Music from hard drive better than CD?

Wow, quite a long thread here. Glad I wandered over from the other forums.

I've been fully hard-drive based for about a year. The system is based around an Apple iBook G4-1.1Ghz with just under a terabyte of firewire hard drives holding approx. 1500 CD's in Apple Lossless format. I tried the Airport Express spdif out, but in the end I preferred a USB extender cable running along the baseboards feeding an M-Audio Audiophile USB then into a Musical Fidelity A32.24 DAC.

The Airport Express didn't maintain digital sync which inserted a 2-3 second space every time you accessed a new track (nothing when playing sequentially). That's really the only reason I went the USB route.

Can it work? Absolutely!

Can it sound great? This setup replaced a Naim CDX2 with XPS2 (over $10k list price) and my wife and I both agree that the sound quality is just different, neither better nor worse than the Naim. That's saying something given the huge price difference.

Graham

Thanks for the clarification Nick. I'm not familiar with the Digitech unit. It's too bad it doesn't work for you as PC audio can be oh so convenient (having your entire collection at your fingertips to mix and match as you please). If I were you I would indeed try a different route. I really doubt it is the hard drive itself, but instead I'd think it was the interface between hard-drive, Digitech, and or DAC. Somewhere in the loop it sounds like the timing is getting lost.

Marco

Nick,

A few suggestions:

1. Set the buffer for the MBox to the highest setting. (why don't you report all of the settings back here and we can maybe see if something else is up)

2. Unsure which Wadia you're using, but what settings are available on it? Upsampling all the way to 192k on my MF DAC destroys the PRaT and makes everything overanalytical as well, so I leave it at 96k.

Graham

Hi Guys,

All the settings are at the default. It does not give me an option for the buffer size. I get the default option of 512 (which I presume is Kilobytes.)

You can view the unit on the Digidesign site:
http://www.digidesign.com/products/mbox/

Digidesign makes some VERY high quality expensive gear.
They are a world class company used by many famous studios.
The Mbox is the cheapest item they make and it costs $500.

I very much doubt the Mbox is the weak link.
My reasoning for that is:
1. Music sounded better coming off the CD laptop drive rather than the HD.
- I believe point 1 rules out the mbox as the culprit as well as everything forward in the chain. Which only leaves the computer and data files themselves.
2. The Mbox is of a high caliber and is used by major recording professionals world round.

I would be willing to try another unit. But based off of point 1, I think the timing of the music is lost coming off the HD. It just does not have PRaT. I really did want this to work.
Absolutely EVERYTHING other than the PRAT is world class and I have NOT heard better period. Just the PRat is missing in action. I am most disappointed in this. I really wanted to go down this road.

I am going to give it another shot tomorrow. Seeing as I believe the HD is the culprit I am going to try all the formats. Before I was using an uncompressed AIFF along with some Apple loss-less.
But seeing as that is what is recommended by Steve at Empirical as well as Wavelength audio I don't think it's going to fix it.

I also have a Parasound (CEC) transport coming. If I am lucky I will get it tomorrow.
My hope was because my Wadia has multiple inputs. I was going to use the Parasound for discs when needed and the computer for most playback, But due to my experimenting I will probably end up using the Parasound elusively.

I will post my results tomorrow.
Cheers,
Nick

If someone want to PM me their number maybe I can call them tomorrow and double check everything over the phone. Please also include you time zone. I am in the Mountain Standard zone.

First, you're falling for the marketing that Digidesign wants you to. True, their high-end gear is used in pro studios around the world. Does this mean that their low-end gear sounds as good? (nope) The mbox is NOT used in pro studios around the world, as it's a prosumer device at best.

Second, the mbox has a horrible reputation amongst Mac musicians for driver issues (and being overpriced).

Third, every audio interface worth more than a hundred dollars has a driver configuration process. Nick, looks like it's time for you to RTFM :) If you want to use toys that come from the studio world, you should learn how to use them before knocking them.