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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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In Reply to: We'll be making one soon posted by Charles Hansen on November 2, 2008 at 12:39:16:
Hi Charles.
Disclaimer: I work in a retail store that carries ayre, somewhere in Scandinavia.
These words only represent my own personal thoughts though.
I'm reading with great anticipation about your new products, and as I am a computer audio user, I can't wait to be able to go fully Ayre sometime down the road.
Specific question about the USB DAC:
Will the USB DAC support 24/192 or will it only support 24/96?
And some general comments:
I find the DNLA interface pretty good for watching movies. You have the movies sorted in different folders, and you just browse the folders and select the movies and then you watch the whole movie. It feels like browsing your files on your computer. And it works well because movies don't need to include all kinds og meta tags. But for music files you don't want to use the same interface a.k.a browsing the folders. You want a database system, or in other words: a music library.
The Linn and others are using the DNLA interface. It is really a flawed and cumbersome interface when you have a huge number of albums stored. I suspect you too are going this route and IMHO it isn't the way to go, although I guess Linn will tell you otherwise:)
When you want to listen to a specific album you have to manually scroll all available albums. Or if you want to listen to a specific artist, you have to manually scroll down all available artis which is also kinda ackward. (Let's be honest, these are the things that matter, people don't browse by genre,year,composer etc) You can't fastscroll by the first letter, so when you want to listen to Zeppelin II, and you have 1000 albums, then be prepared to click a lot of times! Also you cannot do an universal search lazy search. (like how the search in itunes works, it searches immediately for the keyword through ALL the meta-tags of all files)
The interface is really lacking compared to Squeezeboxes or Sonos... But the best interface of all is actually iTunes together with an iPod touch. It is so unbelieveably beautiful, both aesthetically and in practical use. No other interface can touch this combination. I cannot wait to try Ayre USB dac together with iTunes. I would put up screenless Mac Mini, connected to the USB DAC, and then to the stereo. And that is all there is to it! If I need to update iTunes or something else, I just remote desktop from my laptop.
BUT an USB DAc alone won't cut it in a typical stereo rig nowadays. (It would be perfect for that killer computer-audio-in-the-office system though) We have all kinds of digital sources that would benefit from a good DAC. 2 Channel Blu-ray, TV Decoder boxes, Playstation3, XBOX360. In my case I use the PS3 for playing games, and watching movies. And for music I use my airport express with into my DAC's other optical input. (with the slick iPod Touch interface) Hence, it will be a big letdown for me with an ethernet-only R-series DAC. I would probably consider buying it anyways since it will be the only thing that matches the MX-R and a future KX-R down the road, but still.. :D
So to conclude my dream of an R-series DAC:
USB input that can accept 24/192 (Hell, 2L Recordings from Norway even let you download DXD master files at 24/352khz from their server although there are no end-user means of playing these at the moment, how about supporting *that* Charles?)
And maybe 1 optical, coax or AES/EBU input that all can take up to 24/192 (the built-in soundcard in Macs support 24/192 from their optical output, also the PS3 do the same). Word Clock input (if deemed neccesary), and maybe some kind of i2s input (again, if deemed neccesary). You could always keep the ethernet input and go the LINN-route, mayb future updates to the DLNA specifications will make it better. And I guess the DAc will be firmware updateable.
I know the S/Pdif isn't the best solution, but it is a consumer standard nonetheless. I WANT to be able to play FIFA or Call of Duty through an Ayre source, and also 2 Channel Blu-Ray sound. I wouldn't mind paying a little extra for a good S/pdif
input, it will certainly be cheaper than keeping 2 seperate DAC, just to be able to use S/Pdif output from various sources.
C'mon Charles, you make 3500$ amps that kill other brands $$$$$ stuff, surely a good S/Pdif input that doesn't cost an arm and a leg would be feasible for you? ;)
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Follow Ups
- RE: We'll be making one soon - Bloodwound 11/9/0806:09:19 11/9/08 (0)
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