Music from hard drive better than CD?

No I did not miss your first paragraph. I did ignore it however, but since you bring it to task:

Regarding the inexpensive Dell you mention:

It relies upon allocating a good part of it's RAM for graphics (states 64mb). The iMac has an excellent graphics card and does not need to rely upon RAM for graphics. The Mac can easily support an external monitors with its dedicated 32mb of RAM on the graphics card.

It has a slower Celeron processor (as you point out), while the Macs G4 processor is very fast indeed.

Wireless card is an option on the PC and standard on the Mac.

The Dell has no firewire ports at all, while the iBook has both USB 2.0 and Firewire.

As far as the smaller screen I actually prefer a 12 inch screen and compact size and weight. The iBook weighs 4.9 lbs while the bigger Dell is 6.3lbs.

I won't go through looking up the same details on the desktop example you sited as I'm sure it would come out the same: you get what you pay for.

Marco

Why the back and forth on Apple vs. MS. I use Linux with a USB sound card and USB hard drives, the sound card is only to connect to my very satisfactory Audio Mirror DAC. This Linux system runs on a fanless VIA chip (mini itx). No virus possibilities and is internet connected a CDDB data base that automatically sets up folders with titles etc. just before ripping to the hard drive. So get a cheap PC and free Linux. PC audio can be had very inexpensively.
~tom

noise issues, see www.silentpcreview.com

I just tried doing this today for the first time in my system.
I must say overall that I did not like it. I really hoped I would. I wanted to like, I tried to like it. But for me it just didn't cut it.

I used a iBook with a Digidesign Mbox and my Wadia DAC.
All files were uncompress and in Raw AIFF form.

Technically speaking everything sounded better. The soundstage and imagining and depth were great. They were in fact better than I have ever heard them. But the PRAT was gone!

I just could not get involved in the music. When we tried a disc strait from the CD drive it sound better (PRAT wise). My guess is music coming off the hard drive looses it timing?

It's hard to describe, and you kinda have to hear it. It should of been great. Every aspect was better (bass, clarity, soundstaging, etc), but the music was lost. It sounded more like hifi and less like music. Over all it was a let down.

A friend was with me when we did this test. He has about a 10K 2 channel system. In the end we both felt the same way.

Has anyone else experience this?

Of course YMMV, but for me I am going to stick with my CD player. I won't be adopting HD playback any time soon.

Happy listening,
Nick

My guess is music coming off the hard drive looses it timing?

As I understand it, this is the advantage of using a USB DAC (I think the DigiDesign unit is just a processor that upsamples(?) and sends the digital feed to the DAC - much like a soundcard).

Since USB is bidirectional, using a USB DAC with a direct USB connection to the HD allows timing errors to be addressed both at the HD and at the DAC. Using optical, or S/PDIF output to the DAC you are limited as these are both unidirectional feeds. I don't know much about the Digidesign unit, but just looking at the specs it would occur to me that is using the USB for power, but I'm not getting how it is providing 24-bit S/PDIF output unless it is upsampling. Standard USB is only capable of passing 16-bit data. USB 2.0 may pass more. Check out the basic information on the Wavelength Website. You may contact Gordon Rankin via that site and inquire further. I just notice that the specs on the DigiDesign unit says "100% USB Powered"....does that mean it is passing information as well, or are you getting your digital output elsewhere?

I believe you on the timing errors making or breaking the reproduction of music.

Marco