Audiophile Music Servers - Fact or Foo?
Over the last few weeks I've been reading up (beats working) on so called audiophile music servers. These are typically, but not always, stripped down Linux-based PC's which have nothing but the essential parts required to feed a DAC. They are made by a growing number of manufacturers and range in price from around £400 to upwards of £3,000.
Here is a link to Auraliti who make a couple of different servers:
These seem sensibly priced when compared against some of the prices of seen quoted for a pimped Mac Mini.
At the higher end there's devices like this:
Bryston have had their own take on the music server available for at least a year now:
So what do the 'chews massive think about these sort of devices? Has anyone tried one?
I'm really interested to hear one of the Auraliti units. I personally don't buy the whole incremental improvements argument that is often cited about maximising Mac performance, by doing things like switching off spotlight, or running only on battery power - I've tried all these things in my system and they made no difference whatsoever. In the near future, I can see myself buying a dedicated music server though. Potential performance improvements aside, it will free up my MBP from transport duties.
Comments
Keith.
There's a few different streaming options in Naim's lineup, most of which look overpriced, apart from perhaps the Unitiserve SSD. This is relatively unchartered water for audiophiles, and there's precious little in terms of reviews to confirm if these devices sound better than a Mac as a transport, or if indeed they are just stripped out Macs/PC's in expensive cases. I'm keeping an open mind.
If the Weiss doesn't. sound better it will at least be as easy as a cd player to use, which might appeal to a small sector , I hope it sounds better I wouldn't. mind waving adios to ITunes.
KR Keith.
We're seeing three distinct methodologies emerge:
1. At the top end, the Naim/Linn/Bryston/Yamaha/Meridian/Weiss/Aurender way of doing this - entirely bespoke - is definitely the best - but you end up with extremely overpriced, monolithic, non-upgradeable products
2. At the bottom end, mass-produced proprietary streamers like the Logitech, Sonos, et al have similar limitations, sound a bit dismal, but at least are cheap and handy.
3. In the middle, Item, NVA, Auraliti, Sonore and the whole 'open source' movement seeks the quality of the high-end machines without the price tag by bootstrapping existing boards, and fixing as many of their problems as possible. This at least is relatively cheap, and is completely upgradeable, which is a bonus in a world where DAC fashions seem to changing annually.
In answer to the original question - yes: starting with a standard mobo and improving the power supply, operating system, and everything germane to audio, makes them sound much better. I know no-one who has heard one claim otherwise.
Yes, and no. Yes, you have removed a noisy component. On the other hand, the noise of the case fans and power supply cooling has already blended into chaos at a given dB. Chaos + chaos = chaos. So, no: the net effect of removing the cooler fan was practically irrelevant: the machine appeared to be just as noisy with the cooler fan disconnected.
So we swapped out for a silent supply and adjusted the case for passive cooling. Now, the fan was the only noise palpable - yes: it became very easy to hear the effect of removing the fan. It's similar with electrical noise and jitter, which is what we're looking to minimise.