WHAT ABOUT CLOCKS?

Koegz,

That is not a music server. That is a cd player as a dac. I am of the strong belief that the dac should be a seperate and external. It is very susceptible to vibration.

The NWO-M is designed in a way that the VRDS transport is completely separated from the DAC circuit; the only connection is I2S type.

The proprietary AK4399 DAC module has dedicated I2S inputs selected by remote so one can select between VRDS transport, S/PDIF and USB.

There are no vibrations coming from the VRDS transport, plus it does not spin when USB or S/PDIF is used. So there are no negatives when using the NWO-M as a DAC with external digital sources.

Also there is more to a usb dac the the conector. Alot more.

True! The NWO-M optional USB input is based on M2TECH asynchronous technology and proprietary drivers. It can process 192/32. The USB hardware is extensively upgraded and runs off ultra-low-dropout, low noise linear regulators, so noisy switching PC power is unused. This said, it is extremely hard to hear a difference between USB and VRDS on a blind A-B test using the same CD.

Best,
Alex Peychev

HDTRACK adds THE ROLLING STONES to their list of available hd downloads. This may be a water shed event! Only 5 albums but a beginning. Who will be next to recognize the future and get on board? Radiohead, Springsteen, The New Pornagraphers, The Clash, REM, Bright Eyes, Phish, Dylan dare I say it The Beatles? Who will be next?

I agree that those in the market for a new CD based mechanism should consider one that has some provision for digital input, whether SPDIF or USB or firewire. Given that many audiophiles are music lovers (we hope), Esoteric probably assumes they have large libraries of CD and perhaps SACD. Having dabbled with iTunes and Olive, the importing of classical music in such a way as to keep things organized and systematic across multiple performances of multipart works is a nightmare. Independent tracks is not an issue but don't talk to me about boxed sets for opera or anything else. How the heck do you import 6 versions of La Traviata correctly? Or my 10 collections of the Beethoven sonatas? Viewing garbled or inconsistent metadata can drive you to go back and just put a disc in the tray.

On the other hand, there is one blessed soul on another forum who detailed his massive classical music collection on iTunes - he tagged each one manually so that it would show up properly. Said it only took him 12 hours a day on his free days, every free day, for half a year, to do 2500 of his 6000 CD collection. He reckoned he'd be done in another 8 months - if he could hold up. I don't have 12 hours a week to just import music....

Although people have said to me to hire someone to do it; or pay $2/disc. This is something to keep in mind in the present. In the future, metadata grabbing may improve and software may have features that offer solid relational links for classical music. If so, I may wait for that day to come.

I have a good music server (Touch, Esoteric Clock/Upsampler/Berkeley DAC) and an Esoteric X03SE and the SACD on the X03 still trumps the music server, as well as many other recordings (XRCD, DSD, etc). You can have both and I would go for the K-01 if funds currently permitted. Playing a CD while having a music server is almost like putting an LP on a turntable.

Well, I've found JRiver Media Center really easy to use (tagging is a breeze), and the audio quality together with ASIO4ALL is simply amazing, IMO!

Tried MacMini with Pure Music/iTunes. Sounds OK but, to my ears, it lacked against JRMC/ASIO4ALL, and by a good margin.

Maybe if I didn't have the upgraded Esoteric VRDS transport, I'd be perfectly content with Mac/iTunes as many are.

Best,
Alex Peychev