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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#42
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 agree that SSD would be the quietest solution, but at the moment, the size of the drives would not hold a persons full uncompressed music collection. But, even if the player was using a HDD, the SSD could be used in the future when storage space increases and prices decrease. So the HDD solution is good for the moment.

As far as noisy bulky and power hungy, I will disagree, as mechanical isolation (rubber spacers or feet) reduces the noise to an acceptable level
Bulky- you could use 3.5" laptop drives.
Power hungry - they seem to use between 5-10 Watts of power.
according to this article here:
HDD Diet: Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation
To me that is quite acceptable. Seems to be about the same as a CD player.
And much less power than using a PC!!
 
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#43
Hey Erin

What about the Popcorn Hour C200 it can have what ever hard drive size you want which can be removed in seconds it has a screen so you can select tracks and plays flac and wav files and outputs either through toslink or spdif and supposedly has i2s .
 
#53
freddi said:
I like my new/old Audio Note dac with coax input better than DACs had so far for USB - are there reliable/affordable USB - to coax -S/PDIF converters? I'll look at media players to see which output coax
Click to expand...

Freddi
Check out the HiFace m2 tech. It is reported to get rid of most jitter.
There are many rave reports about it's performance in the various forums,
and jkeny from DIYAudio even has a mod using lithium batteries that many claim improves it even further.
SandyK

M2Tech
 
#59
staggerlee said:
Do you have your mini set up headless? Do you control it from another mac on the network?
Click to expand...

I only wish i has a mini. I am running a 1st generation 20" G5 iMac (it was free, i bought a disk & RAM upgrade for it). Working on getting it, Pure Vinyl, and my Edirol FA66 all working together.

If i had a mini, it would be running into the 42" Toshiba TV.

dave
 
#60
erin said:
However, the computer is bulky.
Click to expand...

It does not need to be bulky. This is what I've built recently, using latest Gigabyte Mobo and i3 CPU as suggested by cics. No case needed, 100VA transformer connects externally.
 

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