Me too. It can only - and will often - disturb playback; very many interrupts it creates.

Keyboard and mouse are connected by rather normal PS/2 cable, and the display by means of a 15m/45' very decent shielded VGA cable with gold plated connectors. Works flawlessly.

Yes - Yes - No.

Even with all disks spinning you can't hear them. Well, I can't.

The box is there open for I think a year now, and the slow spinning fans aren't really audible either. Btw, since this photo was taken with 1/60, maybe you can calculate the speed of the fans, since they look like standing still, which they were not.
Ok, the massege is that cooling the drives is not necessary at all at the ambient room temperature, and once the box is out of sight (should go to the basement right under it in my case) I don't see a reason not to leave it like this forever.
I'm thinking of experimenting with a SATA 4 x multiplexer, which is IMO fully legit for speed, since the speed (better : capacity) is always needed between two disks only, so it only takes the good strategy to what to multiplex (there are 8 SATAII connections on that mobo).

Btw, the display, keyboard and mouse are all cable connected, though 12 meters (36' or so) away.

I don't think the TDA1547 is so cr*ppy, if you only accept the oversampling ...

Hi Chris,


That completely depends on the DAC. E.g. the TwinDAC+ does so indeed, the CrazyT does not. Just two examples from the same house.
Keep in mind that reasons can exist for these disgn decisions, like the TwinDAC+ allowing for both SPDIF and USB connections, and the CrazyT being a "standalone DAC" actually not needing anything than a disk to feed it with data, that not being possible with SPDIF (and added to that a certain type of USB connecting that just does).


I2S is an internal protocol for transporting music (PCM) data. "Internal" means : from one IC (like receiver chip) to another (like the DAC itself). It is a most RAW (meaning lossless) connection, a bit similar to SDI connections for video which are found on the better devices (I mention this so you may understand when you know about SDI). I don't think I2S can be an external connection, or maybe a very short one. Anyway, as you can imagine this is not done anyway, because no other devices could connect because it's no "external" standard like SPDIF is. But, suppose you'd have a CDPlayer with I2S output and a DAC with I2S input, it would be the best connection possible.

Oh, and note that different "protocols" can make use of different functionalities. E.g. SPDIF is one way traffic (the receiver e.g. cannot tell "please send again, something went wrong"), whereas USB does have two way traffic. Whether this is utilized by the USB DAC is another matter, but the CrazyT should because it's normally error-corrected reading from disk.


Btw, do not get blind of avoiding the soundcard, thinking that USB is *always* better. I'd rather put it some other way around : since USB DACs are relatively easy to produce, most often you end up with a poorly design, though "cheap" (read : not all the attention was put to it, that could).

Peter

Coincidentally I saw this tonight too. At this moment I don't know how to copy that.

Plus an additional 10Kg somewhere.

Well, I'm curious for the result ...

Oh yes Leif, this is a beautiful and handy "machine". But of course when you take the GB Ethernet as the transport medium, there's a whole world of solutions, like in my case mounting all the backup disks in other PC's. Or just the data itself. But please keep in mind that any copy that takes e.g. 4 hours with the internal disks, takes 12 hours then minimum *if* you have a real throughput of 1Gb/s (which it most often is not).

But I'm a nitwit.  Similar is that I want the disks to spin down.

Steve, it just slips to my mind that since a few versions ago this should be solved. But is it ? I can't test it myself since I don't have the problem.

Thanks,
Peter

With USB connected DACs, yes.
I thought you just bought one ??


Maybe it wasn't your subject, but I don't think any soundcard is good as such. Anyway the FireFace is not IMO. It is good at passing through SPDIF, and it is good at it for several reasons, one of them it being an external soundcard.

Of course I can't know how all soundcards sound, but usually the higher grade soundcards like Fireface, Lynx and a few more, end up sounding the best in their leage. I'm fine with that, but a dedicated DAC made for good sound sounds better. Theoretically a 1200 euro (or whatever it is) 56 channel with (not all channels) 192/24 soundcard can't sound "good" if compared with a 2 channel DAC that's more expensive. Also, I don't think DACs are over-priced as long as they are in the 1000+ leage. A lot of development and knowledge goes into it. I know ... 

Apart from the messy inside, this is what I'm using now for a couple of months, and I must say .

This is my Vista playback machine with 4TB of music on-line, all with SATAII-speed. 2 spare connections (and spaces) left, so with a theoretical 6TB on-line (for current disk sizes) the configuration is this :

1 x ATA (IDE) boot disk (the left most shown). No music on that one.

The next 4 are 1 TB disks, containing music data. They are just separate volumes (hence the most decent - / less complex type of volumes), XXHighEnd making one logical volume of it anyway (Galery function).

The additional (6th) one in the drive bays is an on-line backup disk. Say it has the most economical size (which currently is 750GB), unrelated to the source disk's sizes. It serves as a backup disk for newly ripped albums, and it is replaced with a fresh one when the current one is full. They are bought when they are needed, and at the most economical size as occurs at that time.

The disk laying on top consumes the ad-hoc connection, and that connection serves as a connection for (manually) (re)backing up data from one of the source volumes, or it serves as an input connection for restoring data or wherever a source to copy comes from, like a disk from another PC.

According to the latter too, all is about speed. Please note the importance of this when the volume of data becomes really large, and your total amount of data can be copied in 10 hours (doable) with SATAII to 300 hours with 100Mbit Ethernet (totally unacceptable) with the various connection types hence speeds in between. In sequence of speed : 10Mbit Ethernet, WiFi 11MBit, USB 1.1, ATA (IDE), WiFi 54MBit, 100Mbit Ethernet, USB 2.0, Firewire400, Firewire800, SATA, SATAII (there are some more like Ultra ATA, SCSI, but they are out of date or not for home PC useage).

Important : The speed can be increased a little by some types of RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). Note the "Independent" ...  not true !! . RAID configurations, except for RAID1 are DEpendent; they are dependent on the configuration itself, might it be hardware or software; Can't you copy that in a new or other system when needed, all is lost. The moral : keep it simple ! Just single volumes, and as said, XXHighEnd is disigned for it (it makes one large volume out of an umlimited amount without any spur of danger).

The number of disks you see in below picture, are kind of outrageous for a more or less normal PC. As said, the one on top is an ad-hoc backup connection/disk, as well as one on-line in the bays. The disks outside are backup disks too. When do I need those ? well, I *did* need them at making a backup to them which was only once, and I will need them when something bad happens (it did once, see Spanned Windows Volumes ... maybe not).
Do not use any RAID configuration again to maintain your so called backups. Thus, e.g. before mentioned RAID1 configuration is safe by itself according to the arguments mentioned before, but like e.g. RAID5 it just copies YOUR behaviour. When your behaviour is exidentally deleting some bunch of data, it's immediately deleted from your RAID "backup" disks as well. So, RAID only protects against hardware failures, and it does not protect against you.

The outrageous number of disks directly connected, does not harm the PSU (useage) at all. Why ? well, the main reason is because -like me- you could use Galeries to access all, and my Galeries are on the boot disk (with   backup of that elsewhere, but never mind that). Now, assuming that the boot disk is always spinning, it just as well can spin to serve access to the Galeries; When I choose an Album to play, only then one (and only one) of the other disks start spinning for a couple of minutes.
Important :Only the SATA(II) connection guarantees that idle disks will spin down. With other connections (like USB/Firewire) it depends largely on the intelligence built in the (obviously) external box, with a 90% chance of Not.
Concluded : I will use 2 disks at the same time only, or 3 when a backup disk is involved.

Any disadvantages ? Yes !

Firstly, you have to adopt the idea of hen deleting Albums, you don't delete them from the backup disks. Too much hustle ! But, when you need a restore, you'll have them back !

Then, as often happens, you upgrade CoverArt. Go and find the disk where the according backup is on ? So you better find a method of saving your latest changes (could be a re-rip as well), that backup means to be restored over (!) an initial Restore when applicable.

Next, you'll need a decent administration. In the literal case as how I presented it, because of two reasons :
1. At a restore you 'll need to know where the (backup) sources are to restore to what;
2. Your backup disks are not 1:1 to the source disks because the backup disks consist of more volumes than the sources (this is because of smaller disks are always more economical, hence cheaper, than large (newest technology) disks.

Lastly, obviously it takes you more time and attention to perform a restore. I say : so what. You'd need to intervent a couple of time (switch backup disks) and you thouroughly need to follow the administration. No big deal. After a few days throughput time (you being at your work or sleeping, the system working hard), all is done.


... But with all due respect ... making a regular full backup of everything is out of the question, and by the time it's half way you'd want another. Think of this carefully, because this follows from the amount of data (and no SATA(II) connections left, hence sloooww connections).

Peter

No it isn't. Okay, in Windows help somewhere I guess.

But on that matter, since XX is getting closer to an official version, it needs an official manual as well. So that will be there.
A lot of work, but in fact a substraction of all the bits and pieces from the Releasenotes in a structured form.

Hi Johan,

you couldn't guess it, but the sole fact that I said nothing, implies that I think the ideas are good. I will implement them differently though.
When ? not yet. I think everybody would agree that it's 24bit time now.

Sorry I did not honour your idea by a response at least.
Peter

I don't think this has anything to do with media players, but with, as you say, the user interface.
The user interface is Windows (and I did not try to let that be or look different, compare Foobar), so we have to deal with Windows in this case.

Now go to Explorer, and select two files, and hold ctrl and shift. Now double click ...

So the only thing I'm saying, with explicit means to make it justified is that it is legal to double click a selection, that selection not disappearing in the mean time. If you only hold ctrl and shift, this works and this is formal Windows.

Of course ... nobody knows this combination, and after making a selection people will complain that double click deselects all. Please note that this is not much different than the questions about "can I click a file and let play start ?" where nobody realizes that it deselects again. And that you should press ctrl at the same time, (relatively) nobody knows ...

Arrggh, this is hard to explain, because all has to do with challenging for the bad things by allowing one. Maybe I can give the selection of Items in the Library Area as an example;
All in there works perfectly normal, hence by standards (apart from ctrl-a, which is not my fault really) if you leave the checkboxes Off. Now use all these beautiful standards to select your albums out of, say 1000, in order to make a Galery. Can you do that ? I bet you don't, and if you do you are dead of stress for a couple of hours afterwards. Why ? because it is not allowed for any one single time to click different than you should, or otherwise you'd loose your selections (for 1000 albums this is 2 hours of work including proper judgement).
Now, do you know what would solve this ? just not allowing the selections ! Hahaha. It would not direct people to the wrong path.

Same is with the one-click-play-please. That would be used automatically, and 95% of people (trust me) would not even know selections can be played. Or, that the click on a next track during playing, immediately would start that track for playback, nobody knowing that pressing ctrl would let the other track finish first.
Solution ? again, just don't allow it. So, click on a next track does not start the playback of it, and it needs the Play button to do so. A very easy choice everybody understand, excpect a few complaining people, eager for one-click-play not realizing the consequences for even themsleves, let alone for others.

I hope that by means of this writing you at least see that it's all thought over (even rather carefully). This does, however, not necessarily mean that I made the best choices out of things. So please keep on shooting.

Yes this is obvious. You suggest though that I don't.
Where ?

Gerard, you are right, and my story is wrong;
The fact that you told that you didn't have CD's twice anyway got me thinking "but then he should be able / just allowed to do what he does".

Woke up this morning and saw the light ... 

With me too, the AllMusic (look at that it's bold because I clicked on it !) opens after the Library Area is reselected. But ... you *can* click on the root (GALLERIES in your case), and it *does* work, only ... it takes a while before all is reloaded, and I never saw that it worked !! So for me it looked like my AllMusic did not re-open, while in fact I had selected the root, and *I* have the redundancy I told you not to have. Hahahaha.

Conclusion : it is not working correctly.
I'm not sure yet how to solve it, because I thought it was nice to be able to jump into the structure (automatically) to see where you are. But indeed not at the cost of not being able to select a genre easily.

Gerard, once again thank you for your persistancy and time. And once again ... you were right. 
Peter