jhwalker

... and now I got a list of SPECIFIC recordings that are going to be removed. Nothing I can see in common - a couple of Chandos recordings (not all of them I've purchased), one Chaconne, one of the Haydn 2032 series (but not all of them), one independent release ... I could understand the Chandos issue (given they're going to be shutting down their download service soon), but seems it would be ALL of them (not just a couple), and the others are just random, as far as I can tell 🤷‍♂️

... and just like that, got it this morning here in the US: UPDATE OF QOBUZ GENERAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS Hello, We would like to inform you of important changes to Qobuz services and the update of our terms and conditions. Certain recordings may be withdrawn from the service for legal reasons. To comply with our obligations and ensure the protection of intellectual property in music, we may need to block access to certain releases, both for download and streaming. In these specific cases, any releases that customers have already purchased from the Qobuz Store will no longer be re-downloadable following the date of removal from the service. No action is required on your part, but we recommend downloading your purchases as soon as possible after completing them. By continuing to use our services, you are agreeing to our updated terms and conditions starting October 1st, 2024. We are happy to answer any questions you may have. You can now consult the amended general terms and conditions.

This is interesting, and concerning, considering I have NOT received any such notification. I "shop" Qobuz pretty frequently, and haven't seen any pop-ups, etc., on the website with this communication, either.

I had a similar issue with my LPS-1. It worked well for a year or two and then just ... didn't :/ And the symptoms sound the same; i.e., it would power up just fine on its own, but would turn red and fail to power my microRendu. I didn't try to have it fixed because I just assumed it only had a limited life and I didn't want to continue spending money on it.

I don't think that study said what you think it said. I saw NOTHING in the write-up that claimed the differences could not be measured (and very accurately) by existing methods. In fact, the spectrograms presented in the study were CLEARLY distinguishable; i.e., they looked TOTALLY different using TRADITIONAL measuring techniques 🤷‍♂️

Correct. Libel / slander laws have literally NOTHING to do with the First Amendment which, as you point out, ONLY protects citizens from GOVERNMENT interference on account of protected speech.

Chris - You've said several times you just have to attach a drive to the Shield and it will play the files. What program / app are you using on the Shield to play the files from the attached drive? I do use a Shield, but must use Infuse to play files from my NAS - is that also what you'd use to play files from a directly-attached drive? Or is there some built-in app on the Shield that allows this?

What makes you think either the Lindemann Satie -or- the Naim DAC V1 are non-oversampling? From the specs / information available, they both appear to be pretty standard, oversampling DACs, using normal chips in a normal processing pipeline, including oversampling. Neither are advertised as NOS, and, in fact, Absolute Sound specifically confirms Naim DAC V1 is a normal, oversampling DAC. Since Lindemann also advertises filter selection, it's clear it is oversampling, as well.

Exactly. Getting the recording "right" is the job of the producers, et al. Playing BACK the recording correctly is a job for our playback equipment.

Finally got my Rumours Blu-Ray today - great music, great Atmos remaster, along with DTS Multichannel and Stereo versions.

Same - DBpoweramp uses the AccurateRip database which confirms whether or not you've gotten an accurate rip, and it will re-rip a sector at a time if needed to get it right. And iTunes can sometimes read a damaged CD when even DBpoweramp cannot - irritating ;) but it's a good fallback to have.

My feelings on this lie somewhere in the middle, I think. I know exactly which reviewer you're quoting because I frequent his fora daily. And I think he offers incredible value in the services he offers. I think he oversteps a bit WRT his comments on the universality of the Harman Curve, BUT ... I also think the Harman Curve offers a "standard" we can (and should) reference as a baseline for comparisons. I don't think that any headphone that fails to precisely replicate Harman is automatically valueless, BUT I know I, personally, will not like it if if falls too far from from the curve, because Harman is also MY preference among all the variations I've tried. So, no, people who prefer something else are not necessarily fools (though they may be, or ignorant), BUT I question their judgment when they enthusiastically recommend headphones that are so far from accurate they MUST sound terrible (and they do, the ones I've listened to, at least). I think headphones which adhere closely to Harman as a baseline generally sound pretty good, and any specific variations may or may not contribute to the special value of that model.

... especially compared to some of her other albums, which are among my favorites. Disappointing.

Well, so is Spotify, and it hasn't seemed to hurt it's popularity ;)

Exactly. The only thing that has been updated even semi-regularly over at least the last year is the Bliss (metadata management) software, which I don't use 🤷‍♂️

Nah - my room is pretty decent already. I do use Audyssey (with the extra laptop software) for multichannel and Focus Fidelity for convolution in Roon just to even it out even more, but didn't really need to do much. Oh, and I bought a Klimt-themed sound-dampening room divider to break up reflections off my brick fireplace - works a treat.

90% speakers. 9% other electronics (e.g., receiver, streamers, etc.). 1% "other" (including cables). If a cable follows standard, it will work properly. I will pay a bit extra for what I consider "solid" construction, but not for any special features / 'tech'.

That's a very reasonable price for such a full-featured system. Personally, I find touchscreen-style navigation a pain for my ~9,000 album collection with over 5,000 artists, which is why I stick with Roon and it's easy "search"-based navigation - I can type "Def Leppard" (or "Yuja Wang") and within a second have all their albums to-hand, no scrolling required, so if I were to use this system, it would be as a Roon-ready endpoint. But sounds like a great integrated solution for you!

Understood - I actually use a sonicTransporter i9 as my core / server, and it works great. I bought it instead of a Nucleus because it had better "horsepower" (at the time) for my large library and I like the fanless design (much like the Nucleus). If the Titan had been available at the time, I might have bought it instead for the form factor and (hopefully) adequate horsepower ;)

Where's the dissonance? Is there any claim that this server sounds "better"? I don't see it. The claim is that it is optimized to run Roon, and has high-powered CPU, fast SSD storage, etc. - nothing about sound.

Thank you for the heads-up! Just ordered :) Berliner Philharmoniker Kirill Petrenko Kirill Gerstein piano Sergei Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2 in E minor, op. 27 The Isle of the Dead op. 29 Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in C minor, op. 18 Symphonic Dances op. 45

I love a good DIY story! I'm not at ALL handy enough to do any of that myself, but cool to know that others are and see how it can be done :)

I disagree, obviously. If the server is sending the bits unaltered, there is no mechanism by which they could conceivably sound different. An Excel spreadsheet contains the exact same numbers whether stored on a NAS and retrieved via SMB or stored in the "cloud" and retrieved via HTTPS. The bits are the same; therefore, the content is the same - same applies for music files: there's nothing special about them. Again, if a specific software actually DOES sound different (or an endpoint handles that stream differently), that's a problem, not a feature. NOTE: this is NOT to say that Audirvana (say) or Amarra is NOT doing something internally that "sweetens" the sound in some way, which may be difficult to detect if outputting directly to a DAC (e.g., via USB, etc.). But if they're actually just sending the file to a renderer (e.g., via DLNA), then they WILL sound the same unless the renderer is mishandling the stream.

Roon doesn't have a "sound quality". It's just a server that sends bit-perfect streams to whatever endpoint you are using. If your endpoint somehow sounds different when rendering the same bit-perfect streams from different servers, that's a problem with the endpoint, not Roon (or any other server). Sounds like all they're talking about here is enabling Aurender to be an endpoint for Roon; i.e., to accept incoming, bit-perfect streams via Roon's RAAT (again, bit-perfect) protocol 🤷‍♂️

No "procedure", per se, just tag your files when you import them. For example, when I purchase files from download sites, I run them through MP3Tag to make sure the tags (including Genre) are as I want them. When I import them into Roon, I have the setting "Settings | Import Settings | Use Genres extracted from file tags" turned on. You also have the ability to map "your" Genres to something else for display in Roon, but I don't bother with that - so long as Roon is recognizing the tags I've embedded in my files, I'm good.