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First, a little background on recent system developments…when we moved into the new house last January, my goal was to modernize our computer, audio, and video accessibility as much as possible. I had a new dedicated listening room with beefy, dedicated electrical wiring, and the new room had three times the internal volume of my... Read More »

"Hey, we have the Aurender A10 in; interested in writing a post script to my review?" spoke our fearless leader, Dave Clark. "Sure, why not", I simply replied.  Having spent time with various digital bits and players over the past year or so, including dCS Rossini, Meridian's stupid great Explorer2 (with full Roon and MQA compatibility),... Read More »

SOtM, a Korean company, had caught my attention at a number of shows with their way cool looking and affordably priced products that allow one to get their files from A to B. SOtM offers three lines of products: the Ultimate, the Advanced I, the Advanced II, along with a good number of accessories. You... Read More »

So it is now 2017, and many of us music lovers and gear nuts have moved into the area of playing back our music files (streamed or downloaded from the internet or ripped from a CD) in some fashion. The world of computer-based audio has evolved from using an off-the-shelf PC or Mac to do... Read More »

Streaming is the future of computer audio. Anyone who's serious about playback of digital files knows that streaming is essential to achieve the ultimate in effortless, totally transparent playback. Think of it like this: with computer audio, there's no transport, per se; you can have the world's greatest digital-to-analog converter, but you've still gotta have... Read More »

I come from a do-it-yourself type family. To the best of my knowledge, this handy trait started out with both of my grandfathers and got handed down from there. One was a country boy who liked to build stuff for his own use just for the fun of it. He used to build wooden boats for both work and pleasure, well, just because.

I believe that the hottest word recently used by people listening to decent quality music is Tidal. Tidal is a paid streaming service offering music files in a lossless 16/44 FLAC quality (high quality CD) and hi-res video; The latest addition is the Tidal Master, which offers hi-res PCM audio encoded in MQA (Master Quality... Read More »

Computer audio is a little bit like Sauron's "Ring." It promises audiophiles control over their digital files, easier access to information about the music they are listening to and even dominion over the information from the overlord of information called the interwebs all from your throne, er listening seat. What's not to like? That's the lure. The... Read More »

The NAS element of my Roon/QNAP/microRendu setup is a QNAP TS-251, which has the requisite 64-bit processor and sufficiently upgradeable RAM to run Roon Core effectively. And at a significant cost savings when compared to Roon's recommended QNAP setup ($500 vs. nearly $2000 USD). During my initial explorations of Roon late last year, I quickly... Read More »

So here I am again, returning to one of the touchstone companies for DSD and digital audio:  Playback Designs. Am I surprised? Should anyone be surprised? Heck no. In fact, according to Andreas Koch, he and I first saw each other at the original DSD demonstration at Mobile Fidelity in Sebastopol, CA, back in September... Read More »

I first seriously embraced the advantages inherent in computer audio when Linn released their first iterations of the DS range of ethernet based streamers and dropped CD players altogether. I felt instantly liberated with access to my entire digital library at the hands of my iPad. At first my brain went into complete overdrive as... Read More »

I have become quite lazy and it is all to blame on the technology that we use today to get our music out into the room. It all started with CDs allowing me to sit and listen to something like 60 mins of music while never stirring. Of course a lot of time I never... Read More »

My recent reviews for the Devialet 400 and 800 Integrated Amplifiers generated plenty of emails and comments. Thanks to all the readers who took notice and had an opinion to voice on these components—both yeah and nay. Just another example of different strokes for different folks. It was all respectfully done in good fun but... Read More »

[Amended byline: Roland Dietl, by courtesy of Dirk Sommer] If you are into music streaming and especially into hires music there is one question you can't avoid:  Where to store all these files? Until now the way to go was either to keep the music on your PC or laptop computer, or to use a... Read More »

When you are looking for a way to comfortably manage your collection of digital music, enjoy it with the best sound quality possible and without the need to mess around with computers in your scarce spare time, the Melco N1A is just what you need Just nine years ago integrating a computer into my Hi-Fi... Read More »

"I know it's only rock 'n roll but I like it, like it, yes, I do" —The Rolling Stones Not that long ago, I was working under contract at a big software company in Silicon Valley. However, I had been having tremendous pain in my right knee, largely from a sports injury, and got the... Read More »

"How can I even try I can never win Hearing them, seeing them in the state I'm in" —"You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" by Lennon–McCartney I haven't written a column on digital music servers in a very long time, and I think that's because I haven't really had anything new to say. Everything... Read More »

This is a review of the Cary Audio DMC-600 Special Edition ("SE") digital music center which was added to the Cary Audio line up of products in the fall of 2014 or, perhaps, early 2015. It went on my radar after I received a press release in the fall of 2014. Intrigued, I touched base... Read More »

This is going to be a sort of two-part review… first about the Auralic Aries and then about what I did to take my current file-based audio system to a completely different and yet, stunningly musical level... along with the Aries. Okay so to piggy back on the Antipodes review… yeah, I want it easier... Read More »