Linn Magik DS - the next itch

Ok, so I've got a Linn Magik DS running in my hi-fi system since yesterday, managed to pull a CAT-5 connection from my Unifi.

Just to get started, I'm streaming music wirelessly from my laptop to router, and from there, wired to the Linn. It's smooth, but not all there yet. Files are most mp3.

Looking to add NAS to rip my CDs via WAV or Flac, and also download high-rez.

Some queries:

1 - What's a decent NAS unit - what sort do I need. Long term. I'm think 1TB capacity to start with and expandable, so it needs more than one slot.

2 - What CD ripping software to use? I like iTunes because it gets all the album details from Gracenotes, but EAC has limited titles in its database. Eventually plan to transfer my whole CD collection to NAS.

Anyone got any feedback/suggestions on the pros and cons.

I hear the Linn control interface for iPad, etc, may soon be free.

Getting Linn Magik DS was part of my original plan but I end up building a new HTPC and pair it with a Brik DAC in the end. Still have some cash left to spare for nice cables

Any decent NAS unit will do. As for me I bought this http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopic=1237717&hl= as I don't really need access via network. USB3 connectivity from my HTPC is bloody fast.

Since you are talking about long term, might as well get the biggest HDD you can afford. Samsung 2TB 5400rpm is good and cheap to use as data storage. You don't need fast HDD here especially if you want to enclose them. Fast HDD will generate more heat.

I also use iTunes to rip my CD collection. The most convenient way for me. For FLAC, APE, DTS, etc I usually download directly from the net.

From the computer guy, IF you are going to have a huge capacity disk which means you will be storing huge amounts of music files which will definitely be a collection from a lot of hard work, you MUST implement what we call a 'disaster recovery; plan. Hard disks, especially those at the consumer level and more especially if heavily used, WILL fail. And if you get a disk crash, you might lose years of music collection.

There are two schemes to do data backup.
1. Do periodic back up, once a week, once a month, etc, depending on how often you add new contents. This is usually a tedious manual process and there is a great tendency to quickly ignore it after an initial period, when you find it 'leceh'.

The typical way to do this is to back up on another harddisk. Usually same capacity, Or multiple disks of smaller capacity. Investment in high speed disks now becomes a priority as it is useful to bear in mind write speed is typically quite a bit slower than read speed.

2. You do 'disk mirroring'. Technologies like RAID which is disk redundancy and also automatic cloning of disk images (called disk mirroring) is now making its way to consumer grade I/T equipment as many smaller I/T shops now relies on these type of equipment for their I/T needs. A disk server like the Buffalo hard-disk station will satisfy this need. Basically you have two identical sized disks but treated as a single disk. The hardware automatically clones the contents of the main disk to the back-up 'mirror' disk and for all future updates, it will ensure synchronization of the data contents.

What typically happens here is that after all while, we tend to become stingy and question why we are so stupid as to spend double each time we want to add more storage for more music or movie contents.

So it is up to the individual la. But it is a pertinent question to address, especially now that harddisk based music storage is getting to be the norm. The advice of a computer guy from the professional industry is always to invest in data backup of some form for 'disaster recovery'. Of course many people also subscribes to the legendary malaysian attitude "it won't happen to me la".

(for those curious, I maintain multiple backups of my critical computer data but not ALL of my movies. I have experienced situations which are extremely stressful with regards to loss of data but that is because of my job).

Just got a D-Link NAs with dual bays, plus a 2TB hard drive. Now to set it all up ... ... may call one of you guys for guidance ...

BR,

If you are using laptop, always rip using dbpoweramp and in wav format.

If you use itunes from laptop, ripping using aif, SQ wld not be as good as compared to you using apple mac computer.

Furthermore, you wld have problem sharing non aif files from friends coz flac and wav files ripped thru window based or downloaded flac wld show up without meta(cover art and details).

If you use window based program ie jrivers, the cover art from aif, wav and flac files will show up beautifully on yr monitor. SQ also better.

Also do not get high speed HD coz if gets hotter. You really do not need high speed HD for music files, only hugh rams in yr laptop.

Actually, this is how I want to do it long-term. Storage would be on NAS with music ripped to wav or flac on PC. Thus, laptop for control to Linn DS. Does that make sense?

EAC not a good idea?

No, use DBPoweramp for ripping Wav and not flac. Flac only for downloading HRez.

Use yr Window laptop with SSD optimised for audio. Use Total Stopping services for yr laptop.

Junk yr DS

Call me, I show you what I hv done.

I junk my 40K CD player for it for convenience and SQ.

Can pm me your number, don't have it, tks.

VS126 wrote:Use yr Window laptop with SSD optimised for audio. Use Total Stopping services for yr laptop.

Care to elaborate more on bold items? Thanks

Change yr laptop harddisk to solid state harddisk and optimise with certain parameters.

Download the freeware Fidelizer and use extreme settings, this setting will create a Total Stopping Service which cuts off everything not related to audio. This will make yr laptop a so called 'Audiophile Music Transport' that will rival many High End CD Transport.

Get an Ascyn DAC that will reclock at DAC side and can play native 24/192.

Use Window 7 plus settings that will suit yr system.

Use JRivers Media Center. Do not play MP3 and expect it to sound High End.

Rip yr CD with accurate rip turned on and into wav.

Plus other minor details.......

Cheers and enjoy.

Vince, I figure the big money will go for the asynchronous DAC, right? Maybe 4k and above.

I'm told despite claims by some manufacturers, their DACs are adaptive rather than asynchronous?

VS126 wrote:Rip yr CD with accurate rip turned on and into wav.

Thanks. Why WAV? FLAC is also lossless and smaller in size. Not arguing here but just trying to see from your perspective

I ripped into WAV too. Why? HDDs are cheap nowadays!

LOL it's not whether HDD space is the concern but the format. Both are lossless so they should sounded the same (theoretically).

Anyway I tried to rip a few favourite albums to WAV and make comparison with FLAC. I can't hear any difference unlike when I compare FLAC to 320K MP3 which is pretty obvious and makes lossless far more superior sounding.

Maybe I don't have the right or good enough equipment to hear the difference between FLAC and WAV. So for now I will stick with FLAC

There's nothing 'wrong' with FLAC but I moved on to WAV.
No 'decompression' necessary..

Always rip in WAV format.

(PLS read Computer Audiophile on Techniques On Ripping, they recommend WAV as best format).

Flac and AIFF are both compressed files when ripping and will decompress when retriving. Thus yr computer has to do extra work decompressing or unpacking.

Harddisk is very affordable nowadays, why save. A 2 terra HD costs RM200plus can load thousands of CD in WAV format. Why compress it?

Many audiophile forum have championed WAV as the best SQ and it is quite logical coz it is unpacked file. Even if unsure, just give it benefit of doubt. You wld not want to rerip all over again.

hi VS thanks for your info, i just install fidelizer and j.river (trial version) big improvement on SQ even use mp3 format, sound more detail, texture and bass becoming tight. Now looking for wav format..

VS126
"I junk my 40K CD player for it for convenience and SQ"

VS126 how much better is your notebook playback system than the 40K CD player ? Were there still some areas that it beat the notebook ?

Do you run your notebook on batteries or plugged into the mains ? Which model of CD player did you have ?

microkernel wrote:hi VS thanks for your info, i just install fidelizer and j.river (trial version) big improvement on SQ even use mp3 format, sound more detail, texture and bass becoming tight. Now looking for wav format..

With WAV, you can remove yr CD player.

With HiREZ, you will be high in Heaven.

When you got yr WAV, PM me and I give yr more tips.

carz wrote:VS126
"I junk my 40K CD player for it for convenience and SQ"

VS126 how much better is your notebook playback system than the 40K CD player ? Were there still some areas that it beat the notebook ?

Do you run your notebook on batteries or plugged into the mains ? Which model of CD player did you have ?

WADIA.

Comparable with CD, but with HIREZ, HI REZ is better.

VS126 wrote:
Flac and AIFF are both compressed files when ripping and will decompress when retriving. Thus yr computer has to do extra work decompressing or unpacking.

VS126,

You are mistaken. Standard AIFF, as used in iTunes and in most implementations, is uncompressed & lossless, similar to WAV and both employ PCM as a representation of an analog signal. The key difference between standard AIFF & WAV is the endianness. For more on WAV, AIFF and Endianness, you may refer to the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Interchange_File_Format
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness
http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~gary/307/week4/audiofile.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-code_modulation

Objectively speaking, since both WAV & AIFF are uncompressed & lossless, given a particular bit depth & sampling rate, file sizes should be near identical, save for any extraneous headers.

Subjectively though, I'm not sure if there are discernible differences. Your mileage may vary, but I can't seem to go against the notion that they sound the same. However, for some inexplicable reason, on my 5th gen iPod Video & 1st gen iPod Touch, WAV sounded way better than Apple lossless.

Just to add on, Apple Lossless is very similar to FLAC as well.
That is, in the the files are packed in a compressed algorithm, but during playback, they are decompressed back to their full glory and there are no "missing bits" from the original digital representation.

Much like a RAR or ZIP archive. The files are much denser and smaller than the original file, but when unzipped, its a bit perfect restoration of the original file.

As for Lossless-compressed files sounding inferior to uncompressed WAV or AIFF files, one theory is that the extra CPU power needed to decompress the files on the fly would give rise to jitter artifacts. But given the computing power and adequate buffering, and re-clocking and what nots , it should safely render jitter issues harmless.

BTW, after having done some armchair research as to how certain USB cables change the sound. It was brought to light that most implementations of USB audio are iso-chronous. This means, the Computer sending the audio signals via the USB to the receiving DAC is timed at equal intervals.

But that being said, computers do not make very good clocks esp for realtime critical D/A conversions.

To cut a long story short, a USB DAC can be a pretty amazing piece of gear and it can definitely earn its place in high end audio. The problem is that Computers actually do quite a horrible job in sending nicely clocked and cleanly timed signals (bad jitter), but its really not computer's fault because such critical jitters that wreck havoc on D/A conversions are actually in-consequential in the computer world (where everything stays digital, and as long as the bits are not corrupted or not out of sequence).

But not all is lost, and the problem is easily rectified at the logic layers.
DCS has its own novel implementation of Asynchronous USB transfers to completely remove the timing problems.

Other DACs would employ similar in-between buffering to reclock and re-time the signals for clean D/A conversions.

Looks like a Computer-Audiophile system is the next wave of the Digital frontier for 2 channel systems.


For those who wanna read more, here are some reference links:
http://www.eetimes.com/design/audio-design/4009467/The-D-A-diaries-A-personal-memoir-of-engineering-heartache-and-triumph

http://www.eetimes.com/electrical-engineers/education-training/tech-papers/4127198/USB-Audio-Class-Tutorial

mugenfoo wrote:
That is, in the the files are packed in a compressed algorithm, but during playback, they are decompressed back to their full glory and there are no "missing bits" from the original digital representation.



As for Lossless-compressed files sounding inferior to uncompressed WAV or AIFF files, one theory is that the extra CPU power needed to decompress the files on the fly would give rise to jitter artifacts. But given the computing power and adequate buffering, and re-clocking and what nots , it should safely render jitter issues harmless.

That is what I meant. Why take the risk??
Extra CPU power means more noise, more heat and more ram needed.
Every little things matters.

Use WAV and forever rest in Peace.

BTW I just bought a 2TB harddisk for RM269.00
Hardly can buy a couple of CD's.

mugenfoo wrote:
DCS has its own novel implementation of Asynchronous USB transfers to completely remove the timing problems.

dcs actually licenses its asynchronous usb transfer technology from wavelength audio. ayre also licenses it from wavelength. plus a few more.

ok, i may be wrong about dcs. it cld be its own technology.

but ayre for sure licenses it from wavelength.

well... if it was a 486 CPU doing the decompressing and PCM streaming, then perhaps the jitter would be much worse and rightly so.

But in today's age of cheap CPU horsepower and asynchronous USB links, there really isn't any reason to fret over on-the-fly lossless decompression.

Its commonly used even in mainstream audio, such as MLP (Meridien Lossless Packing) and even in SACD's DST.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD

BTW, one obvious advantage in storing denser files is that the HDD won't konk out so soon (less physical wear&tear on the mechanisms). Simply because it has less to read off its platters! HDDs may be cheap, but the hassle of having re-rip everything just because a HDD croaks is just mind boggling!


Actually vince, i'm just yanking your tail !

OK, enuff forumming for me and i'll go and disappear for another extended period of time again. Got some new hifi toys in the pipeline coming within these few weeks.

when playing FLAC or other compressed files using VLC Media Player (V1.1.9) on a PC, i find that when i slide the bar to forware the music, there is quite a long time lag (about 5 seconds) before the music play. But there is no spike in CPU activity which stays below 10% or less

Does anone know why ? This does NOT happen when i play WAV format

Cld be the unpacking of Flac files.

Yr RAM is not high enough. at least 4 g is recommended.

My advise on wav format is for those just starting to rip.

MF, everybody does backups on their music files,

I got the lag also when I was using P4 with 2gb RAM playing FLAC files but I never tested with WAV. Now I'm using i3 with 4gb and it doesn't even break a sweat

VS126 and arremie,
PC has AMP Sampron 3800+ 2.21Ghz processor with 4GB memory running Windows XP SP3

The thing is there is no spike in CPU activity, and utilization stays below 10%. HDD activity (blinking lights) looks the same as playback.

I find that just following what's prescribed by Linn to be mostly fuss-free.

http://docs.linn.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Products

I got the Majik DS too and I use the QNap NAS 1.5TB.

carz wrote:VS126 and arremie,
PC has AMP Sampron 3800+ 2.21Ghz processor with 4GB memory running Windows XP SP3

The thing is there is no spike in CPU activity, and utilization stays below 10%. HDD activity (blinking lights) looks the same as playback.

Carz,

I handle a lot of high resolution printing machines and using a quad core PC to process a 800MB file for printing also does not generate much CPU activity. It hovers around 30% on two cores and 10% on the other two cores but I still have to wait 10 minutes before any printing starts. When I was using a hyperthreaded P4 CPU, that same printing job took around 45 minutes but at more than 90% CPU utilization.

It seems to me like modern CPUs operate at high enough clock speeds that you seldom see 100% CPU utilization but it will still take time to process and decompress your FLAC files even so.

bimmerman,
Strange that your quad core don't fully utilise the CPU power and do the job in 5 minutes instead ? Is it inefficiencies in the OS or the application software in maxing out the CPUs. What quadcore CPU are you using ?

i still don't understand

WongKN - what is your take on this ?

Hi Carz,

It's just an older Core2 Quad. I won't pretend to understand it either but my suspicion is perhaps a combination of OS overheads, caching, buffering into ram and perhaps inefficient code.

Oh, i'd like to add that I've even tried a 6 core Phenum processor and it did take only 5 minutes but 2 cores showed no load while the remaining 4 cores were 10% 20% 20% 10%.

Perhaps someone from the IT industry like WongKN can explain better???

mugenfoo wrote:OK, enuff forumming for me and i'll go and disappear for another extended period of time again. Got some new hifi toys in the pipeline coming within these few weeks.

Those big rectangular things? Adding more?

Yeah, those big rectangular things... brings new meaning to "Bachelor pad".

It doesn't matter how many cores you have but if the application you are using unable to utilize multiple cores then it's just the same as others.

dbpoweramp able to utilize all cores when converting files. You can see all 4 cores (in my case) went up to 100%. Converting 10 or so files from WAV to MP3 only takes a few seconds. Pretty cool

The speed of processing depends on a few factors.

FIrst is how fast the data is delivered to the program. This depends on how fast the data is transfered from the storage device to the -in core- memory, firstly the RAM, but then ALSO the actual memory inside the CPU (I think it was called 'core-storage' or 'core memory' at one time).

Then whether the program is 'multi-threaded' like what arremie says. Multi-threading means an ability to process more than 1 thing concurrently (we used to call it parallel processing, versus sequential processing). Even the latest programming techniques are seldom very parallel in nature. It is just the characteristic, or limitation as some calls it, of our I/T technology. So if the program can only process one thing at a time, you throw it a 10 core CPU, it will still only process one thing at a time. And use one core at a time.

RAM is also important as this is where the data are staged after transfer from the HDD, before it gets routed inside the CPU for actual processing.

When you open the system monitor, beside the CPU utlitilization, you also need to check as suggested by VS126, the RAM usage. If the RAM is not big enough (if you have a huge 2GB file, it can happen), then there will be delay due to transfer from HDD to RAM. And sometimes the processing may require more RAM and 'paging' is done (parts of RAM memory are transferred temporarily to harddisk, the 'paging partition') to make space.

WongKN, you reminded me of my lecturer back in Uni time

Thanks for the compliment. I think. Because lecturers are also well known for being long-winded and boring...

it's not just the processing speed of the chip, duo core or quad core. it's also not just the ram - 2gb or 4gb.

most computer audiophiles are actually not listening to their hi-res files at their native sampling rates. this is simply because the sound card in laptops can handle 24/96 max (plse correct me if i am wrong) regardless of chip speed or ram size.

thus yr 24/176.4 and 24/192 files are actually streamed to your 24/192 capable DAC at 24/96 max.

to stream at up to 24/192, you need special drivers, mostly proprietary, and convert the usb 1 to usb 2.

Most USB 24/192 capable DAC ie AYRE, WAVELENGTH, WYRED4SOUND, DCS, WEISS etc have their own drivers to convert and play native 24/192.

DAC like the new Audiolab CD player/Dac will downconvert all files higher than 24/96 even though it uses the same 32bit Sabre chip.

So if a USB 24/192 DAC comes without a driver for it, all 192 hiRez files will be downsampled.

So, it is important to determine before purchase. There are increasingly more 24/192 files in the market or in the Clouds.

vs126,

since u hv much experience playing with computer audiophile systems, perhaps u r the right person to answer a few questions that i hv been trying to answer:

1) why do some dacs have problems handling HRx 176.4 files?

2) hv u noticed sq differences between toslink, aes-ebu, bnc, coax, ethernet (like the linn ds) usb (like most dacs) and firewire (like weiss)?

Believe it is the receiver chip that is not programmed for 176.4
Although it is the natural multiflier, it is seldom used in audio except by RR.

Mostly happens in cheaper or legacy DACs. I do not have that problem.

For computer audio, the best connection is thru USB/firewire if the DAC is equipped with ascyn. This way, the clocking is done at the dac instead of at the computer.

If adaptive, it makes no difference.

Do not shoot me, I might be wrong.

I am just trying to impart to those who are novice in CA. I am also still learning and we discover new things everyday.

Screen shot of playback in foobar of FLAC(Top) and WAV(Bottom) ripped using dBpoweramp.

Display of metadata for FLAC is complete, unlike for WAV.

Sonic wise, FLAC played softer in volume than WAV. Does anyone know the reason?

tycham, FLAC or WAV sound better to you ?

carz wrote:tycham, FLAC or WAV sound better to you ?

WAV sounded better to me.

tycham,
was wondering if PC power and RAM has anything to do with it.
What Processor, speed, ram size and OS are you using?

carz wrote:tycham,
was wondering if PC power and RAM has anything to do with it.
What Processor, speed, ram size and OS are you using?

With ripping I really don't know if the above would affect the sound quality.

My dedicated player benefitted from linear power supply and a smaller than usual RAM.

I am using these: i3-540(underclocked to 900Mhz and unvolted to 0.6375V), Kingston DDR3 512Mb, and XP Pro SP2.