In my unending quest to find a suitable cd player for my rig, i have really gone through a few ranging in many price brackets, up to the new ARC ref. 7 cd player. Since I own probably close to 1000 cd's, and I am looking for a new cd player, the idea came up to get a music server with enough space on it but route it through a high end dac so as not to "step-down" from higher quality machines I have gotten used to. Can anyone chime in if I'm crazy for thinking this will work out, or should I just stick with a cd only machine? It really comes down to convenience with the server, but I won't give up sound quality. Any input?

Keep in mind, I'm of the mindset that transports are overrated. The DAC is where it's at. Furthermore, I'm conservative on the degree to which jitter matters, so I'm inclined to think that you're going to have a great setup with your favorite DAC coupled with a music server.

But given that...

Which of the following are you using now:
1) separate transport and DAC with a standard S/PDIF or AES/EBU connection
2) separate transport and DAC with a master clock generated by the DAC;
3) a single-box unit.

If it's 1, then a music server shouldn't be any worse than what you have now. Just substitute it for your current transport and you're good to go. The Transporter discussed below might be overkill unless you're sensitive to jitter, in which case its careful clock design might provide some benefit.

If it's 2, then with you can keep this architecture and all its jitter-reducing benefits by using a network music player with a master clock input. The SlimDevices Transporter qualifies, for example. (See the "High-end network music player" thread.) You can drive the Transporter using your DAC's master clock, and your DAC should be none the wiser. You'll be leaving some pricey analog electronics unused in this case (i.e., the Transporter DACs) but if you already like the sound you have...

If it's 3, then you have a couple of choices. First, you can use the Transporter's built-in DACs. It was designed with the audiophile in mind, and the owners on the aforementioned thread are happy with it. Of course, they were believers in the network music player concept beforehand, so they might be biased, but they're also audiophiles. Audition if you can.

Or, you can buy a new DAC and music server and put them together yourself. A master clock arrangement alleviates any objectivist limitations of this approach; but honestly a good buffering DAC should do great.

thanks for the detailed info michael. i have spent the last few hours reading up on this topic, and as you mentioned there are a few ways of going about it. all of my cd players have always been a one box solution, so i think if i venture into this "idea of mine", i will stick with a quality tube dac with spdif/aes digital into the music server and into my tube pre. i checked out the escient website and they have a music server with 400gb space, but quite pricey if you ask me ($4k) plus a quality dac and you're easily into an emm setup on the used market. hmmm, what would be my best option for a music only server? im not into the squeez box or transporter, i would like a unit similar to the escient where you pop in the cd and burn it into the harddrive, thats all. any suggestions?

The Squeezebox is no work.
You can use Apple iTunes to rip your CDs.
iTunes will inhale all your CDs and organize them -> no mess no fuss.
The Squeezebox software can tie directly to your iTunes library & playlists -> no mess no fuss.
Now making your custom playlists is minor work, but you have to do this on any system.

I use cheap Monacrhy DIP as an anti-jitter device between my PC and wireless Squeezebox v3.
I would like to try a better jitter-device such as an Apogee Big-Ben.

- Andy

Probably a bit OT but did you consider/listen to the new EMM one box solution CDSA:

http://www.emmlabs.com/html/audio/cdsa/cdsa.html

i haven't, but i assume it will be some time for it to come on the used market at a cheaper price than msrp. time will tell i guess.

im not into the squeez box or transporter, i would like a unit similar to the escient where you pop in the cd and burn it into the harddrive, thats all. any suggestions?

Here's one:

Olive Music Server (http://www.olive.us)

In my limited experience with Olive products, you'll definitely be better off using an external DAC with them, unless you are into the whole "modding" thing, in which case there are some guys who do a pretty good job modding these units to sound pretty good on their own. As a transport, both the Musica and the Opus have credible (although not stellar) performance...

That said, I'm not crazy about the UI on these for the simple reason that the text on the display is not big enough to read from your listening seat...

on a side note, what is the best conversion for cd's? (flac, lossless???) im a newbe in this regard, but is there any format that does a 100% direct transfer from cd to music file with 0% degradation?

You can leave the ripped data as uncompressed WAVs, but you might as well use a lossless compressor like Flac, Monkey's Audio, Apple Lossless, etc. These compressors are bit-for-bit perfect, and you'll cut your disc usage per CD by 45% or so.

You can leave the ripped data as uncompressed WAVs, but you might as well use a lossless compressor like Flac, Monkey's Audio, Apple Lossless, etc. These compressors are bit-for-bit perfect, and you'll cut your disc usage per CD by 45% or so.

One quick note...this is true for the Squeezebox/Transporter...both SB and TP only natively decode certain formats (eg. WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP3), relying on the Slimserver server software to decode/convert Apple Lossless to one of these formats before sending to the SB/TP. Because of this, you cannot fast-fwd/rwd within a song if you use Apple Lossless. I recently converted my entire Apple Lossless collection to WAV because of this (I store my music via ITunes on a Mac system, and ITunes doesn't support FLAC)...

You may want to find out what player you'll be using and see if there are similar constraints with whatever solution you find.

so the flac format is an exact transfer from original cd to file. the reason i ask is because the escient website says the e2's can convert using flac, so am i correct in assuming this is one of the highest formats available for direct cd transfer and it also saves space on the harddrive?

I have also studied how to best store my CDs and access them not only for distributed audio throughout my house but also for a nice two channel rig in my home office. I have looked at Sonos as probably my best option because of the ease and cost effectiveness for audio distribution throughout my house. I initially looked at an Audio ReQuest music server -- but a 500 Gb version costs around $7000. (The high "audiophile" version -- the "S" series-- costs $14,000!) An alternative that I am exploring is getting a Network Attached Server (a 1.0 terabyte model by Buffalo Technologies can be had for around $800) -- and then my CDs can be stored in any lossless format I want (Apple Lossless, WAV, etc.) The Sonos zoneplayer has a digital out as well as analog out, so I can run the digital out to a nice DAC and use that for my two channel system. I already have Crestron gear in my house to operate several home theater viewing areas, but the cost of incorporating a ReQuest server and Crestron comes out to about $31,000 --to run distributed audio to ten rooms and store CDs on the ReQuest drive. The savings of using Sonos is 10x less than that-- and gives me much better flexibility and storage. Setting up a NAS drive is not too difficult and a RAID 5 arrangement incorporates some protection against loosing files and having to burn CDs all over again.

Anthony A.
so the flac format is an exact transfer from original cd to file

I hesitate slightly over your use of the word "exact" but the answer to your question is "yes". There is no loss of information in the flac files compared to the original seedee. From my reading of how the SlimServer/Squeezbox combination is implemented, the flac file will present the identical (and complete) musical digits at the Squeezbox's (or Transporter's) DAC or digital outputs as the seedee.

cool, so knowing that i can use flac format, i have to really decide on which unit now. i have narrowed it down to the following 3:

1.) escient e2 400gig
2.) olive musica symphony 250gig
3.) cambridge azur 640h 160gig

the escient e2 has everything i want but it won't accept an external HDD for "added" space. it will only allow another escient unit to be added, meaning more $$$ in the future.

the olive musica seems to me to have everything except no gui interface (video out) that i can sent to my tv. i can however use a pda, tablet pc, etc.

the cambridge is a toss up right now. i am not sure, but can anyone confirm if it encodes using the flac format? the website only says apple lossless. does anyone know? if so, it would meet all of my criteria and at a great price.


thanks in advance.

as an update, the cambridge unit does not encode flac. there is however, talk that the next firmware update will add this. in any case, i have chosen to go with the olive as you can add an external harddrive and there is always new firmware coming out for it, which means that olive actually cares (a bit?) about their customers. i have done all the research in the world with this thing, one question i have if anyone knows would be great. when adding an external harddrive, must you encode your music files from your computer and then insert it into the olive and it will read and add it to its library, or can you simply plug it in and insert cd after cd and it will automatically store it into the new drive (if its built-in drive is already full)?