Music Server vs. PC vs. Transport vs. ?

Deshapiro, I also wanted to follow-up with you on why your enthusiasm waned on the wavelength audio Crimson USB DAC solution that you put into your system. If memory serves me correct, you went the distance with Alex at Aplhifi explaining how good this setup sounded in the "Game Over" thread? If I am confusing your with someone else, please disregard this question.

Hi All,
I am still very enthusiastic about the concept. As I also posted, in my system the Crimson simply didn´t have enough bass dynamics. I´m talking about the grunt that you feel with a drum thwack, not flabby, boomy bass. I auditioned the AMR CD player, and found that it provided the bass kick, but that it wasn´t as good as the Crimson in other respects, imaging, staging, tonality, etc. I´m currently using a USB DAC called the iroc which seems to be a good compromise between the Crimcson and the AMR. My dealer is Ron Lapporte at Ultimate Audio, and he will be exhibitng with Rockport and Purist. As with all things, YMMV.

David

Any of you guys plan on being at CES this year? I know Audioengr will have a room, but I was wondering if anyone else might be attending. Maybe we can hook up and browse around together up for a while? Please feel free to drop me an email if you are up for it.

Deshapiro-

What will Mr.Lapporte be exhibiting?

You don't need a USB DAC! I have I think what most of you are looking for. I had a PC Alchemy in Carlsbad, CA who builds home theater PC's, build me a home audio PC. Basically it is a PC that sits in your audio rack with the same dimensions as your audio gear. The PC has a 7" touch screen in the front along with the DVD player/burner. The PC has an 80 GB hard drive for the operating system (Win XP) and 3 750 GB hard drives that is my music storage. That's 2.25 TB of storage for your audio.
The key to the system is the Card Deluxe audio card by Digital Audio Labs. I installed the card myself, and it has AES/EBU, RCA and optical outputs. I use the optical output to my DAC 1 by Benchmark Media. The DAC then sends the audio via Balanced interconnects to my preamp.
I have a 21" flat panel monitor on the end table next to the listening chair. I have a wireless keyboard and a remote control that I can control the pc with.
The system works flawlessly and I will put it up against any CD player/transport. I rip all the music off Cd's in FLAC with a compression of 4. That works out to about 300 MB per Cd. I use Media Monkey as my audio player, as it will play all types of audio and doesn't care if your name is Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, it will just play the freakin' file.
Not only does the system perform flawlessly and superbly, but it looks great in the rack also.