Mach2Music mini and Amarra : Huge disappointment

Both of you have spoken for many experienced listers.

And of course, many experienced listeners disagree. Lots of folks, myself included, have gotten sound they like a lot from computer front end with tolerable amounts of hassle (and much more convenience than any other format once up and running).

As to getting best of show in a "hotel hi fi" exhibition, I expect Steve's point was not that he and his co-exhibitors got the best possible sound, but that they got better sound than people taking other approaches in comparable conditions (at the same hotel), including people using hi end analog front ends. (Though on my hearing, I'd not mind getting that sound everyday!) Seems like a valid comparison to me; certainly as valid as comparing experiences in wildly different listening rooms (as is done all the time here).

You havent mentioned anything about burn-in or did I miss that?Perhaps theres a remedy somewhere,good luck,B

If you are a hardcore audiophile with a truly high quality system, especially tube centered, then I suspect any hard drive system will be a disappointment. In the same way that the Benchmark DAC is not an audiophile type component, computer hard drives systems are not audiophile grade. Unless you wrestle one to the ground and beat it half to death, a hard drive system won't be musical, sweet, airy, or possess any other audiophile desired flavors. It will just report what is stored on the hard drive and many people won't like this non-editorialized sound.

Don't get me wrong, I am a avid hard drive music user, but their primary advantage is in how they allow you to access you music collection. If you're a music lover with a sizable collection a hard drive system will allow you to readily listen to a much larger proportion of your music collection than otherwise. For me that makes the subtle differences in sound quality irrelevant. Others can disagree.

Jdoris,
No arguement from me, my point is it`s just another alternative pathway to build a system. I believe computer audio runs the gamut from bad to excellent just as any other front end choice and people will have varying degrees of satisfaction( just like other formats).

I don`t feel this format(at this stage) is inherently superior to a well setup CD or analog system,but just offers another choice(choice is good). i`m extremely happy with my current CD front end and I`m certain you are with your computer based system.At this point in time I don`t find a compelling reason to change, that`s all.
Regards,

I've heard hard disk and SSD-based systems that sound fine, but system complexity was inappropriate for domestic conditions, especially for conveniently ripping a large CD collection. Also, the discrete componentization introduces inter-box variables even more vexing than the analog variables of interconnects, power cords, etc. And computer power supplies, fans, disk noise, etc. are intrusions where they shouldn't be. Not to say there aren't some computer audio configurations that don't address some, most or all of these concerns, but the system complexity just for a source remains a dog's breakfast of gear.

On the other hand, the Olive 06HD appears on first glance to be an ideal solution for slipping computer audio into a domestic hi-fi along with other 17" wide source and control components. Ideal, that is, until you find that Olive uses a proprietary data model for storage, that cannot be readily used by other "industry standards" like iTunes-based retrieval.

Then we have multiple garage shop integrations of Linux OS servers requiring network integration and browser control. Bryston threw up their hands and came up with the strange offering of a dedicated computer to stream files from USB devices directly attached to it for output to a DAC. Can it sound good? Sure. Is it useful in a multi-system household? No. Not unless you're moving to yet another physical carrier -- USB drives. Early adopters and kids who are young enough to not have amassed a physical media library can build fresh libraries of downloads -- if they don't mind not having full-resolution audio files for most of their music. But the great middle of the market has CD libraries that have to be ripped. An Apple Mini no longer includes an optical drive, so add yet another box. Some ripping and music management software goes backward in sound quality, version to version. We get software within software or on top of software to get sound in the ballpark of musicality. Every ripping solution is replete with data errors in album art and notes. Yeah, right....I'm going to find time to comb through the data of 3000+ ripped CDs to edit errors. NAS, backups, wifi foibles. Where's plug'n'play?

I haven't actually seen it be more convenient to find and play music from a large collection stored and managed via computer audio, than organizing physical media for retrieval. Small collections, sure. But I have over 3000 CDs to rip, and will surely acquire more. Every large collection I've seen ripped to hard disk is made no easier to retrieve through existing data management playback applications, like iTunes. I tend to listen to albums anyway, not playlists nor single tracks.

In most digital technologies I have a long history of being an early adopter, but not in this realm of computer audio. It's impractical, intrusive, glitchy and woefully inefficient to make the transition. Most solutions are inelegant and poorly integrated, and the options that are elegant integrations all fail in at least one or two vital characteristics. Circa 2004, I accepted the chaos. In 2012, no. Given the rate of change in everything else digital, the pace of computer audio evolution is unacceptable. Application UX/UI is ill-conceived and often awful in execution. Noise and the scatter of boxes are disruptive. Surgery to turn off features in a generic computer's OS is arcane. Yeah, I could hack through it. But why? Technology glitches force an IT mentality into a leisure activity. No, no, no, no....no!

Productize, somebody, please. Apple, which is easily in a position to make a consumer-grade one-box media server has refused so far to integrate above the iPod/iPhone level. Fine, when can I have a 3TB iPod Touch or iPad? I witnessed someone at an Apple store's Genius Bar asking how to assemble a computer audio system around a Mac mini. She walked away shaking her head. It's a small market that wants NAS + computer + network + digital player + DAC to play music at home.

Phil