My question is if you have $5-$8 thousand dollars to spend on a digital system what would you recommend.
To be honest ? to spend less.
There are three major parts involved :
1. The PC (often called "music server" which IMO is a wrong name);
2. The D/A converter.
3. The playback software.
Indeed it is the DAC where I have spent half of my life on the last 16 months, and assumed the rest of the chain is arranged for in an "adequate" way, it is here were all can be gained;
The DAC for the PC environment is special to the sense it will be external, but in the end not more special than any external DAC from the old age. The main topic here is jitter, knowing that any external DAC needs special provisions to counteract the additional jitter an external DAC incurs for. Furthermore there's additional complexity in the fact that the DAC will be connected to a PC, that being a noisy beast which tends to pass on its noise.
Lastly, a D/A converter within itself contains numerous elements which all can be optimal to bad and everything in between.
Now, the Phasure NOS1 deals with each and every of these elements, and really every element involved is optimal to the sense of no technologies known for further improvement. The project to get there has been "cost no object" by itself, but with the interesting objective to let it be much affordable for hopefully most while being the best of the world, which mainly was achieved by not incorporating any of the development costs.
In the end we can say that without exception all the technologies used in the DAC, have not been applied before. Not even for the single elements (think in terms of PSU(s), I/V, connection means, topology, filtering and net output jitter).
I take it that the playback software doesn't need further comments, and while it is as influencing as a DAC itself, there's also the combination with the two, say, in this case made for eachother.
The PC actually doesn't take much, and when you want it silent, well, just make it silent. However, it would be the most wrong to achieve this with a low consuming cpu, because the performance will be as low, and it *will* disturb. This is more important than most people think, but which is related to the complete digital chain, as I see it. For example, the DAC explicitly anticipates on outboard (thus upgradeable !) filtering, and XXHighEnd provides just that (which is the current Arc Prediction filtering). And, because XXHighEnd plays from memory, things like the filtering (and more) take place via pre-processes, and the faster the cpu, the less noticable this is.
Another thing to take into account is a sufficient number of SATAII(I) connections, anticipating on the large volume of albums to be stored (not today, then next year), knowing that SATAII is by far the fastest connection, and while a 2TB disk may take 2.5 hours to copy, the next fast means already approaches a day.
All 'n all, if you had to spend more on this all than $5000, I would be much surprised.
I hope this helps you a bit !
Peter
PS:
what about DAC and soundcard? should the sound card be external?
This definitely shouldn't be inside of the PC. So, yes, the soundcard should be external, *if* a soundcard is applicable. If you are going to use an USB DAC there is no soundcard involved, nor it there with the Phasure NOS1 (which is not USB connected
).
