Wavelength Brick

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...

You will be very happy with a Mac - and guess what the new ones "play" Windows too - what's not too like? LOL

As for the Opticis - main reason is to provide the highest degree of isolation possible - if you are going to be snooty about it, you will want to use a better power supply then the one they used to sell - write them, the proprietor Fast Eddie spent some time posting here and on Asylum. Gordon can fill you in as well. The secondary reason is if you want to put the Brick more then 15 feet from the computer (USB requires all kinds of fancy footwork after that)

The way I see it, you spend your money once and eliminate another variable - really does sound very, very good

Thanks again...So you are saying the powersupply for the Opticis cable is just so-so? I will have to contact them directly if thats the case before I spend my money with them.

Heres a question for you...If you set up a computer (of any sort) as your server, and you decide to use an external USB or Firewire drive instead of the internal drive, does it add or take away any performance from the USB to the BRICK? I am most likely going to use an existing Western Digitial (320GB) located in the bottom of my rack, and since I am splitting hairs over everything else, this got me to thinking.

Also, how are you displaying your music? I want to stream out of the Mac to my TV, problem is, it is a CRT (Tube) with Component inputs at best. No DVI or VGA. Wondering how this is going to look. Wanted to be able to sit at the couch and just tool around from a wireless keyboard.

The purists among us felt that the stock power supply was a bit noisier then it might be - you might never even hear it... Take a look at The Socket which is a battery power supply. No point in being too picky since there is nothing else like Opticis out there. If you don't want to bother just get the premium Belden gold USB cable.

The choice between an external and an internal drive will make no difference. You need to understand that there is a new paradigm here - this is truly digital. Computers push data in and out all day long - its what they do 24/7/365 around the world. The amount of data involved and the speed of data transfer required to make perfect audio is absolutely trivial. Consider that on my rig I can in digitze a CD (rip) at the same time as I am playing back two different songs - one via USB and one via Ethernet... and surf the web...

If you stress your computer by asking it to do a lot of other things at the same time - particularly data intensive things like process large photoshop files, you may get it to hiccup now and again. You will hear it, it will be momentary and music will resume automatically. You will then have the choice of turning off the music or stopping/reducing your other activities.

There are very few things that will impact the quality of computer served audio. First and foremost is how the data is ripped and compressed. Apple Lossless with error correction "on" and all choices under Preferences/Playback "off" is all you need to do. Second is of course how you get the audio data off the disk and back into music. The Brick is as good as they come, perhaps a bit better with Opticis particularly if you live in a RF/EMI noisy environment or have ground loops. End case.

As far as display, I run iTunes on my computer display. Take a look at the new Apple TV product - it may solve your problem.

http://www.apple.com/appletv/