Tír Na HiFi

jaybee wrote:let me preface this by saying, lets not embark on the great cable debate....

we're talking entry level, dipping of toes, and saving for TT and phono stage.......

So my PowerBook has been wiped and had a fresh install with nobbut iTunes...

Im ripping everything to Aiff going via USB to my rDac

now, my USB cable is a belkin one, so not as cheap and nasty as some... is it worth spending a couple of quid on an audio specific one?

ie Audioquest Forest @ 30 odd quid?

IMO the Wireworld USB cables are really good value !

I have the Wireworld Ultraviolet and love it : http://www.futureshop.co.uk/wireworld-u ... XhBOsonylE

So I was reading the audioquest guide to CA, and while the suggestion of carrying the audio out and storage access on different connection hubs (one usb one firewire) makes sense, it raises a question?

Is the suggestion that you get higher performance by using external hard drives instead of your laptops internal one?

For me it is a definite yes Jaybee, let the internal drive do all the processing and use an external drive for music storage.

I use a Western Digital 1 TB USB 3 drive for music connected to the USB 3 port on the laptop. They are relatively cheap, robust and portable.
The cable that comes with it is fairly short which is ideal and if you are worried about the drive dangling off the laptop you can use double back tape and stick it to the top surface of the laptop lid.
The cable is long enough to allow you to open up the lid without pulling on the usb connection.

Cheers,

I'm a macaholic though! So for me it'll be a FireWire 800 2TB drive so that the only traffic on the USB bus will be the audio...

jaybee wrote:So I was reading the audioquest guide to CA, and while the suggestion of carrying the audio out and storage access on different connection hubs (one usb one firewire) makes sense, it raises a question?

Is the suggestion that you get higher performance by using external hard drives instead of your laptops internal one?

I think its important that the drive and the dac are on different busses - gives a more straight forward throughput in the computer with less data packet clashes and possible delay associated with bus sharing - one cause of jitter in the system. Most decent players (Amarra, Audirvana etc.) will load the track or album into ram before playing, so the performance of the HD may not be important to the sound quality but may effect load time.
You can check on the bus configuration using the system profiler on the mac and move the dac to another port if necessary.

Also, if your library is on a separate drive, making a clone or backup is a very simple matter. I keep 3 copies of my 30,000+ song library as I could not face into ripping/downloading everything again.

I am using a headless mac mini with a 2 Tb external firewire 800 drive (Iomega) as a source. The mini is configured using screen sharing and once set up is controlled from iPad or iPhone using the remote app. This is a very convenient and elegant solution for me and I'm delighted with the sound - zero fiddling about and maximum music listening.

Mark.

that's exactly the route ill be taking...

Here are a couple of pics of my setup

Ah the beautiful ML's! How are you getting on with them? Are they 'kind' to all types of music? Is the bass 'lean' or more than adequate? Finally (!!!!) what kind of music do you listen to?

Quick question:

At the moment I run iTunes to a AppleTV (via wifi) then through optical into my HT amplifier. Sounds great except for a bit of sibilance. I might have the option of moving the mac to beside the amp so I was wondering if I'd hear any benefit from running the mac directly to the amp via optical (mac towers have optical outs) and taking the AppleTV/wifi out of the chain?

Frankie Lee wrote:Quick question:

At the moment I run iTunes to a AppleTV (via wifi) then through optical into my HT amplifier. Sounds great except for a bit of sibilance. I might have the option of moving the mac to beside the amp so I was wondering if I'd hear any benefit from running the mac directly to the amp via optical (mac towers have optical outs) and taking the AppleTV/wifi out of the chain?

best thing to do is try it
i think it would be better, maybe consider amarra or audivarna as it will help a lot too