My Wadia Vs hard drive

Hi you guys, it has been a busy year and I've not dropped by much but it is good to see the usual guys hanging out here. Tone, well done for getting Omiga going.

I thought that I would share some thoughts that I have been having about moving to hard drive and to get some feedback. For those that do not know I have a Wadia transport/Trichord Pulsemaster/Wadia Dac CDP that I am really happy with, Nuvitsa M3 (all on Hutter) and SF Amator IIs. I have been thinking about moving to a one box CDP / DVD player (I also have a DVDP transport) as I am fed up with lots of boxes and having to change CDs.

As I am in the music biz I have got some advice from my pro audio dealer who has come up with what I think could be a great solution. Instead of a one box CDP/DVDP I am considering recording all of my CDs (and DVDs) to hard drive (but obviously not compressing the audio). One option is to go for Glyph GT308 (drive) http://www.glyphtech.com/site/products_gt308.html controlled by an i-MAC with Apogee or RME soundcard. I will either keep my Wadia DAC because it sounds great but if I need to seel the transport with the DAC will then look for something else, but do not know what yet.

In the industry Glyph are the leaders in audio and video storage, the idea of having 250gig drives that I can have 200-240 Cds on and swap them in and out of the drive bay sounds very convenient and future proof.

I will be getting one on demo in the next few weeks for a listen. I know that I can record CD and DVD from Glyph Plextor drive but forgot to ask and am not sure if DVD-A and SACD disks will be able to be ripped in now or in the future. This is not a major problem as I am very happy with the sound quality that I get from CDs and was unimpressed with one demo of SACD that I had, I'm just thinking maybe 3 years ahead when DVD-A and SACD have sorted themselves out, this is really intended to be my last change for quite a few years (famous last words!)

All comments very welcome. Thanks.

dominicT

 

Hi Dom,

Good to see you back, How long are you in blighty for this time?, flying visit or a bit longer this time
Timpy has played a big part in Omiga too, Dom
When your free give us a call mate Atb Tone

 

Hi Tone

Here for a while now, just got back from New Zealand, its a great country. Actually it is the new girlfriend that has kept me busy more than anything else. The upgrade was a bit like hifi, not better on all fronts but better for what I was looking for right now!

Tone what do you think of my idea to abandon a CDP. Am I mad? Have I overlooked anything? I know that this flies in the face of conventional thinking, but is a computer drive replacing a CD transport a good idea or bad? Afterall most of the music that you are listening to is recorded onto a computer and most leading studios back-up to a Glyph.

Cheers

Dominic

 

Dom, you have your finger on the pulse in pro gear sector more than I (at the moment ).
I understand the advantages of the medium storage, less boxes and tider set up.
Although I have yet to hear a decent computer drive that can do a satisfactory job.
The transport issue is a contenious one in the very least, if you take 2 identical computer drives, fit one in a computer, the other in an isolated and damped purpose built box, with seperate power suppiles for the digital sevro drive, clock cuiritry & digtal output board, further damp the menchism & fit an internal mains filter, compare that to the computer's smps swamping the the whole computer with rfi? and internal dsp's and processors. A computer is a multi tasking tool that can preform many functions, pretty well. A dedicated trasnport is just that, it doesn't compute.
We have done a limited amount of experimentaion with this, all things in audio are compromises, just how much of a compremise you make is down to the indivdual, personaly there is no way, I could make that compromise at the this juncture in time & for the foreseeable furture. However we do keep an eye on new technologies for possible advances in this area. Tone

 

I think having all your music stored in one box is a great idea, I have been listening to music this way for quite a few years now. Although to get the sound quality of a Wadia DAC from a computer, you'd do well to keep a hold of your DAC in my opinion. Sound cards are better than most people would like to believe in many cases, but you'd be doing well to find one that can compete with a Wadia. Hard drives read data perfectly, so make a good transport. if they did not read data properly, it would cause no end of problems for the computer. Reports about the RME Digi PAD are good, but nevertheless, I think they tend towards the analytical side of music listening.

Rather than waste space having totally uncompressed audio, why not try Monkeys Audio or FLAC lossless compression which will nearly double the capacity of your hard drives.

Paul - now donning a flame proof suit for the inevitable crusade against compressed audio

 

Dom why not flog the transport and buy a G5 mac.

It has digital in and out so you can plug a DAC onto it and control the whole lot from itunes.

Its very tempting for me to do this as well!

 

Paul - you shouldn't need the suit, anyone complaining about lossless compression obviously has not the faintest idea what they're talking about.

Dom - the main issue I'd see would be about the stability of the output clock. Ideally you'd have a DAC with and onboard clock and clock-link driving the digital output card. Do Trichord do clocks/DOB's for PCs yet? No doubt Michaelab will be along soon to tell you to get an optical link from PC to a DAC64!

 

Until said box breaks down and you can't access any of your music :JOEL:

 

Aha, but you'd have the same problem if your CD player broke down

 

Not quite Paul. A CDP can be replaced quickly and you would still have all your CDs. A HDD crash (rare these days I grant you) is a total loss unless you have backups. As far as I can remember, I've experienced 2 HDD crashes, and yes I had backed up

Having said all that , I agree with your comments regarding Wadia DAC, lossless compression etc. etc.

 

I guess this angle is because I'm PC literate and begrudge the markup on any 'digital jukebox' product I've seen.

I couldn't compare a PC SPIF source to a wadia tansport, because I've never had the pleasure.

To determine if my AV amp and it's DACs were limiting my 2-ch quality, I tried taking line level analog off my m-audio Aupiophile 2496 soundcard straight in to my power amp. I as surprised that it sounded less pleasing than digital SPDIF via the AV amp (now using opical digital to decouple the PC's potential for EMF/RFI noise thanks to Isaac's suggestion) in addition to Supra LoRad shieded mains cables.

I think modern semi/pro soundcards in to decent DAC's may surprise a few people. I'd even propose that a decent PC soundcard in to a transport insensitive reclocking DAC like a Chord DAC64 would give anything a run for it's money sound-wise.

Any hard disk sytem is susceptable to hard disk failure. Triple disk redundancy (RAID software or hardware) can apparently warn and minimise the impact of that happening.

PC's a be hard to automate with remote controls, and occasionally cranky if you play around with the setup, but it can be done.

I also use Monkeys Audio (.APE) format lossless compression. There are is an advantage over uncompressed in that it supports tags, detailing album, track number, artist, etc.

Another new 'PC' feature I like is ReplayGain tagging which can make all your albums or tracks play bac with the same average volume level. I love it. Older recordings don't sound quiet and thin compared to listening to modern (dynamic range compessed) recordings. See ReplayGain.org and foobar2000.org for a great quality software player that can calculate and use ReplayGain tags.

What I don't have is a visual album cover based browser that can control foobar2000. I might well write one soon.

regards,
Rob.

 

Ah yes, but I have a DVD player and its ability to play CDs and MP3s so its not a total loss

I guess I've been lucky, never had a failed HDD yet.

 

A bit of a myth about the DAC 64 IMHO. Its a great DAC, but you can tell the difference between transports with it, just like any other Ive tried.

Ive only heard this effect with balanced and phonos though. Never tried different transports with it on optical.

Chris

 

- however, an optical link from a PC to any DAC isn't a bad idea as PCs really are noisy (electronically) places so it's a good idea to isolate them electrically from any hifi bits.

Michael.

 

Ah Tony, I think that you have hit the nail on the head here - nobody has yet designed a dedicated HDD audio system for the HIGH END market. Most of the HDD products available are pretty much PC motherboards/PSU/soundcard/etc with a redesigned user interface (usual linux or proprierty OS). Your concerns over SMPS is indeed a valid one.

But things are moving in the right direction and funnily enough it is the likes of sky+ and other PVRs which are maturing the markets for all things HDD. Maybe the right product would be an audio/video HDD server? who knows. (I think the word 'server' scares Joe public a little so this would have to go).

So, given the right application (eg damped, good PSU, good output and dac etc) the HDD would easily out perform any optical transport (CD or DVD). As well as the mechanical advantages, the protocols are being made with AV specific commands (ata-7), but it is dubious that even these are required.

cheers //lamboy

 

How about the Linn Kivor ?

 

Surely, that's the most overpriced PC in the world

 

Thanks for the interesting replies; very useful. I think that it is worth emphasising that the kit that I am looking to buy really is considered to be state of the art in the recording world and is what is used to record the most critical music; it is what Abbey Road etc use to either record or master with. The Apogee soundcard alone for example is £1200 and is built specifically to address clocking issues etc. I will not pretend to understand all of the technical things that are addressed, I'm but a lowly musician, but everything appears to at least Wadia standards or above. The laptop that I would use would 'only' be used for accessing the Glyph hard drive, housing the soundcard and running i-Tunes. It will be interesting to see if a G4powermac laptop outperforms a proaudio spec laptop fro the likes of Millenium (considered by Sound on Sound to probably be the best PC laptop available).

On the what if it crashes front, I am guaranteed next day replacement, I'd like to see that from a Hifi manufacturer!

Thanks again. Looking forwward to more challenge as I do want to go in with my eyes open! And also it will be interesting to see if anyone has ventured further than me down this route.

dominicT

 

You are not wrong there Dev - 'tis a PC motherboard with some LINN extras and a new fascia. Good for multi room apps, similar to the Imerge stuff.

 

Hey Dom,

Do you really need a RAID system for use as your audio player? I would suggest that you use your mac/pc as the player and use a RAID box for storage only - kind of a cacheing method. This way you can use the highest RAID level (for data integrity but lower performance).

For serious mastering - try Tony Faulkner (he should be at the bristol show) - I know he uses Seagate SCSI drives in his SACD mastering.