Do Audiophiles want a stand alone high end HDD source?

If someone made a bit perfect low jitter HDD media source, would you buy it?

  • Yes, if it sounds better than my PC

    Votes: 78 31.5%

  • Yes, if it sounds better than my CD player

    Votes: 83 33.5%

  • No, why would anyone want this?

    Votes: 24 9.7%

  • Yes, I have been wanting something like this for ages.

    Votes: 99 39.9%
  • Total voters
    248
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wakibaki

wakibaki

Banned
Joined 2008
I don't see much point in a HDD source. Mechanical, noisy, bulky, power hungry.

A solid state drive, that's a different matter. I can get all my MP3s on a single (micro) SD card. Which is precisely what I've got in my car stereo. I expect developments to keep pace with and outstrip my capacity to buy CDs. If I could get everything on a single card, uncompressed, that'd be something, but it's probably not far down the road. Just so long as I can afford it.

w
 
A

Ali Tait

Member
Joined 2007
I had a Touch on preorder and got it last month.I use a Drobo with it,connected directly,so no need to have a computer on to listen to music.As for sound quaity,I find the Touch superior feeding my Audio Note dac than either my Arcam or Marantz CD94,and of course hi rez files sound far better still.So personally,I'd certainly call the Touch an Audiophile device.I won't be going back to using cd's.
 
L

Luke

Member
Joined 2001
planet10 said:
All Intel Macs can be directly booted into Windows -- they become Windows PCs. A number of North American PC/Windows magazines have ranked them as #1 hardware platforms.

dave
Click to expand...

thats interesting, Ive never heard of them running Windows. Im not sure why everyone follows apples lead with most things, but no mac mini look alikes out there. A friend uses one for his multimedia pc and it seems to serve him well.
 
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Luke

Member
Joined 2001
Speedskater said:
Why or how would it sound different (let alone better) than a CD Player or PC?
More important questions about a HDD Player might be:
a) Cost
b) Noise
c) Functionality and navigation
Click to expand...

PC audio may be better than you think. the point is, all my music is now digital, I would have to burn a cd which is dumb. I have a small wall of cds that now resides in my HDD. What I dont like is having to use a PC to listen to those tracks.
 
L

Luke

Member
Joined 2001
wakibaki said:
I don't see much point in a HDD source. Mechanical, noisy, bulky, power hungry.

A solid state drive, that's a different matter. I can get all my MP3s on a single (micro) SD card. Which is precisely what I've got in my car stereo. I expect developments to keep pace with and outstrip my capacity to buy CDs. If I could get everything on a single card, uncompressed, that'd be something, but it's probably not far down the road. Just so long as I can afford it.

w
Click to expand...


I recently compared an Opus dac with usb and another one with spdi via squeezebox. We ccould not hear any difference and its a pretty good system.
PC noise is overstated IME.
 
Bas Horneman

Bas Horneman

Ex-Moderator
Joined 2002
basaudio.wordpress.com/
I believe that some of the OPPO disk players have a USB port for attaching a HDD. I don't know how the display lists the presumably thousands of tracks on the HDD. Still, a very interesting option that I haven't heard discussed..
Click to expand...
The Squeezebox Touch supports this as well now. But one or even 2 or 3 hard discs on a usb port is not really ideal I think. I want it to be scalable. So I'm thinking of building my own NAS with a silentpc and FREENAS. Not just for my audio which is 611GB or so at the moment. But also for HD video content in the not too distant future (in my case). I'm sure through virtualization..several NAS servers could be seen as a single drive. (Haven't done a lot of research yet)
 
Bas Horneman

Bas Horneman

Ex-Moderator
Joined 2002
basaudio.wordpress.com/
Plug a WD Live TV HD into the DAC of your choice: ta-da!
Click to expand...
For audio you could even use the WD mini media player (Which I got just for playing around with and for holidays.) Connected a seperate 500GB external 2.5" hard drive which does not use an external psu....and as rdf says...ta-da! Works like a charm and will set you back only around 150 US or so.
 
planet10

planet10

frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
planet10-hifi.com
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Javin5

Member
Joined 2006
One problem I heard about the Squeezebox Touch is that it requires permanent Internet access to work, even if you only want to play music from an attached USB HDD. It does have a built-in mini server of sorts, but things can really get quite slow. Don't know if they improved this by now, maybe someone who owns a Touch can comment.

Kurt
 
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