Memory Player vs Dedicated PC-TopUSB Conv and DAC

BigAmp
Thanks for explaining it with all the intricacies, as you mentioned no one has gone deep into it and how different is RUR to the EAC software,etc...
And most importantly when should we guys stop investing in a transport? Has this median reached the stage that it betters the performance than the top mechanism/drives from Esoteric.

Your skeptisim is fine, but you should also consider that the Memory Player was not developed in a vacumme.

The MP developers knew about EAC, you have to consider that there is much more to the Memory Player than has been published about it. There are processes going on in the player after RUR which processes the data and helps create the Memory Player's sound.

As per optical transports like the Esoteric, yes they are dead in the water, Memory Play back is indeed better.

There are processes going on in the player after RUR which processes the data and helps create the Memory Player's sound.

What does this mean? Is the bit stream modified? If modifying the data makes the MP sound better than other devices, that's OK - whatever it takes to get the right sound. Some people like the sound of certain components because of the coloration they introduce. Foobar 0.8 and it's resamplers change the bitstream, but a lot of people prefer this sound over other software.

Will be nice when more details are provided.

"it would be great if Steve from Empirical Audio would participate in the shootout. Steve?..."

I will not be attending RMAF this year, or I would definitely do this. With two shows a year and a 33 customer backlog, I cannot afford a week of travel time. Travel time is the biggest problem. I suppose if I could fly in and only carry a few items with me, like Off-Ramps and DAC's, it may be possible, but I would have to partner in a room with another vendor. I tried to arrange this with a vendor that I trust and it didn't work out this year.

I am confident that my USB and wireless solutions will beat the MP, both the transport section and the DAC. They are all bit-perfect now and dont require any ASIO or Kernal streaming etc..

Steve N.

Steve those are big and bold claims. You have produced some very good and well respected products but you are forgetting exactly who you are dealing with. Nova Physics is indeed a new company but the men behind this company are anything but neophytes in the field of audio engineering.

The Memory Player is the first product from two 30+ year veterans of High End Audio, George Bischoff and Mark Porzilli.The Memory Player has only been "on the market" since November, 2006 and has already won 2 awards and
received 5 rave reviews in 3 magazines!

In their 20 year partnership at Melos they accomplished some very big things. Melos was successful in business with over 14,000 satisfied customers and dozens of products which were very highly rated at the time. In its 20 year history, Melos Audio garnered over 200 rave reviews from 30 countries, on six continents. Melos won Stereophile's"Product of the Year" for its legendary SHA-1 Headphone Amplifier and "Editor's Choice" in The Absolute Sound. The original Pipedreams won TAS' "Golden Ear" too.

Melos Audio products stayed on Stereophile's "Recommended Components" for an incredible TEN YEARS. Melos holds copyrights and US Patents for "Filament Drive" (SHA), "G2 Triode Drive" (High Current Triode Amplifiers), "Ultrasonic Noding" and "Cylindric Non-Parallelism" (the Pipedreams Loudspeakers)

Mark designed all of Melos Audio's solid state and vacuum tube products with George Bischoff from 1979-1999. He is also the designer of the original, award winning Pipedreams Loudspeakers.He is the designer of the new Scaena Line Source Loudspeakers as well.

The Pipedreams Loudspeakers received rave reviews from Harry Pearson of The Absolute Sound, and Jonathon Valin , also of TAS. The accomplishment of unifying over 100 drivers into a simple 2-way speaker with no nodes* was literally patentable. After the reviews,The Pipedreams also won the "Golden Ear" from The Absolute Sound.

Since 1979, while designing for Melos Audio and several OEM
products, George and Mark made strenuous efforts to refine the precision of clocks, which ultimately found their way into serving vacuum tubed DACs. Melos had several since the 14bit era, which were well received in both Stereophile and The Absolute Sound magazines.

George Bishoff on his own, after Melos designed the respected Gerorge Mark DAC which received a rave review from Stereotimes magazine before he changed directions to incorporate his DAC designs into the Nova Physics player being designed by his former partner Mark.

With Nova Physics these two man have been reunited to bring forth a new and radical improvement in the art and science of the music CD, Memory Playback,

Through the Memory Player you can compare Hard Drive playback vs playback from Memory and the Memory Playback sounds far superior to reading from the Hard Drive. There are still timing errors introduced by the way a hard drive locates data, and organizes that data for playback, and for that reason the Memory Player does not playback from the Hard Drive but instead loads the data into Memory.

The Memory Player was borne out of years of research and a through understanding of the problems of conventional computer based audio.