Amarra for iTunes at RMAF...

Hi Antipodes_audio,
there seem to be many deals in place regarding online libraries. The frightening part of it is the people who created the music see very little in return. It really is bad, but that is another topic.

For my work I use many different types of music production software. They are not much use for a library playback system, as they are mainly geared towards recording/mixing and manipulating audio.

Professionally I use a wide range of software and hardware, but the software of choice for me is Steinberg's Nuendo 4 which is 64 bit on PC. Although I also use Cubase (a baby brother of Nuendo) on PC, Protools on Mac, Wavelab on PC, Digital performer on Mac, and the various plugins associated with them too.

The hardware I use differs depending on the software in use, but I have RME fireface 800, which is a firewire 800, 24 bit 192k preamp/ converter, Apogee Rosetta converters, Digidesign HD 192k, MOTU 896mk3 firewire which is also 192k.

I have found the DCS Scarlatti converters the finest hifi playback I have heard. Every time I am taken with their resolution and lack of character.

You say you have been eying up DCS. If you can get one and try it. But I must say that for sometime I passed by DCS, until I had one at home. I was shocked at how much better they were, and have had them ever since. I am sure there are others coming out now which are capable and hopefully cheaper, but DCS set the bar IMHO no matter which input.

I am also a firm believer in the optical input ( I am not mad). Everyone trashed it, but when I had the old Ref ML Transport/DAC, the dealer at the time told me to try it. I had always used AES/EBU with an expensive cable. I popped in a glass cable and was shocked. It was a 10th of the price and sounded as good if not better, especially for midband speed. Ok so it is limited to 24/96, but if you find yourself around that resolution, give it a go. Not dissimilar to Amarra's effect over firewire. Like a lightness or freedom to the sound.

I have upsampled to DSD from glass on the DCS upsampler for 16/44.1k and 48k. It works well and means the source can be a long way from your hifi without any problems.

Interesting point about optical. Optical has a bad rap based partly on early poor implementations and partly on ignorance. The main issue is reflections and so there are many small issues to deal with when constructing a good optical cable.

Just as people come to something new like computer audio and assume one implementation will be as good as another, the same applies to something like an optical cable and ignorance leads them to believe they will all sound the same, so they only try a cheapie. The terminations and connections really have to be done with high precision to avoid reflections, and the outer layer of the cable must not reflect light, and you should try to avoid the cable going through tight turns. But done right they are, as you say, superior to using wire. Cleaner and faster.

You have got me thinking about Firewire now.

Antipodes_audio,

The firewire connection is worrying too. The BS is just starting there too. I am not sure if firewire 800 suffers the same issues as 400, regarding the total length of cable ( I think the longest 400 is 5m in length).

I was surprised at how Amarra worked so well over firewire, but does the quality of the cable itself cause problems? I hope we are not going to get ripped off again by snake oil cable manufacturers for firewire & USB audio cables. I have seen a few expensive ones already.

DCS use firewire as a DSD connection, and the cable quality proved to be quite important there. I dont know if this is still the case with a normal firewire connection from a computer. But if you believe Crystal cable and Siltech, they are willing to take $1000 for a firewire cable. How do they do it? What on earth have they done? Extra shielding? Solidcore silver and teflon? Let the BS begin...

Hmm, have you seen the price of my cables?? We have really suffered at the hands of the gold price, and our prices for our top end cables, which have a lot of gold in them has rocketed up alarmingly.

Since the computer is the master clock then the cable isn't transferring data in block mode, as it does in most other applications, and so the delicate clock timing has to be transmitted by the Firewire cable. So it suffers exactly the same issues as good versus bad SPDIF cables, for example. So the 'quality' of the cable matters, but more or less so depending on what it is feeding.

The benefits of Firewire and USB over SPDIF or AES/EBU are that the signal does not have to be locked onto so tightly, and Firewire is usually going to get a lower jitter signal out of the computer than USB.

I thought that with Asynchronous USB implementations, such as from Wavelength, Ayre and dCS, the computer is no longer the master clock. Likewise for some Firewire implementations.