OT: For the computer music server people

[alancohen]

Sounds like a great plan. I mainly listen to vinyl, CD's, and DVD's so I'm not in a rush but considering you're going to get a lot of use immediately out of whichever unit you buy your rationale makes total sense to me.....

I thought so.

I'm not the most frugal guy in the world, but I'm far from a spendthrift either. I like to do my research and then let things simmer for a while before taking the plunge. When I start hearing similar things from several unconnected sources I start paying attention. Heck, that's how I found Altec and haven't looked back.

It seems the trend of the ones and zeros crowd is to toss their CD players and move to dedicated music servers. Playing music files from memory instead of "on the fly" from disc has some distinct advantages. A big one is losing the motor. I'm using an early 2009 Mac Mini both as a player and a server. I prefer it in server mode when I'm doing some serious listening, since even the sound of the transport is audible.

The future will be local SS hard drives or remote servers where our music will be stored in the cloud. The technology of these D/A converters will allow for an almost analog musical experience. This will be invaluable since everything recorded in the past 20 (maybe 40) years was recorded as ones and zeros in the first place.