The way to go

Looks like this will be the first post on this site! I believe that with music stored on a hard drive with no compression played through an excellent DAC you can have sonics that compete with top of the line CD players and transport/DAC combos. Add the convenience of having your entire digital music collection available to you at a click and you have an unbeatable combo.

Purely by accident, I conducted a study. I built a new house with a dedicated two channel listening room and a separate dedicated theater with a projector, both with acoustical design by Keith Yates.

In my two channel listening room, I set up my trusty Emm Labs Front End, DAC and pre-amp and just for grins, I also set up my old den system in the same room, but with a twist;

Before moving into the new house, I ripped all of my 2000+ CD's uncompressed onto a NAS (Network Attached Server) and used it in the new house to feed a Sonos System so I could have music at my fingertips all through the house (13 zones including the backyard pool and patio).

All I had to do was place a Sonos player and DAC on top of my Emm Labs stack and I figured, heck, this way I can play around with the Sonos thing while I work on my laptop in the listening room.

This is what I figured;

I will use the Sonos for the fun of it, but -- hey -- I am an audiophile! When I want to do some serious listening, which will be all the time, right? RIGHT?! I will get a disc out of one of my binders -- I long ago quit using the jewel cases -- put it in the Emm Labs transport and have SERIOUS music. What we audiophiles like to call CRITICAL listening.

It took me a full year and a few months to realize that I had actually been conducting this study, but one day it dawned on me that the results were staring me right in the mug.

In 16 months, I had listened to and -- gasp -- even enjoyed the heck out of -- hundreds of hours of music -- with the Sonos -- in my listening room.

I had yet to pull out a disc to play in the Emm Labs.

So, I sold the Emm Labs gear.

Sonos plus excellent DAC sounds damn good and I listen to music a lot more often.

I use an Apogee Mini Dac and to my ears it is a giant killer, a huge bang for the buck.

To my ears, it sounds wonderfully detailed yet organic and natural.

I know there are other solutions that also sound great, other DAC's, other players.

Love to hear what others are using and happy to answer any questions from anyone thinking about going this route, whether you are thinking about doing it in your serious music system or a less serious den system -- which is how I started experimenting -- or if you're looking to distribute music into a zone or two or thirteen.

I'm sure there are others here who can help, too.

Steve Williams said:

I have a computer based server on my to do list for this year and would welcome any of your suggestions

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Do you have wi-fi in your house?

Can your current DAC be used as part of a hard drive system?

First thing to do is decide on your storage solution.

Your server.

Next, rip your CD collection to it, uncompressed.

Some people use lossless and swear you can't tell the difference, but I figure at the price of hard drive space these days, what the heck, just rip it uncompressed.

If you don't want to sit there ripping CD's, get a neighborhood kid to do it for ten bucks an hour.

In my experience, there are several systems out there that include a server, but they charge a huge premium for the server and that makes these a non-starter for me.

So, I recommend you get started by picking a server and digitizing your CD collection uncompressed -- because you're going to need to do this no matter which route you go with the player.

If your current DAC can be used in a hard drive system, and -- correct me if I'm wrong -- I believe it can -- you just need a player to get the signal from your server and feed it to your DAC and -- bada bing -- you in bidness!

Here's another suggestion;

If you think you might want to go with a solution that includes a server, start this way ----

Hard drive storage is so cheap these days, just get an external hard drive, whatever size you need.

To be safe, figure you need approximately 50 gigs per 100 CD's.

Get the neighborhood kid or a niece or nephew to rip your collection to an external hard drive while you decide which system you're going with.

When you decide, simply click, drag, and copy your music collection from your external hard drive to your server and keep the external hard drive as a back-up.

One of the things I love about the Apogee is that I do not need a pre-amp. I take a SPDiF digital connection from the Sonos ZP-80, then run balanced interconnects from the Apogee to my two Levinson 436 Monoblocks, Canare 4s11 + WBT connectors to my speakers -- how's that for streamlined?

In my previous den set-up, it was even more streamlined.

I used balanced interconnects to connect to two internally bi-amped Mackie powered speakers, eliminating the need for pre-amp and speaker cables!

I have not compared the Apogee to the Benchmark, but I've heard good things about the Benchmark.

One of my tests for any piece of gear is this; once I put the piece in my system, do I still get the itch to replace it? The audiophile in me will always be curious so I am open to the idea that there may be a better DAC out there, but I am coming from a top of the line Sony SACD player to Emm Labs stack and I don't have that tell tale itch.

That tells me something.

$750 is a chunk o' dough, but I tried a few less expensive solutions (M-Audio) and could not be happy with them.

That sounds like an excellent solution for a one zone system. I've heard from a number of people who are happy using an Apple Airport.