In article m, Rob
wrote:
On 12/12/2010 14:23, Jim Lesurf wrote:
In , Geoff Mackenzie
wrote:


Interesting to know if anyone has tried one, and if they have found
out what disc format they use - e.g. FAT or ext or whatever. A
standard format and type of HD might make backups easy enough if
willing to take the box apart. :-)


It says you can back up in the instruction book (p.12) - USB FAT32 drive
required.

OK. That seems useful. Sounds like my uncertain recollection that this was
possible is true. If so, a Plus point if making a backup is fairly easy.

Must admit one thing I wonder is if the internal HD makes any whirring
noises. I find normal HDs a PITA for audio as they make noises. So I
tend t use SSD for the machines I use to play audio. But at present
that's not a cheap option, and limits capacity.


I've got a 'silentish' music server that I don't use and will ebay at
some point - far and away, the 3.5" HD is the noise problem.

I have about 300GB of music so SSD out of the question. A 2.5" drive
suits my needs. By no means silent, but tucked out the way (easy enough
as no power supply), it's not obtrusive at all.

I've been using a 300GB USB removable with a long lead. Tucked it in a
corner of some shelves in a place that minimises how audible it is from the
listening seat. This is almost the far end of the room. Acceptable, but
still just audible when the music is very quiet. Low enough to ignore, but
not silent.

I'm hoping that SSD will improve in capacity and drop in price to the point
where I/we can simply use solid-state memory and get no 'mechanical' noises
at all. Hope that we can see more CPUs used that don't need fans as well!
Annoys me that hardware reviews never really deal with these issues. What's
the point of having a vast 'dynamic range' for the stored info if all you
can hear is whizzes and whirs from the box? :-/

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

In article , TonyL
wrote:
Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , TonyL
wrote:

That's an interesting point. I've noticed that players are also
starting to have sockets for things like USB or memory cards as well.
So far I've not seen any widespread standardisation of such things.
But this may turn out to be a significant trend.


Yes, this player also has USB but one advantage of network access is no
whirring HDs in the same room.

I can see why people find that approach attractive. Must admit that I do
wonder about systems with multiple devices having their own clocks, though.
Witness the timing effects I found when I was looking at the iPlayer this
year! My impression is that even the BBC have problems with this.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Jim Lesurf wrote:

Yes, this player also has USB but one advantage of network access is
no whirring HDs in the same room.

I can see why people find that approach attractive. Must admit that I
do wonder about systems with multiple devices having their own
clocks, though. Witness the timing effects I found when I was looking
at the iPlayer this year! My impression is that even the BBC have
problems with this.


Good point. When I think about the multiple hardware and software steps to
get that digital stream from HD file to the decoder in the player, plus the
probable multiple 2.4GHz path through a few brick walls and the different
hardware clocks which may/may not be synced....boggles my mind :-)

In article , TonyL
wrote:
Jim Lesurf wrote:

Yes, this player also has USB but one advantage of network access is
no whirring HDs in the same room.

I can see why people find that approach attractive. Must admit that I
do wonder about systems with multiple devices having their own clocks,
though. Witness the timing effects I found when I was looking at the
iPlayer this year! My impression is that even the BBC have problems
with this.


Good point. When I think about the multiple hardware and software steps
to get that digital stream from HD file to the decoder in the player,
plus the probable multiple 2.4GHz path through a few brick walls and
the different hardware clocks which may/may not be synced....boggles my
mind :-)

From what I've seen/measured, the first and last areas were the clear
problems. I'd be surprised if any home users had any synchronisation. So
rely on buffering and adequate control of that and latency/interrupt
effects. How well that works, I wonder. Problem is that a home system has a
number of 'plates to spin' and experience makes me lack confidence in what
the makers of domestic computer hardware and software do - or even if they
have a clue about audio.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Jim Lesurf wrote:

From what I've seen/measured, the first and last areas were the clear
problems. I'd be surprised if any home users had any synchronisation.
So rely on buffering and adequate control of that and
latency/interrupt effects. How well that works, I wonder. Problem is
that a home system has a number of 'plates to spin' and experience
makes me lack confidence in what the makers of domestic computer
hardware and software do - or even if they have a clue about audio.


On reflection...most of the points you make are relevant to streaming (I'm
no expert so correct me if I'm talking rubbish here) In the case of audio
files of fixed size, as in this case, surely the best solution would be to
transfer the whole file across to the players RAM and play it from there.
Transfer to a local copy would take negligible time and clock
synchronisation would not be an issue. Comments ?

P.S. I haven't yet gotten around to looking at network activity while
playing audio so I don't know if they actually do this.

Cheers
TonyL

In article , TonyL
wrote:
Jim Lesurf wrote:

From what I've seen/measured, the first and last areas were the clear
problems. I'd be surprised if any home users had any synchronisation.
So rely on buffering and adequate control of that and
latency/interrupt effects. How well that works, I wonder. Problem is
that a home system has a number of 'plates to spin' and experience
makes me lack confidence in what the makers of domestic computer
hardware and software do - or even if they have a clue about audio.


On reflection...most of the points you make are relevant to streaming
(I'm no expert so correct me if I'm talking rubbish here) In the case
of audio files of fixed size, as in this case, surely the best solution
would be to transfer the whole file across to the players RAM and play
it from there.

Ideally, yes. Couple of "howevers", however... :-)

Firstly, the file might be large. Chances are this is rarely a problem for
domestic use. But I've had to cope with files well above 2Gbyte. High
bitrate long recordings and LPCM do shove up filesize.

Secondly, to ensure that is how your playing system will work happily.

Transfer to a local copy would take negligible time and
clock synchronisation would not be an issue. Comments ?

Agree with what you say. But you may find that simply reading from a
'local' HD works about as well. The timing problems I was concerned with
were if streaming from a 'server' elsewhere.

Finally, note that if using something like a USB DAC then you may still get
timing/latency/etc problems with playing the stream out though the DAC.
Depends entirely on the details of the hardware, etc. If concerned, look
for some of the more recent USB DACs that control the transfer rate to
ensure they can convert smoothly.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

In article ,
TonyL wrote:
Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article ,
TonyL wrote:

That's an interesting point. I've noticed that players
are also starting to have sockets for things like USB
or memory cards as well. So far I've not seen any
widespread standardisation of such things. But this may
turn out to be a significant trend.


Yes, this player also has USB but one advantage of
network access is no whirring HDs in the same room.

I can see why people find that approach attractive. Must
admit that I do wonder about systems with multiple
devices having their own clocks, though. Witness the
timing effects I found when I was looking at the iPlayer
this year! My impression is that even the BBC have
problems with this.


I don't see how this relates to this case. The Blu Ray player has the only
relevant clock, and that affects only its analog outputs. All other data
transfers are asynchronous.

"TonyL" wrote in message


After my old cd player finally stopped working (plastic
transport mechanism parts disintegrated) I was also
interested in a Brennen-like solution but couldn't make a
decision and left it 'pending'.

Then our DVD player gave up the ghost last week and we
got a Sony Blu-Ray player replacement. Almost as an
afterthought, one of the built in features is wifi
connectivity and I realized that I now have a PC-based
solution for my original CD issue because the Blu-Ray
player can access audio files on my PCs via a home
network.

You must be talking about the new Sony BD player that has DLNA support. This
is very hot and new.

DLNA supports NAS, which includes PCs that do file sharing. NAS hard drives,
which now can cost barely more than non-networked external hard drives are
also supported by NAS as homes for music and video libraries.

Navigation is easy since the player screen
display mimics the folder organisation on the PCs. Audio
out from the player into my IPL transmission line
speakers via a Pioneer amp sounds great to my aging ears.

I see no reason why it shouldn't be. In your system the converters in the
BD player set the analog quality, and there's no reason to believe that they
are not of high enough quality to be sonically transparent.

BD players with DLNA support seem to a bell that tolls for many dedicated
music library devices, given reasonable user-level skills.

"Jim Lesurf" wrote

Finally, note that if using something like a USB DAC then you may still
get
timing/latency/etc problems with playing the stream out though the DAC.
Depends entirely on the details of the hardware, etc. If concerned, look
for some of the more recent USB DACs that control the transfer rate to
ensure they can convert smoothly.


I had the problem with playing audio from my laptop that there was a
background "buzz", this buzz varied with processor activity, a screen
refresh was particularly loud. I tried a relatively expensive external USB
connected "SoundBlaster", but there was no improvement in this respect over
the laptop's internal audio circuitry. However when I used a cheap USB to
SPDIF converter from Maplin, connected to an external DAC, the problem went
away.

I don't have the knowledge to say why the cheap, simple Maplin converter
worked better than the much more expensive "SoundBlaster" unit, but it
proves to me that spending more money doesn't necessarily make for better
results.

David.

In article , Arny
Krueger
wrote:
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

In article , TonyL
wrote:
Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , TonyL
wrote:

That's an interesting point. I've noticed that players are also
starting to have sockets for things like USB or memory cards as
well. So far I've not seen any widespread standardisation of such
things. But this may turn out to be a significant trend.


Yes, this player also has USB but one advantage of network access is
no whirring HDs in the same room.

I can see why people find that approach attractive. Must admit that I
do wonder about systems with multiple devices having their own clocks,
though. Witness the timing effects I found when I was looking at the
iPlayer this year! My impression is that even the BBC have problems
with this.


I don't see how this relates to this case.

Hence the "though" at the end of one of comments. It does depend on what
you are doing.


The Blu Ray player has the only relevant clock, and that affects only
its analog outputs. All other data transfers are asynchronous.

Yes, that's fine provided the transferred are all adequately bufferred and
any variations in transfer rate don't have unwanted side-effects. (See my
comments on David's posting.)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html