Wavelength Brick

I think you will be pleased, I know that I am. The Brick replaces a fully modded TriVista and does an admirable job of it and then some. It bests all of my modded Squeezeboxes. And of course it works directly with iTunes which is sweet.

A couple of "tips" - first, do use the Opticis USB cable for total isolation from the Mac. And secondly I did find that the unit is responsive to tube rolling - not a lot, and Gordon does send it out with a good one, but it still seemed to make a difference - I have a NOS Brimar in there now that fattened things up just a bit. Cables of course make a big difference - for grins you might try it straight into your Krell and run the volume from the desktop. Pretty transparent. I found that the case is extremelt rigid so decoupling is not a biggie though I have it up on Ceraballs just because.

BTW I use Apple Lossless, anything less would be a waste.

As for the Cosecant - I wish I could and I am sure I will but for now I am a happy guy.

Hey thanks for the response!! Much appreciated and makes me feel much better about potentially buying one.

Question for you. Since I am new to tubes, not sure what Tube Rolling means. Is that swapping out for a different tube? And the Opticis Cable can be found where?

As far a digitial compression goes, thats an area I am well-versed. Apple Lossless is good, just remember there is still a compression algorithm in there I believe. If you really wanted to purify (although I doubt you will hear it) you could go WAV 16-bit 44.1 into the Brick. Depends alot on storage capacity you have though.

As far as the Cosecant, I don't want to hear it, because I know I will want it if I do a side-by-side. After purchasing my 5.5 no room in the budget at the moment, so Brick will have to do. Whoa is me right? : )

OK - in order.

Yes, tube rolling means swapping out one tube for another - great phrase, not sure where it came from. Anyhow the premise is that one can vary the sound of a unit by changing the tubes - FWIW Gordon says that because of the way the tube is used in the circuit, the Brick is not a particularly good candidate - certainly not compared to a preamp or power amp.

Opticis cables are sold at

http://industrialcomponent.com/opticis/optusbext.html

The Lossless versus not Lossless has been debated about a million times so far. The consensus is that Lossless means Lossless. That said if you like to use 2x the hard drive space use WAV or AIFF. There are some issues with "tagging" those formats. Tagging refers to adding, managing and accessing metadata such as name, title, album art etc

So the moral of the story is that unless you have bat ears and an over the top system do iTunes with Apple Lossless and be very happy. If you've got the money do the Cosecant and pay someone else to manage your metadata LOL

Thanks alot once again, good info on the tubes...I found those Opticis USB cables, they have two versions though. One with a a copper conductor in them for the power supply? Is it safe to assume the reason for buying this USB is for the additional power isolation from the source? Or the optics? Not a cheap USB cable thats for sure, but what the heck I came this far.
: )

I went and looked at Macs last night, and oh boy they look fun. I figure I would rather deal with a Mac for this project than a PC. Maybe it is just an excuse to get another toy...