Music Servers VS Excellent Transports?

Sydsrig - no formal shootouts scheduled that I'm aware of. Most manufacturers will not do this, although I'm game.

Empirical Audio gear can be heard at THE Show St. Tropez #1203. Our converter technology will also be exhibited in the DEQX room at Alexis Park #1512 and the Hovland room at Venetian 29-333.

Wavelength will be at Venetian 30-325.

Logitech (slim devices) has a booth in the convention center.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Sydsrig,

I have the Wavelength Crimson and get great impact and dynamics out of the bass with my unit. Perhaps its the Levinson 33H amps driving Wilson 8s with a Watchdog II sub.
Like David, I would sell the DAC if it had flacid heavy bass.

David has great equipment so its hard for me to explain why he was not getting the bass he expected at the price of this unit.

Linn has just come out with two interesting pieces, the Klimax DS and Akurate DS, both of which are D/A converters that have nothing but an Ethernet input. Your music is streamed to the DS from your computer or NAS. Sound quality is said to be better than Linn's Sondek CD12. I haven't heard one yet, so we'll see if they are really that good.

A couple of disagreements:

1. No CD playback can equal the sound of the best vinyl.

2. It is very difficult to equal the sound of the best CD transports/players with a computer/hard drive/server as the source- harder than some make it sound in this thread.

Ckorody, thank you for your in depth and informative answer to my question. I think I get it now.

Audioengr, thanks for the schedule and layout for these setups at CES/THE Show. I will be seeing you in your room as well as the others.

Splaskin, thanks for your additional insight on the wavlength Crimson.

Davemitchell, thanks for the heads up on Linn. I will make it a point to see them as well. Do you know where there will be shoing this technology?

Davemitchell said:

"A couple of disagreements:

1. No CD playback can equal the sound of the best vinyl."

Agreed, but digital can be get extremely close, particularly DVD-A and SACD. Olive has a higer rez Music Server, but, unfortunately the onboard input device is limited to CD-quality. You can use wireless to load hi rez files off you computer. I'm thinking of buying their Opus No. 5, but a little bummed by the limitation to a CD reader/writer rather than CD/DVD RW.

Oh well, you can't have evrerything.

Dave