On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 08:51:52PM -0600, Paul E Condon wrote: > I have been out of touch with the high-end audio world since I bought > this system. I had never heard of Pass Labs until you mentioned them > in your email. Wikipedia puts them in the class where Adcom was when I > bought. I don't want to re-join the craziness of puriest hi-fi audio, > but I do want to investigate upgrading the way that the digital music > that I have now on CDs is stored.
Nelson Pass did have a hand in a few Adcom circuit designs. I would say the the Pass Labs equipment is a bit more expensive although higher performing than the Adcom stuff. Mr. Pass is unique in that he is heavily involved in the DIY community and many of his desgins are released (for non-commercial purposes) to the community. >From the Wikipedia article: "Unusually for a leading figure producing commercial equipment, Pass has also long been very supportive of the DIY audio community, by way of published articles (Notably in "The Audio Amateur") and schematics of out of production models on the Pass Labs site and more recently the First Watt site. Extremely unusually for such a noted figure, he is readily contactable and frequently interacts directly (if tersely) with audio hobbyists individually: all of which hobbiests are extremely grateful for and for which he is held in very high esteem.[5][6][7] His nickname among the DIY audio community is "Papa". You can find at this forum: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/pass-labs/ His DIY website: http://www.passdiy.com/default.html > I think it ought to be possible to copy data that is now on CD onto > modern hard-disk and play it with quality that is no worse than I have > now. Yes, I agree. You can use programs such as grip to get accurate rips of your CD's and store them as FLAC files on really big cheap hard disks. Some people swear by EAC (Exact Audio Copy), but it only runs on Windows. Not an option for me no matter what they claim. > I accept the inferiority of CD to true purist hi-fi. (CD is good > enough for me, but I can't abide earphones.) In my humble listening, CD's ain't all that bad considering that they've have a long time to smooth out a lot of kinks. Besides, you can get a good amount of music in high resolution (24 bit/96kh and greaters) formats these days, e.g. http://hdtracks.com Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails fame, released one of his albums for *free* in a variety of formats including 24bit/96khx FLAC and WAV. Link: http://theslip.nin.com/ > I believe in free speach, free beer, and caveat emptor. If you have an > idea that involves Debian, please discuss it here. I may not be able > to use it myself, but it might be helpful to someone else. Ok. Simply, Voyage Linux + MPD + PC Engines Engines ALIX single board computer = audiophile grade open sauce goodness at 4 watts total power draw. Voyage Linux is a Debian based distro modified to run on embedded and low power x86 machines. It's desinged to run entirely in RAM and can load from compact flash cards as small as 128MB. Images are available for the PC Engines ALIX series boards. Link: http://linux.voyage.hk/ MPD is music player daemon. The daemon runs on the the headless ALIX boards and plays your FLAC files. The client which controls MPD can be on any other machine on your network. This can be your PC, laptop, PDA, bluetotooth phones, IRDA remotes, etc., etc., etc. There are web clients, Java clients, ncurses clients, GTK and QT clients, Windows and Max OS X clients, iPod/iTouch clients... In other words, you have many options for how you want to control your music. Links: http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Wiki http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients The PC Engines ALIX single board computers are small, power efficient, AMD Geode x86 based single devices. They are totally fanless and dead silent, a prerequisite for my dedicated listeing space. They're mainly used as firewall/routers and wireless access points. I had been using one their previous WRAP boards (and still do!) with m0n0wall as my primary firewall. When PC Engines started to offer the ALIX, which now sports USB ports, I got the idea to use the board as a USB music server feeding an external USB DAC. I use both the ALIX 2d2 and the 3d2 as music servers. The boards are relativley inexpensive (approx $125 USD for the board & $15 for case) for the flexibilty that they offer. Links: http://www.pcengines.ch/alix3d2.htm http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2d2.htm Other reasons I am fond of the PC Engnines boards are their power effiecncy and their general purpose desgin. My ALIX never draws more than 4 watts of power (using s Kill-A-Watt meter) when playing files, and they're general purpose desgins means that, in the future, I'll be able to recylcle them for other uses in the event that i stop suing them as music servers. My setup is as follows: My Debian desktop, which resides in the bedroom, is where I rip all my CD's to FLAC, and is also setup as an NFS server. The ALIX resides in my listening room where is is connected to my router via a CAT5 cable. The ALIX boots into Voyage Linux and MPD starts up. MPD fetches FLAC's via NFS on my desktop. The ALIX feeds an external Wavelength Audio Brick USB DAC; the standard snd_usb_audio module is all that is required. Music is controlled from any computer in the house, i.e., you can, if you wish, have mutiple clients simultaneously controlling one mpd server, For example, I can use my Nokia N800 tablet or my Thinkpad to control the music. Song changes are nearly instantaneous over 100Mb network. The ALIX also sports mini-PCI slots in case you want to implement this in a wirless fashion. You can just about use any decent quality USB DAC that fits your budget. Most are Linux friendly. Current versions of MPD support 32 bit audio, if you're considering high-resolution files in the future. An upgrade of the USB DAC is all that would be required. There are many high quality USB DAC avialble. Links: http://www.stereophile.com/digitalprocessors/ayre_acoustics_qb-9_usb_dac/ http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/system1/digital-analog-converter/dac1-usb Less pricey: http://www.devilsound.com/DAC/ You could also use a USB to S/PDIF converter to feed a S/PDIF DAC. I used to use a Trends UD-10.1 with my Adcom GDA-700 HDCD DAC before I purchaed the Brick DAC. The Trends also as a DAC built in as well as it is baed on the Burr Brown PCM2704 chip. Links: http://www.trendsaudio.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=40&Itemid=28 http://www.computeraudiophile.com/Trends-Audio-UD-10-1-USB-Audio-Converter-Review There's one on sale at Audiogon for cheap: http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?dgtlconv&1260475457&/Trends-UD-10.1-Lite-usb-audio- > So far the responses that I have gotten comfirm without a doubt that > what I was told by the sales person in Best Buy is not at all the > whole story. There is *a lot* more to the solution than just buying an > adapter cable. Mention of Burr Brown 24bit ladder DACs brought back memories > of technical problems that simply have no solution via software alone. Ack! Best Buy? Danger Will Robinson! > Even if this information doesn't fit with your expectations, please make > your recommendation. This is my recommendation. And with a decent USB DAC it sounds absolutley wonderful. So much that my Theta Data Basic CD transport hasn't been power up in almost 18 months. I hope this helps. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
