “best imaginable” music sever will cost $599 and will do the very same as any snobby western machine.