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In Reply to: Re: Considering Squeezebox -- Please help posted by richs on September 5, 2005 at 18:06:22:
Hi -Sounds like you have a great system. Also that you have done a good job thinking about how to make this work in your environment - which is the real key to success and happiness. I can tell you from personal experience, and you can find traces in the posts if you read enough of them - that anything but the most maxed computer will skip every now and then when asked to playback and simultaneously do something computationally intensive like a heavy duty game, video editing, Photoshop or the like. This seems to vary a little depending on how you are encoding the audio and how much processing it takes to decode.
So I like your isolation strategy - giving the kid his own gear is a great first step towards achieving your goal. And keeping all the audio on its own hard drive or NAS is also smart - and makes back up easier. For reference, I am a Mac guy and once I moved from a G4 to a G5 the "skip" problem went away.
Beyond that, like everything audio, sooner or later this becomes all about money. IMHO here are two ways to go here.
The low cost, get your feet wet is to go either Waveterminal which is extremely credible or SB2 - also extremely credible. Either approach needs to be supported by lossless or wav encoding.
I run a MF Trivista DAC modded by Parts Connexion and I am not going to tell you that the SB2 analog out is going to give you the same experience. But like an awful lot of other Inmates, I am happy enough with it in the context I use it, my "not so serious listening" environment that I am dumping the DAC. I do run a set of Harmonic Tech Pro Silways MkIII's from the analog out to the preamp - and yes to my ear they do sound better then some other cables I have tried.
Would the SB2 analog out cut it in my critical room - probably not - but I am reasonably confident that I could run SB2 SPDIF into my DAC and be happy. I have not tested this so I don't want to oversell it. But I was thrilled with the Waveterminal SPDIF combo.
Unlike some aspects of mystic audio, there is solid engineering behind this. By replacing the transport with a hard drive you will have overcome most of the problems and realized most of the advantages to be gained from this approach. (And we haven't even talked about the real thrill which is getting rid of handling all those CDs)
So to me the real question is, do you want to spring for one of the few available DACs that have the USB mod built in - Gordon and Audioengr being the prime practicioners - or do you want to choose from a wider choice of DACs - either more expensive - or less expensive - as are available for example on Audiogon. So maybe you try a Scott Nixon Tube DAC - or a Trivista - or a ... put in the object of lust here. Any and all of them are going to rock - no doubt one of them will probably be more to your taste because it has better synergy with your system. Point being that you have more choices if don't get hung up on the USB DAC.
If you end up with SPDIF or Toslink in the chain, so what. Buy a premium cable - in my case a Stealth Varidig made the Waveterminal/TriVIsta come to life. Now for the record I believe that the SuperNova Toslink direct from the optical out on my G5 to my DAC is slightly drier and more detailed. But if it went away tomorrow it would make no never mind - changes in tubes and isolation components both make a bigger difference in my system.
Hope this helps. Take the plunge - see what you think and then go back to doing the audiophool things we all enjoy to optimize the sound.
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Follow Ups
- Re: Considering Squeezebox -- Please help - xmasparty@mac.com 09/5/0520:03:40 09/5/05 (0)
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