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Linux-Based Audiophile CD Archival System
cporter writes: "My disappointment with the quality of compressed digital music formats (MP3, Ogg, WMA, the list goes on ...) and playback hardware has so far forced me to stick with the good ol' aluminum coated plastic discs. However, Linn has created the Kivor Knekt multi-unit linux-based hard disk system for archiving CDs in uncompressed form for cataloging and playback (yes, it does support ripping to MP3). It includes the Tunboks storage system, the Linnk control interface, the Oktal D/A converter, and the PCI Musik Machine sound board. The system can support up to 11 hard drives for storing audio. Stereophile magazine has a review in their current dead-tree issue, not available online, during which the reviewer hooked up a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and found an AMD Duron system running Linux. The price is a mere $20,000, plus installation. Guess I'm sticking to CDs for the moment." Looks amazing despite the price. They should send me a review model :)
I wonder what the price for additional hard drives are? Can you stick in a generic 76 gig IDE drive, or do you need to buy specific ones from them? 250 hours of music isn't all that much...
[TMB]
I agree with you to an extent. Vinyl rocks. I have some good 'ol punk vinyl and the vinyl definitely gives it the feel as the artist intended. This new digital stuff just doesn't recreate the atmosphere the way vinyl did.
The solution, of course, is to dump your vinyl to digital and burn it to CD, giving you the best of both worlds. Well, ok not exactly, but the vinyl -> CD sounds a heck of a lot better than these digital -> CD facsimiles they pawn off these days.
Now, to put this post ontopic, how do you spend $20K on a setup like this? Especially since it's just a PC with some nice audio and lots of hard drives.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Was this a blind test? I.E., did you get someone else to play the audio, from somewhere you and the participants couldnt see? If not, it isn't much of a test. Anyone asked would pick the turntable, since it's generally common knowledge that "turntables sound better", so your mind plays tricks on you. It wouldn't be much of a test unless it was run like 10 times, each time blind, with different tracks, switching the 2 sources randomly. THEN we'll see which one really sounds better to you.
"The bottom line is, CDs encode the entire range of human hearing"
i'm not qualified to debate that point. but consider this: people may actually LIKE the imperfections inherent in record players. even if the CD is scientifically better, a record be more subjectively pleasing to some peoples' ears.
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Let's see... For $20,000 US, I can buy:
1. Terabyte Fileserver: $5000
2. Turtlebeach sound card with optical out (SBLive won't do it; it resamples the data for no reason): $400
3. 'Ultimate Linux Box 2001'= $3200-$7000
4. Choice of storage formats: WAVs (Free[as in beer]:1250-1750 cds:lossless) MP3 (done proper) (Free[as in beer]:12,500-17,500 cds:lossy) Ogg Vorbis (Free[as in speech]:12,500-17,500 cds:lossy), and FLAC (Free[as in speech]:2500-3500 cds:lossless)
All this, 2.54*10^24 times more storage, and a set of components guaranteed to be better than what is in that POS that's being sold. Oh, and lets not forget the $7000 or so you'll be saving.
I'll pass.
Toodles
Toodles D. Clown