But how is the isolated circuit powered? Nicest way to do it might be powering separate boards by battery supplies which are only charged during the time the device is not used. As this method is known for high precision instruments, might this be a high end solution?
Well my media server is from Dell with multiple XEONs and a RAID10 through a Cisco L3 managed network on CAT6 with multiple Ubiquiti APs. I can stream to any number of computer based audio and video devices around the place. Some day I will even have a digital source feed my currently vinyl only stereo.
My music server is a DIY build. Raspberry Pi3, AlloBoss DAC, 2tb hard drive, 3A linear power supply. Running Volumio. Have it about 4 years now and really love it. Most of my music files are flac. It can also access my backup Synology NAS when necessary. Really cool IMHO!
If you want a central place to load music from, use a specialized computer with passive cooling and only SSDs/M.2 drives for storage. And customized noise reduction on as many surfaces as you're willing to. But then you could easily start going insane and thinking about living in a quieter area, replacing windows with walls, and other crazy things.
@@Harald_Reindl Always introduce! But it's only in video and especially in audio that it's more noticeable. On spreadsheets you don't notice anything! It all depends on the use of the machine and what is used to pass the signal to the speakers.
@@Harald_Reindl Thanks for the info. I won't ever have to bother with md5 checksums ever again. What a relief. Hate to be insulting, but you are an idiot. People who actually work with computers know that computers and networks routinely corrupt data streams.
I have a MacBook Air with no fan and use Audirvana with a DSD compatible DAC. Since I've got 2TB of storage and 16GB of RAM nothing gets in the way of my music. I also have a Mac mini with the same specs which does have a fan, but the fan literally never revs up when just playing back music (M1 one Macs are beasts).. Not sure investing money in old hardware and techniques is what I would do.
@Douglas Blake Granted you are correct, I still don't see how a completely solid state machine would produce any electrical noise? Of course, I am no expert on this, and I only use my DAC with the intereated amp for my headphones. I get much more noise with a different DAC (with no amp) that's plugged in to my stereo with a 3.5 mm plug. The DAC I use for my laptop is USB through and thorugh.
@Douglas Blake Cool, thanks for the detailed explanation. I think if anything, I only notice dubious recordings/masterings, where background noise is quite noticable. But I was actually thinking that in a NAS/server environment, you'd probably require a lot more juice in your router/switch since some of the DSD files I have would need to stream several gigabytes per album, and some 192/24 files I have take up hundreds of megs per file, which is also why I went for some internal storage over having to stream over the network.
Perfect answer. NAS drive all the way - easy to store on, easy to upgrade and increase storage for hi-res audio files, easily accessible by multiple streamers, easy to isolate any issues without stopping the rest of your system - it's a far better system than internal hard drives. I have two Synology NAS drives - one for standard music up to 24/48 which serves the Sonos speakers in the kitchen, study etc, and one for higher resolution and DSD files for "serious" listening in the library. As both are connected by ethernet in my study, I can't hear them in the library or rest of the house, and I just drag and drop new files to the NAS from my Mac.
Air gap technology... it sounds impressive but IS it ? The isolated circuitry is of an active nature I'm sure .. but how does the power supply get into it .? That is hard wired !
Electrical noise should not be a major concern in your normal operation unless you try to reduce noise in every step possible starting from your main electric power line input, along with your home shared electrical system scheme and if you are using any number of devices and machines under the same electrical node. So there's no need to freak out about electrical noise also since computers themselves are grounded. About NAS or internal should be quite the same in general sense but even better if you have a high quality computer. HDD or SSD wont matter since audio doesn't require high bandwidth operation compared to video. Just make sure you don't have crap equipment and you'll be ok. Also of DSD or HQ-PCM if you're streaming audio to play on a phone, tv or similar devices that simply wont be good idea since those type of devices have low-quality DAC chips with crappy speakers so no case to bother.
I only have crappy compressed music from the Napster e.a. days on my hard drive. Streaming High Res is just the same as streaming from a NAS, so why bother? Only when something is not available for streaming maybe.
@@D1N02 I don't like tracks to disappear over the years from my playlists and hence I have 54000 FLAC tracks with at least 3 backups and one on my smartphones SD-Card
The only thing I can imagine is just getting a NAS so you can put it somewhere where you don't hear it. Also don't bother with audiophile switches and ethernet cables, that's pure 'snake oil'. Or just get a SSD, problem solved, more efficient and doesn't make any sound
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio good we need more competition... as I have been using Audirvana for a very long time, I can tell you it is very buggy, but yet I have very few choices.
hey paul love your channel! i've been trying to learn more about amplifier class and i'm wondering: should i leave my pioneer sx-850 on all the time? and if so, which input should be selected? does volume knob matter? thanks!
I had both then settled on Audirvana for sound quality. But I am interested in this Octave Paul talks about because I am not signing on to Audirvana's subscription model for music I already own.
A respectable correction here. He didn't define what the "NAS" is and that comes in many flavors. Paul said that the files are stored the same way either on a "NAS" or an Internal HD. In the case of a single HD NAS likely it will store files using the same way thay maybe a PC does. Maybe not. What is the Operating System of the NAS ( Likely Linux, likely ext4 )? If your playing your content over a LAN on a Windows PC then for sure the file storage structure is very different between the likely Linux NAS ( ext4 ) and the Windows PC ( NTFS ). I suggest Paul consider storing content ( video/audio ) on a bigger type of NAS. I'll use mine as an example. I use a QNAP RAID5 NAS. Four 4TB Seagate IronWolf drives ( 16TB ) in RAID5 resulting in just over 10TB of usable NAS space. And that NAS is connected to a Gigabit LAN. All devices on the LAN support 1GBit transfers. As to if that makes a sonic difference I can't say. I assure you the way that audio/video content ( including DSD files ) are stored on my QNAP NAS is VERY different then is stored on a Windows or Apple computer.. Is there an advantage. I donno. Maybe quicker????? For sure more secure.
It’s not different at all, aside from the data possibly being striped across multiple disks in a RAID5 scenario. It makes no difference to how the data is retrieved and sent along the network interface for playback. Beyond that, RAID volumes exist on macOS and Windows. There’s nothing special about Linux or ext4.
@@DavidEvenson "It makes no difference to how the data is retrieved and sent along the network interface for playback" - I will agree with you that the playback device probably sees the same data stream regardless of how it is stored on the RAIDx. I'm not sure if there is going to be any sonic difference.
at the point the file enters the networking stack it's irrelevant what filesystem stores it and you can have performance and redundancy on every operating system these days, storage performance is completly irrelevant for tiny data like audio and most of your networks aren't faster than a single disk because you guys hardly have 10 Gigabit networks in your homes
@@wilcalint "I'm not sure if there is going to be any sonic difference" - i am sure there can't be any difference! why do you guys think a dumb tiny audio file is something magical?
For US$8 per month I have lossless CD quality or better streaming of approx. 100 million music tracks from Amazon Music HD. Why bother with less costing more? I used to think streaming online was not for audiophiles, but technology has improved a lot and now it has become rather ignorant to think streaming is any less than local storage for audio. Same for video, which is much more demanding now with 4K being standard, btw.
A NAS is just a server with a higher density of disks (generally). It has an operating system and motherboard and all the same pieces-parts that a “server” does. There is no difference in how data is retrieved from either device. They are in practice identical devices.
@@anikiace2253 Sure, of course. And those others can still be wrong. You’re claiming the difference is the location of the device., and I’m trying to point out that it’s a distinction without any basis. Both servers and NAS devices can be installed anywhere.
@@anikiace2253 you can do the same with your PC acting as server, mine is router, firewall, server, wireless-accesspoint, network-switch, virtualization host, music-server, databse-server, webserver, mailserver, development machine and what not in one simple mini-tower running 365/24 since 2011
The fun of hifi, other than listening to the music, is the research and putting together your unique system. I agree with the above comment and Steve Guttenberg recently said, nowadays hifi equipment is mostly great, so just buy what you like because you’re going to have great sound. I have a system I love which I will keep tweaking as it’s part of the hobby, but I love going to see other systems to see what they’ve put together, it’s a never ending puzzle of fun imo!
good speakers, digital optical connection to a proper designed AVR, case closed from the technical point fo view - the most improtant is room acoustics which makes your 2000 $ speakers sound like 20000 $ speakers in an audiophile setup with no clue that 50-70% of what you hear is your room 4000 $ for the equipment, 5000-10000$ for room accoustics and you are done the next 20-30 years
@Douglas Blake the 4000 $ includes speakers, amplifiers, cables, subwoofers, antimode and no i can't move my furniture around - in fact i invested 13000 in the past year for gear, speakers and room-acoustics and as i can operate REW and the goal was 300 ms reverbs over full-range it takes some money - you can't trick physics at low frequencies
I use a NAS, 2 actuallly, that an Asus laptop using foobar feeding an ifi usb to coax and an ifi purifier at the DAC to reclock and clean the signal. Take the purifier off and the signal audibly degrades.
The best digital sound quality will be achieved via a custom-built computer that will send your DAC a (virtually) jitter-free, noise-free, bit perfect data stream. Those data can originate from an on-line service, such as Qobuz, or from laptop, etc. As long as those data get fed to the custom-built computer, then that custom-built computer will act as a high-end, super accurate, noise-free, jitter-free conduit that feeds your data to your DAC. The hard part is expertly choosing the parts for that custom-built computer. Every part, from the motherboard to the CPU to the power supply, etc, are all key for accomplishing this goal. Lastly, you will need the software and the operating system on the custom-built computer to not run anything other than what is needed for the music task at hand. All of the above is a tall order. But it is how you get the best digital sound quality. Cheers!
Doesn't need to be expensive. A raspberry pi running volumio or even better a pi with the extra hardware Pi2AES for outputs like I2S. That will be leagues above a desktop PC. Get people 95% of the way to buying a several thousand dollar dedicated streamer.
@Douglas Blake I suspect that you are building generic PCs, with standard, mass produced parts. Such PCs will do the job. They will not, however, do the best job, which was the focus of my comment -- because Barry, who sent Paul the question, asked about getting the best DSD experience. For digital audio, you always need a DAC. To convert digital data to an analog wave form, that is the job of a Digital to Analog Converter. I suspect that you mean that you do not need a stand-alone DAC, because your home theater PC has a built-in DAC. All computers, today, have built-in DACs. When you use a built-in DAC, you then must use the built-in pre-amp, too. On a department store stereo, they will be a good match. But for a stereo, such as in Paul's IRS room, you will hear the shortcomings of that gear. I am not knocking that gear. But it is like comparing a Corvette to a LaFerrari. The Corvette is very desirable. But it is not on the level of a LaFerrari. The type of custom built computer that I wrote about would be LaFerrari level, and would be a proper fit for Paul's IRS room.
@Douglas Blake The designers of the best gear design their own caps, their own power supplies, their own DACs, their own everything (short of the CPUs and the memory chips). None of them use mass produced, off the shelf components. Providing specs, as you did, reveals 0% of how the unit will sound. The only test is to play the unit, and have your ears send the sound waves to your brain, which will determine the sound quality. There is no shortage of equipment with great specs that have nothing special sound quality. Give me a unit with lousy specs and great sound quality. I will take that unit over any box with great specs and lousy sound quality. You revealed your bias against quality products, by calling them "Audiophile elitism". Although there are people that simply want to show off, there are also people that simply want fantastic sound quality. They are not elitists for wanting great sound quality. Have you compared your ESS, TTPCs, 1200, 1220, RealTek ALC, l-m-n-o-p boxes to the Innuos Statement, or the Aurender W20SE? I will lay 10,000 to 1 odds that you never have, never will, and yet you have concluded that your l-m-n-o-p boxes sound just as good. You simply will not accept that there are experts that design and build exotic things (homes, ships, cars, aircraft, medical gear, etc, and even computer gear) that are beyond your skills and beyond your reach, and so you lash out at that computer gear, and call it "elitism". I choose to be in awe of that gear. I choose to give credit to the brilliant designers and engineers that succeed where 99.99999% of the rest of us have not. Shame on you for pissing on the accomplishments of these highly skilled professionals that are at the top of their field of expertise. Lashing out in envy is the way of the resentful, puny minded twerps. And you are not sorry. You meant it, which is why you wrote it.
@Douglas Blake The specifications that your last comment refers to are not the same specifications that your previous comment refers to. Your first comment on specifications was the finished product, implying that those specifications determine that the sound quality of that equipment rivals the best in the industry. Now you go into a song and a dance on the history of specifications. All equipment has specifications. But the ones that are reported in reviews, in the company's owner's manuals -- the ones that you first wrote about -- mean zero, for knowing what the product sounds like. Your changing the focus from the specifications, that you first wrote about, to specifications on the parts that make up the box, is your way of admitting that you were wrong about your first use of specifications. And it was your first use of specifications to which I replied, and to which your next reply dodged. Now you are going into how specifications determine what a device can do and cannot do, which is a new topic, and is a typical ploy for someone that will not admit defeat, and, instead, throw unrelated items into the discussion, to try and avoid their original flawed comment. And my 10,000 to 1 bet was on the money. You never actually audition the best audio gear, such as the Innuos Statement, or the Aurender W20SE. You, instead, call it "Audiophile elitism", and that your mass produced parts are just as good. When you, Douglas Blake, shop for stereo equipment, you should go by the lab results (the specifications). I will go by my ears. You have not explained your disparaging "Audiophile elitism" remark. So I will remind you of your disrespectful remark, on every reply where you try to distance yourself from your disrespectful remark, that you aimed at the brilliant engineers that make the best of the best audio gear. If is one thing to be proud of the equipment that you build. But to disparage the far, far, superior equipment that others build is pathetic.
@Douglas Blake Rather than facing your prejudice, and facing your envy for equipment that you relish, you, instead, take shots at it. And when I point out you doing so, and when I point out you skirting your own words, you dig your heels in with a feigned, last effort assertion that it is not you that needs help. Folks like you are what makes this hobby such a challenge, because you spread so much BS. For you to insist that your massed produced equipment is on par with the finest equipment available, anywhere, is you spreading BS. I am reminding you, again, that you never auditioned the Innuos Statement nor the Aurender W20SE, nor anything close to their quality. And you still insist that your mass produced gear is on par with those best of the best boxes. Being exposed as an envy troll hurts. czcams.com/video/y7nTrdbCq64/video.html
Like stated below, a NAS is a computer/server... I've been in the IT industry for over 22 years, and the only thing that will make a difference (lag) will be if you are running solid state drives or spinning hard drives. Most people are going to store music on like a 4 or an 8 TB drive array, and if they are spinning drives, that can actually cause audio issues. In my home setup I run solid state drives, and they have almost no lag, but there still is some mainly when just accessing the music. Playback is perfect.
If you have - genuinely - been in the IT industry for 22 years (as opposed to, say, working in a shop that sells calculators) you'll know that a NAS is not simply a computer/server - and that spinning disc storage will not cause audio issues - there is no "audio" benefit to using SSD over HDD. The only possible Lag issue is simply the streamer you're using connecting to the NAS and selecting what to play - once playing there is no "lag".
@@Harald_Reindl Harald - I know exactly what a NAS is, I use two of them in my current system and have done so for years. Pointless comment yet again, and therefore ghosted.
A Nas is, in practice, a computer with an operating system and a power supply. instead of having a computer, it has 2. Data transfer is done by cables. using a NAS is completely counterproductive. More power supplies more clocks more cables. Soon there's more EMI RFI. Power supplies are a real problem. On a PC you can take the power supply out of the box if you like and shield all the internal cables. If the shield is done well, the advantages are many. If you don't use a NAS, you cut a network cable, most likely a switch from the equation at least 2 clocks, and especially one or two power supplies! On top of that, using the NAS requires one more information pass before reaching the usb or optical terminal. The smallest connection is in fact the best one, disk, ram, usb. All obviously shielded. When doing your next tests use a properly shielded machine and not a nuc or compact or portable pc. EMI RFI increases with the concentration of components in the PCB. By the way, use two direct power lines to power the pc and dac separately.
@@richardt3371 Everything I said is correct! It's a matter of study and testing. Start with NAS operating systems and end with EMI/RFI. Then put into practice what you learned, which I did and have been doing for over 15 years. There will be a happy surprise!
@@vlbphoto Thanks, but I'll continue to use the NAS drives I have. There is no issue whatsoever with EMI, RFI or any other initialism you want to throw into the mix. The "happy surprise" is that my Synologies do the work they are supposed to, independently of my Mac, and supply bit perfect music to my network streamers. Quite why you'd want to waste time and effort reverse engineering something that works perfectly, to make something that is unlikely to, is quite beyond me.
Analog is no picnic either. Choosing the right turntable, tone-arm, and cartridge, professionally dialing them in for ideal tracking, and isolating the turntable from feedback, is no easy task. And then there is the phono-amp, too, that needs to be carefully chosen. This all amounts to a fair amount of $$, and time to set it all up (assuming the owner knows how to "professionally" dial in the above).
pure nonsense! in a proper setup the digital audio goes over a optical connection to the amplifier with a proper DAC and digital room correction your analog crap has dozens of stages with noise
@John Holmes: Harald Reindl is an attention seeking, misinformation troll. You know how most people try to help each other with this hobby? Well, Harald Reindl seeks to stir things up, confuse things, and outright fabricate things. I suspect that some of what she says she actually believes (such as her believing that analog is crap), because she either cannot afford a decent analog set-up, or she never set-up her analog gear with any knowledge or precision -- so her analog experience sucks. Therefore, because her analog experience sucks, she wants to make the case that everyone's analog set-up sucks. Some of the best sounding digital recordings come from master "tapes". Yet, Ms. Reindel will rant along with all manner of nonsense. If nothing else, her trolling is entertaining. Cheers!
@@NoEgg4u come back when you built NAS/SAN storages, firewalls, networks, mailfilters, mailservers, fileservers, voip-systems, nameservers, database servers, webservers over many years from scratch and wrote some hundret thousand lines of program code running in production over 20 years to tell me something about computer systems and digital technology - you are even not capable to guess if someone is male or female by the name
@@Harald_Reindl And that is your reason why "analog is crap", even though amazing sounding digital songs are derived from analog master tapes? Throwing all manner of computer lingo into a discussion about "yet another good reason to stick with analogue" is your way of trying to impress someone with information that does not speak to the subject at hand. And all of your computer experience (assuming you actually have computer experience) means zero for properly setting up a turntable. How is "analog crap" (your words), when so many great sounding digital releases are derived from analog tapes? You built NAS, firewalls, and databases, so surely that gives you the information you need to explain why there are many great digital songs that are derived from analog tapes. Building nameservers, webservers, and mailservers must give you the answer to world peace, too. Be sure to copy/paste your comment for all other debates that you lose, where that experience has nothing to do with the subject at hand. Remember to explain why great sounding digital songs, that are derived from analog tapes actually sound fantastic, when (your words) analog is crap. (I identify you as female)
what nonsense again, just ask yourself how you are able to run windows om every crappy computer in the world without any problems and think about how much more complex an os is compared to a simple music file. you do not have to handle digital music like an lp. you can send any digital file around the world and it's still there 100%.
Modern internet connections allow plenty of bandwidth to stream lossless digital streams in much better than CD quality PCM or DSD. There is no reason to stream compressed audio anymore. Even MQA is meaningless when you can go 100% lossless with digital master quality. It doesn't matter if your digital audio comes from an internal drive, a NAS or an online service, if the data is identical. Keeping the analog audio free of digital noise can be an issue, but fixable and it's not an argument for either way of getting the audio.
"digital master quality" is audiophile nonsense, you simply get a different mastering so that it sounds different - in most cases more bass and more treble, that's all
@@Harald_Reindl I've not observed any elevated bass or treble with Amazon HD Music vs. CD playback on anything from red book 44.1kHz 16 bits to 192kHz 24 bits tracks. Actually it's rather opposite. People paying extra for lossless FLAC streaming such as Amazon HD Music are seeking higher fidelity and have higher performance systems where such EQ is undesired. EQ makes more sense for compressed low cost streaming to smart phone earbuds and small Bluetooth speakers.
@@Harald_Reindl Recently things have shifted for major streaming providers to allow actual master quality to be streamed lossless. For example, the Apple Music service streams music with this stated requirement for their premium master streaming: "The PCM audio of the masters from the mastering house must not be altered. For example, it must not be up- or down-sampled, the bit depth must not be changed, it must not be watermarked, and so on". The idea is that what your DAC receives is what was produced from the studio exactly. Even highest fidelity uncompressed master quality audio is trivial for a modern internet connection. For video we still need compression.
@@petermortensen2405 Peter, I'm afraid nothing you can say will affect Harald's Weltanschauung. There is, unfortunately, a seemingly coordinated effort on the part of pseudo-audiophiles (like John Darko et al) to denigrate hi-res audio. Somebody, somewhere, decided that anything more than CD quality is snake oil, any files supplied at more than the magic 16bit/44.1 numbers is "marketing" rather than simply providing higher sampling frequencies and/or greater bit depth. It seems to be the one area of music appreciation (I refuse the epithet "audiophile" as it's both a misnomer and a weaponised and divisive term) that internet warriors can unite behind to attack - "you're not hearing anything other than a track that's been artificially manipulated to sound louder/ have more bass/more treble (delete as appropriate)". No matter what you tell people about reduced roll-off, or greater accuracy, or even a greater sense of openness with a higher-than-CD-quality file, you'll just get short, usually passive-aggressive, claims that 44.1 is all you can hear. Point out that you have an SACD recording, and that the SACD layer sounds better than the CD layer, and you'll hear the same nonsense fired back at you,, time and again. Heaven forfend you buy a 192 file and consider it sounds better than the the CD quality file - it MUST be because the studio or the music service has manipulated it to be different! I've even had someone buy a 96khz file, downsample it to CD quality, then upsample that to 96khz and challenge me to tell the difference. Um, well, no, not now you've screwed with the format, moron. Tell you what, let's downsample a 10MB 360dpi photo to a 156kb 72dpi thumbnail, save it, then try to upsample it into an A4 size photo. Is it the same clear photo of a labrador as before, or is it, gasp, a pixellated mess? I've learned to simply nod and smile, and continue to buy and download in hi-res, or CD, or on vinyl, or in whatever damn format I want, and listen to the music, not the ill-informed Luddites and keyboard warriors.
either way, don't forget to backup the data!
no backup, no mercy
But how is the isolated circuit powered? Nicest way to do it might be powering separate boards by battery supplies which are only charged during the time the device is not used. As this method is known for high precision instruments, might this be a high end solution?
Well my media server is from Dell with multiple XEONs and a RAID10 through a Cisco L3 managed network on CAT6 with multiple Ubiquiti APs. I can stream to any number of computer based audio and video devices around the place. Some day I will even have a digital source feed my currently vinyl only stereo.
My music server is a DIY build. Raspberry Pi3, AlloBoss DAC, 2tb hard drive, 3A linear power supply. Running Volumio. Have it about 4 years now and really love it. Most of my music files are flac. It can also access my backup Synology NAS when necessary. Really cool IMHO!
If you want a central place to load music from, use a specialized computer with passive cooling and only SSDs/M.2 drives for storage. And customized noise reduction on as many surfaces as you're willing to. But then you could easily start going insane and thinking about living in a quieter area, replacing windows with walls, and other crazy things.
you completly missed the topic - audiofools think a computer introduces noise in a digital signal and only when it's a audio signal
@@Harald_Reindl Always introduce! But it's only in video and especially in audio that it's more noticeable. On spreadsheets you don't notice anything! It all depends on the use of the machine and what is used to pass the signal to the speakers.
@@vlbphoto bullshit - forget your dumb analog world - I talked about DIGITAL SIGNAL and only a fool does DAC that early in the chain
@@vlbphoto on spreadsheets and other data a bit-flip would be fatal, for audio it won't be noticeable at all
@@Harald_Reindl Thanks for the info.
I won't ever have to bother with md5 checksums ever again. What a relief.
Hate to be insulting, but you are an idiot. People who actually work with computers know that computers and networks routinely corrupt data streams.
I have a MacBook Air with no fan and use Audirvana with a DSD compatible DAC. Since I've got 2TB of storage and 16GB of RAM nothing gets in the way of my music. I also have a Mac mini with the same specs which does have a fan, but the fan literally never revs up when just playing back music (M1 one Macs are beasts).. Not sure investing money in old hardware and techniques is what I would do.
@Douglas Blake Granted you are correct, I still don't see how a completely solid state machine would produce any electrical noise? Of course, I am no expert on this, and I only use my DAC with the intereated amp for my headphones. I get much more noise with a different DAC (with no amp) that's plugged in to my stereo with a 3.5 mm plug. The DAC I use for my laptop is USB through and thorugh.
@Douglas Blake Cool, thanks for the detailed explanation. I think if anything, I only notice dubious recordings/masterings, where background noise is quite noticable. But I was actually thinking that in a NAS/server environment, you'd probably require a lot more juice in your router/switch since some of the DSD files I have would need to stream several gigabytes per album, and some 192/24 files I have take up hundreds of megs per file, which is also why I went for some internal storage over having to stream over the network.
I´m not sure i get the galvanic isolation-thing. Does each curcuit on both end not need a powersupply? And does that not introduce noise?
it's about grounding noise - optical digital transmission and you are done
It's wouldn't be Ask Paul if he didn't start with a Dad joke or questionable accent referencing the location of the letter writer. :D
Perfect answer. NAS drive all the way - easy to store on, easy to upgrade and increase storage for hi-res audio files, easily accessible by multiple streamers, easy to isolate any issues without stopping the rest of your system - it's a far better system than internal hard drives. I have two Synology NAS drives - one for standard music up to 24/48 which serves the Sonos speakers in the kitchen, study etc, and one for higher resolution and DSD files for "serious" listening in the library. As both are connected by ethernet in my study, I can't hear them in the library or rest of the house, and I just drag and drop new files to the NAS from my Mac.
Air gap technology... it sounds impressive but IS it ? The isolated circuitry is of an active nature I'm sure .. but how does the power supply get into it .? That is hard wired !
Electrical noise should not be a major concern in your normal operation unless you try to reduce noise in every step possible starting from your main electric power line input, along with your home shared electrical system scheme and if you are using any number of devices and machines under the same electrical node. So there's no need to freak out about electrical noise also since computers themselves are grounded. About NAS or internal should be quite the same in general sense but even better if you have a high quality computer. HDD or SSD wont matter since audio doesn't require high bandwidth operation compared to video. Just make sure you don't have crap equipment and you'll be ok. Also of DSD or HQ-PCM if you're streaming audio to play on a phone, tv or similar devices that simply wont be good idea since those type of devices have low-quality DAC chips with crappy speakers so no case to bother.
why should I give a shit about the DAC in my TV? It has a optical digital output and my Yamaha AVR has a optical digital input - case closed
I only have crappy compressed music from the Napster e.a. days on my hard drive. Streaming High Res is just the same as streaming from a NAS, so why bother? Only when something is not available for streaming maybe.
Not everyone wants to pay for a streaming service monthly, some are quite expensive.
@@TheGamerUnknown They are a steal. You can buy one physical cd (a new release) for a month's worth of streaming in high res audio.
@@D1N02 I don't like tracks to disappear over the years from my playlists and hence I have 54000 FLAC tracks with at least 3 backups and one on my smartphones SD-Card
Shout out from Adelaide. Keep it simple, none of this matters if your DAC is galvanically isolated... ;)
to programmatically and not expensive enough for audiofools
All hail the High Priest of Audio Subjectophilia and prepare to make donations!
The only thing I can imagine is just getting a NAS so you can put it somewhere where you don't hear it. Also don't bother with audiophile switches and ethernet cables, that's pure 'snake oil'.
Or just get a SSD, problem solved, more efficient and doesn't make any sound
UTP (Unshielded Twisted Pair) ethernet cable is inherently designed to reject noise and interference.
the audiofools talking about noise in the signal and not from the hardware
What is this Octave you talk about Paul... and please tell me it's not a subscription model.
It's our music management program that's yet to be released and no, it's not a subscription service.
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio good we need more competition... as I have been using Audirvana for a very long time, I can tell you it is very buggy, but yet I have very few choices.
hey paul love your channel! i've been trying to learn more about amplifier class and i'm wondering: should i leave my pioneer sx-850 on all the time? and if so, which input should be selected? does volume knob matter? thanks!
Paul would probably tell you to leave any piece of audio equipment on. I say shut it off.
@@spacemissing and i'm taking your word over what we assume paul's word will be because.....
Do you think Audirvana is better than Roon?
I had both then settled on Audirvana for sound quality. But I am interested in this Octave Paul talks about because I am not signing on to Audirvana's subscription model for music I already own.
A respectable correction here. He didn't define what the "NAS" is and that comes in many flavors. Paul said that the files are stored the same way either on a "NAS" or an Internal HD. In the case of a single HD NAS likely it will store files using the same way thay maybe a PC does. Maybe not. What is the Operating System of the NAS ( Likely Linux, likely ext4 )? If your playing your content over a LAN on a Windows PC then for sure the file storage structure is very different between the likely Linux NAS ( ext4 ) and the Windows PC ( NTFS ).
I suggest Paul consider storing content ( video/audio ) on a bigger type of NAS. I'll use mine as an example. I use a QNAP RAID5 NAS. Four 4TB Seagate IronWolf drives ( 16TB ) in RAID5 resulting in just over 10TB of usable NAS space. And that NAS is connected to a Gigabit LAN. All devices on the LAN support 1GBit transfers. As to if that makes a sonic difference I can't say. I assure you the way that audio/video content ( including DSD files ) are stored on my QNAP NAS is VERY different then is stored on a Windows or Apple computer.. Is there an advantage. I donno. Maybe quicker????? For sure more secure.
It’s not different at all, aside from the data possibly being striped across multiple disks in a RAID5 scenario. It makes no difference to how the data is retrieved and sent along the network interface for playback.
Beyond that, RAID volumes exist on macOS and Windows. There’s nothing special about Linux or ext4.
@@DavidEvenson "It makes no difference to how the data is retrieved and sent along the network interface for playback" - I will agree with you that the playback device probably sees the same data stream regardless of how it is stored on the RAIDx. I'm not sure if there is going to be any sonic difference.
at the point the file enters the networking stack it's irrelevant what filesystem stores it and you can have performance and redundancy on every operating system these days, storage performance is completly irrelevant for tiny data like audio and most of your networks aren't faster than a single disk because you guys hardly have 10 Gigabit networks in your homes
@@wilcalint "I'm not sure if there is going to be any sonic difference" - i am sure there can't be any difference! why do you guys think a dumb tiny audio file is something magical?
Don't forget Roon :)
For US$8 per month I have lossless CD quality or better streaming of approx. 100 million music tracks from Amazon Music HD. Why bother with less costing more? I used to think streaming online was not for audiophiles, but technology has improved a lot and now it has become rather ignorant to think streaming is any less than local storage for audio. Same for video, which is much more demanding now with 4K being standard, btw.
The answer to this question is questionable at best.
A NAS is just a server with a higher density of disks (generally). It has an operating system and motherboard and all the same pieces-parts that a “server” does. There is no difference in how data is retrieved from either device. They are in practice identical devices.
but u can have the nas elsewhere in the house, where it does all its work and isolate the noise.
@@anikiace2253 I keep my NAS and servers in a rack in the basement. I wonder what noise you’re talking about.
@@DavidEvenson if u dont see his point, then u dont see his point. others do.
@@anikiace2253 Sure, of course. And those others can still be wrong. You’re claiming the difference is the location of the device., and I’m trying to point out that it’s a distinction without any basis. Both servers and NAS devices can be installed anywhere.
@@anikiace2253 you can do the same with your PC acting as server, mine is router, firewall, server, wireless-accesspoint, network-switch, virtualization host, music-server, databse-server, webserver, mailserver, development machine and what not in one simple mini-tower running 365/24 since 2011
I liked Audirvana when it was not a SaaS and you could just buy it.
connect you DAC optical and you are done
Too many variables in hi-fi these days.. I've given up.
You are right 😂
The fun of hifi, other than listening to the music, is the research and putting together your unique system. I agree with the above comment and Steve Guttenberg recently said, nowadays hifi equipment is mostly great, so just buy what you like because you’re going to have great sound. I have a system I love which I will keep tweaking as it’s part of the hobby, but I love going to see other systems to see what they’ve put together, it’s a never ending puzzle of fun imo!
In my opinion, a good part of these "variables" are things that cannot actually be heard.
good speakers, digital optical connection to a proper designed AVR, case closed from the technical point fo view - the most improtant is room acoustics which makes your 2000 $ speakers sound like 20000 $ speakers in an audiophile setup with no clue that 50-70% of what you hear is your room
4000 $ for the equipment, 5000-10000$ for room accoustics and you are done the next 20-30 years
@Douglas Blake the 4000 $ includes speakers, amplifiers, cables, subwoofers, antimode and no i can't move my furniture around - in fact i invested 13000 in the past year for gear, speakers and room-acoustics and as i can operate REW and the goal was 300 ms reverbs over full-range it takes some money - you can't trick physics at low frequencies
I use a NAS, 2 actuallly, that an Asus laptop using foobar feeding an ifi usb to coax and an ifi purifier at the DAC to reclock and clean the signal. Take the purifier off and the signal audibly degrades.
I've been thinking of getting the ifi purifier myself.How good is it?
The best digital sound quality will be achieved via a custom-built computer that will send your DAC a (virtually) jitter-free, noise-free, bit perfect data stream.
Those data can originate from an on-line service, such as Qobuz, or from laptop, etc. As long as those data get fed to the custom-built computer, then that custom-built computer will act as a high-end, super accurate, noise-free, jitter-free conduit that feeds your data to your DAC.
The hard part is expertly choosing the parts for that custom-built computer. Every part, from the motherboard to the CPU to the power supply, etc, are all key for accomplishing this goal.
Lastly, you will need the software and the operating system on the custom-built computer to not run anything other than what is needed for the music task at hand.
All of the above is a tall order. But it is how you get the best digital sound quality.
Cheers!
Doesn't need to be expensive. A raspberry pi running volumio or even better a pi with the extra hardware Pi2AES for outputs like I2S. That will be leagues above a desktop PC. Get people 95% of the way to buying a several thousand dollar dedicated streamer.
@Douglas Blake I suspect that you are building generic PCs, with standard, mass produced parts. Such PCs will do the job. They will not, however, do the best job, which was the focus of my comment -- because Barry, who sent Paul the question, asked about getting the best DSD experience.
For digital audio, you always need a DAC. To convert digital data to an analog wave form, that is the job of a Digital to Analog Converter.
I suspect that you mean that you do not need a stand-alone DAC, because your home theater PC has a built-in DAC. All computers, today, have built-in DACs.
When you use a built-in DAC, you then must use the built-in pre-amp, too. On a department store stereo, they will be a good match. But for a stereo, such as in Paul's IRS room, you will hear the shortcomings of that gear.
I am not knocking that gear. But it is like comparing a Corvette to a LaFerrari.
The Corvette is very desirable. But it is not on the level of a LaFerrari.
The type of custom built computer that I wrote about would be LaFerrari level, and would be a proper fit for Paul's IRS room.
@Douglas Blake The designers of the best gear design their own caps, their own power supplies, their own DACs, their own everything (short of the CPUs and the memory chips). None of them use mass produced, off the shelf components.
Providing specs, as you did, reveals 0% of how the unit will sound. The only test is to play the unit, and have your ears send the sound waves to your brain, which will determine the sound quality. There is no shortage of equipment with great specs that have nothing special sound quality.
Give me a unit with lousy specs and great sound quality. I will take that unit over any box with great specs and lousy sound quality.
You revealed your bias against quality products, by calling them "Audiophile elitism". Although there are people that simply want to show off, there are also people that simply want fantastic sound quality. They are not elitists for wanting great sound quality.
Have you compared your ESS, TTPCs, 1200, 1220, RealTek ALC, l-m-n-o-p boxes to the Innuos Statement, or the Aurender W20SE?
I will lay 10,000 to 1 odds that you never have, never will, and yet you have concluded that your l-m-n-o-p boxes sound just as good.
You simply will not accept that there are experts that design and build exotic things (homes, ships, cars, aircraft, medical gear, etc, and even computer gear) that are beyond your skills and beyond your reach, and so you lash out at that computer gear, and call it "elitism". I choose to be in awe of that gear. I choose to give credit to the brilliant designers and engineers that succeed where 99.99999% of the rest of us have not.
Shame on you for pissing on the accomplishments of these highly skilled professionals that are at the top of their field of expertise. Lashing out in envy is the way of the resentful, puny minded twerps. And you are not sorry. You meant it, which is why you wrote it.
@Douglas Blake The specifications that your last comment refers to are not the same specifications that your previous comment refers to. Your first comment on specifications was the finished product, implying that those specifications determine that the sound quality of that equipment rivals the best in the industry.
Now you go into a song and a dance on the history of specifications. All equipment has specifications. But the ones that are reported in reviews, in the company's owner's manuals -- the ones that you first wrote about -- mean zero, for knowing what the product sounds like.
Your changing the focus from the specifications, that you first wrote about, to specifications on the parts that make up the box, is your way of admitting that you were wrong about your first use of specifications. And it was your first use of specifications to which I replied, and to which your next reply dodged.
Now you are going into how specifications determine what a device can do and cannot do, which is a new topic, and is a typical ploy for someone that will not admit defeat, and, instead, throw unrelated items into the discussion, to try and avoid their original flawed comment.
And my 10,000 to 1 bet was on the money. You never actually audition the best audio gear, such as the Innuos Statement, or the Aurender W20SE. You, instead, call it "Audiophile elitism", and that your mass produced parts are just as good.
When you, Douglas Blake, shop for stereo equipment, you should go by the lab results (the specifications).
I will go by my ears.
You have not explained your disparaging "Audiophile elitism" remark. So I will remind you of your disrespectful remark, on every reply where you try to distance yourself from your disrespectful remark, that you aimed at the brilliant engineers that make the best of the best audio gear.
If is one thing to be proud of the equipment that you build. But to disparage the far, far, superior equipment that others build is pathetic.
@Douglas Blake Rather than facing your prejudice, and facing your envy for equipment that you relish, you, instead, take shots at it. And when I point out you doing so, and when I point out you skirting your own words, you dig your heels in with a feigned, last effort assertion that it is not you that needs help.
Folks like you are what makes this hobby such a challenge, because you spread so much BS.
For you to insist that your massed produced equipment is on par with the finest equipment available, anywhere, is you spreading BS.
I am reminding you, again, that you never auditioned the Innuos Statement nor the Aurender W20SE, nor anything close to their quality. And you still insist that your mass produced gear is on par with those best of the best boxes.
Being exposed as an envy troll hurts.
czcams.com/video/y7nTrdbCq64/video.html
Yes but the galvanic isolation is just power it's not data is it? Still waiting for my answer from you with the USB power lol
Isn't the server also just streaming a (encoded) bit stream? So the noise added should not have any effect on that unless it flips a bit 🤔
Like stated below, a NAS is a computer/server... I've been in the IT industry for over 22 years, and the only thing that will make a difference (lag) will be if you are running solid state drives or spinning hard drives. Most people are going to store music on like a 4 or an 8 TB drive array, and if they are spinning drives, that can actually cause audio issues. In my home setup I run solid state drives, and they have almost no lag, but there still is some mainly when just accessing the music. Playback is perfect.
If you have - genuinely - been in the IT industry for 22 years (as opposed to, say, working in a shop that sells calculators) you'll know that a NAS is not simply a computer/server - and that spinning disc storage will not cause audio issues - there is no "audio" benefit to using SSD over HDD. The only possible Lag issue is simply the streamer you're using connecting to the NAS and selecting what to play - once playing there is no "lag".
@@richardt3371 a NAS is simply a server with a few disks and for noobs it gets a special enclosure and a closed operating system
@@Harald_Reindl Harald - I know exactly what a NAS is, I use two of them in my current system and have done so for years. Pointless comment yet again, and therefore ghosted.
@@richardt3371 child a NAS is a computer with a Linux/BSD operating system and some disks in a RAID running Samba to share your files - that's it
A Nas is, in practice, a computer with an operating system and a power supply. instead of having a computer, it has 2. Data transfer is done by cables. using a NAS is completely counterproductive. More power supplies more clocks more cables. Soon there's more EMI RFI. Power supplies are a real problem.
On a PC you can take the power supply out of the box if you like and shield all the internal cables. If the shield is done well, the advantages are many.
If you don't use a NAS, you cut a network cable, most likely a switch from the equation at least 2 clocks, and especially one or two power supplies! On top of that, using the NAS requires one more information pass before reaching the usb or optical terminal.
The smallest connection is in fact the best one, disk, ram, usb. All obviously shielded.
When doing your next tests use a properly shielded machine and not a nuc or compact or portable pc. EMI RFI increases with the concentration of components in the PCB. By the way, use two direct power lines to power the pc and dac separately.
Almost everything you said is incorrect. Bravo sir.
@@richardt3371 Everything I said is correct! It's a matter of study and testing.
Start with NAS operating systems and end with EMI/RFI. Then put into practice what you learned, which I did and have been doing for over 15 years. There will be a happy surprise!
@@vlbphoto Thanks, but I'll continue to use the NAS drives I have. There is no issue whatsoever with EMI, RFI or any other initialism you want to throw into the mix. The "happy surprise" is that my Synologies do the work they are supposed to, independently of my Mac, and supply bit perfect music to my network streamers. Quite why you'd want to waste time and effort reverse engineering something that works perfectly, to make something that is unlikely to, is quite beyond me.
yet another good reason to stick with analogue ;)
Analog is no picnic either. Choosing the right turntable, tone-arm, and cartridge, professionally dialing them in for ideal tracking, and isolating the turntable from feedback, is no easy task. And then there is the phono-amp, too, that needs to be carefully chosen. This all amounts to a fair amount of $$, and time to set it all up (assuming the owner knows how to "professionally" dial in the above).
pure nonsense! in a proper setup the digital audio goes over a optical connection to the amplifier with a proper DAC and digital room correction
your analog crap has dozens of stages with noise
@John Holmes:
Harald Reindl is an attention seeking, misinformation troll.
You know how most people try to help each other with this hobby? Well, Harald Reindl seeks to stir things up, confuse things, and outright fabricate things. I suspect that some of what she says she actually believes (such as her believing that analog is crap), because she either cannot afford a decent analog set-up, or she never set-up her analog gear with any knowledge or precision -- so her analog experience sucks. Therefore, because her analog experience sucks, she wants to make the case that everyone's analog set-up sucks.
Some of the best sounding digital recordings come from master "tapes". Yet, Ms. Reindel will rant along with all manner of nonsense.
If nothing else, her trolling is entertaining.
Cheers!
@@NoEgg4u come back when you built NAS/SAN storages, firewalls, networks, mailfilters, mailservers, fileservers, voip-systems, nameservers, database servers, webservers over many years from scratch and wrote some hundret thousand lines of program code running in production over 20 years to tell me something about computer systems and digital technology - you are even not capable to guess if someone is male or female by the name
@@Harald_Reindl And that is your reason why "analog is crap", even though amazing sounding digital songs are derived from analog master tapes?
Throwing all manner of computer lingo into a discussion about "yet another good reason to stick with analogue" is your way of trying to impress someone with information that does not speak to the subject at hand.
And all of your computer experience (assuming you actually have computer experience) means zero for properly setting up a turntable.
How is "analog crap" (your words), when so many great sounding digital releases are derived from analog tapes?
You built NAS, firewalls, and databases, so surely that gives you the information you need to explain why there are many great digital songs that are derived from analog tapes.
Building nameservers, webservers, and mailservers must give you the answer to world peace, too. Be sure to copy/paste your comment for all other debates that you lose, where that experience has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
Remember to explain why great sounding digital songs, that are derived from analog tapes actually sound fantastic, when (your words) analog is crap.
(I identify you as female)
what nonsense again, just ask yourself how you are able to run windows om every crappy computer in the world without any problems and think about how much more complex an os is compared to a simple music file. you do not have to handle digital music like an lp. you can send any digital file around the world and it's still there 100%.
audiophiles are caught in an analog mindset
os win... takes time.... no os is better
Modern internet connections allow plenty of bandwidth to stream lossless digital streams in much better than CD quality PCM or DSD. There is no reason to stream compressed audio anymore. Even MQA is meaningless when you can go 100% lossless with digital master quality. It doesn't matter if your digital audio comes from an internal drive, a NAS or an online service, if the data is identical. Keeping the analog audio free of digital noise can be an issue, but fixable and it's not an argument for either way of getting the audio.
"digital master quality" is audiophile nonsense, you simply get a different mastering so that it sounds different - in most cases more bass and more treble, that's all
@@Harald_Reindl I've not observed any elevated bass or treble with Amazon HD Music vs. CD playback on anything from red book 44.1kHz 16 bits to 192kHz 24 bits tracks. Actually it's rather opposite. People paying extra for lossless FLAC streaming such as Amazon HD Music are seeking higher fidelity and have higher performance systems where such EQ is undesired. EQ makes more sense for compressed low cost streaming to smart phone earbuds and small Bluetooth speakers.
@@petermortensen2405 there is still nothing like "master quality" which could make an audible difference between 44100 and hires
@@Harald_Reindl Recently things have shifted for major streaming providers to allow actual master quality to be streamed lossless. For example, the Apple Music service streams music with this stated requirement for their premium master streaming: "The PCM audio of the masters from the mastering house must not be altered. For example, it must not be up- or down-sampled, the bit depth must not be changed, it must not be watermarked, and so on". The idea is that what your DAC receives is what was produced from the studio exactly. Even highest fidelity uncompressed master quality audio is trivial for a modern internet connection. For video we still need compression.
@@petermortensen2405 Peter, I'm afraid nothing you can say will affect Harald's Weltanschauung. There is, unfortunately, a seemingly coordinated effort on the part of pseudo-audiophiles (like John Darko et al) to denigrate hi-res audio. Somebody, somewhere, decided that anything more than CD quality is snake oil, any files supplied at more than the magic 16bit/44.1 numbers is "marketing" rather than simply providing higher sampling frequencies and/or greater bit depth.
It seems to be the one area of music appreciation (I refuse the epithet "audiophile" as it's both a misnomer and a weaponised and divisive term) that internet warriors can unite behind to attack - "you're not hearing anything other than a track that's been artificially manipulated to sound louder/ have more bass/more treble (delete as appropriate)". No matter what you tell people about reduced roll-off, or greater accuracy, or even a greater sense of openness with a higher-than-CD-quality file, you'll just get short, usually passive-aggressive, claims that 44.1 is all you can hear.
Point out that you have an SACD recording, and that the SACD layer sounds better than the CD layer, and you'll hear the same nonsense fired back at you,, time and again. Heaven forfend you buy a 192 file and consider it sounds better than the the CD quality file - it MUST be because the studio or the music service has manipulated it to be different!
I've even had someone buy a 96khz file, downsample it to CD quality, then upsample that to 96khz and challenge me to tell the difference. Um, well, no, not now you've screwed with the format, moron. Tell you what, let's downsample a 10MB 360dpi photo to a 156kb 72dpi thumbnail, save it, then try to upsample it into an A4 size photo. Is it the same clear photo of a labrador as before, or is it, gasp, a pixellated mess?
I've learned to simply nod and smile, and continue to buy and download in hi-res, or CD, or on vinyl, or in whatever damn format I want, and listen to the music, not the ill-informed Luddites and keyboard warriors.