DACs to DS - a users perspective.

Folks,

Having followed the distributed Audio threads with interest, particularly with regard to Naims new products in this area, my own personal quest for a high quality computer based / streaming solution has now come to a conclusion and with a much different end point than i ever thought it would.

This post is in no way meant to knock Naim - I still continue to use Naim products after 22 years and just wanted to add my own experiences of computer audio to the vast amount of accumulated knowledge already found in this section of the forum.

I've been a digital convert for the last 14 years after a Naim CD3.5 ousted my LP12. The idea of having my whole music collection so easily accessible has really appealed to me but early systems were either too expensive or not of good enough quality to warrant investigation. My first attempt at streaming consisted of an Airport Express into the digital input of my n-Vi (acting as a DAC) controlled via a bluetooth enabled mobile phone. Not the slickest of systems but not bad sounding either...

Move on a couple of years and i've gone the Mac 'n' Dac route with a headless Mac Mini and various DACs - the Lavry DA10 via Toslink and then to a Weiss DAC2 and finally DAC202. The Weiss DACs really come into their own with the Firewire connection. I'd come from the school of thinking that if the output is bit perfect then it can't be improved upon - unfortunately it can.

I was an early adopter of Amarra and later Pure Music. Both players improve on standard iTunes playback whilst remaining bit perfect (the Weiss DACs can do bit transparency checking so the path from Hard disk to DAC can be checked out). Further small improvements came from maxing out the memory in the Mini and replacing the internal hard drive with a 64GB SSD drive for just the OS and the music player. All the music is stored on external NAS so internal storage size wasn't an issue. Controlled via an iPod touch, this made a very good digital front end. Sound quality was superb but with a few operational niggles...

I went through a number of versions of Amarra - all sounded different. A friend (thanks Joe) put me onto Pure Vinyl which i found i prefered to Amarra. Pure Music was released which was just Pure Vinyl, with all the Vinyl bits taken out, effectively just a stripped down music player. The introduction of memory play was the key in getting this sounding so good. Individual tracks or a complete album could be loaded into memory rather than access the disk / network. Minimising what the computer is doing when playing music really has a beneficial effect on the final sound which is why i'd recommend dedicating a computer to this task (the Mini is ideal as it can run headless and is quiet - silent with the SSD). Whilst the sound produced by this setup was excellent, minor bugs made it a less than seamless experience. Using Apples remote app to control iTunes (both players integrate with iTunes as the Music database / control and just take over the audio engine), Pure Music would sometime lose sync with the iPod necessitating a restart of the software, there was a gap when loading music into memory and i always suffered a slow memory leak whereby the player would run out of virtual memory and crash. Whilst these are very minor irritations, they would always happen when friends were using the system and (for me) spoilt my enjoyment of sitting down for a couple of hours of listening to music.

So why the move to the Linn ? - The Mac / Weiss front end has been superb, no questions about that but i wanted to simplify things, get the computer out of the rack and make the operation slick and family proof.

Whilst the obvious solution would be an HDX / NDX the next step had to meet the following criteria -

Full iTunes integration. We have a number of iPods and have mostly Mac's in the house and i like using iTunes as a way of managing my music.

It must integrate with my library of AIFF files (XLD ripped), stored on a NAS. I don't want to be converting files to WAV / FLAC or re-ripping (again !) etc.

A one box player solution would be prefered. No additional boxes required in the rack.

So why not Naim ?

I like the HDX - it's a good product but after reading comments from other users, the small amount of residual noise from the internal drives put me off. The SSD solution, whilst ideal was said by a couple of the Trade members to be not so good as using the internal disks when reading from an external NAS - again not ideal.

The NDX ? - well that's an unknown quantity as of yet. i'm sure it will be good but as an early adopter of the n-Vi and all its problems i'd want an NDX that had all its bugs ironed out before i went that route. That would be too long given its present release date.

So onto the DS. I'd been put off Linn, mostly by comments on this forum over Linns electronics pedigree and the rather different presentation to Naim and so had not really considered the Linn route. The control interface on the Linn had put me off too but a couple of hours spent browsing the Linn forum showed promise with some rather nice control apps for the iPods. Linn introduced a major firmware update late last year (Cara) which added new features and better sound quality to the DS units (different dither and upsampling algorithms) and introduced an improved SMPS supply, the Dynamik, which upped the game again.time to borrow an Akurate DS from my dealer.

Out of the box the Linn is extremely lightweight after the Naim boxes - no heavy toroid to add to the weight. It's a very neat unit, well engineered and very well put together (which it should be for close to £4k). It also is silent and runs cool. I already have a wired Ethernet connection between my lounge and study so the Akurate was placed in the rack, power cable connected, Hi line plugged in to the RCA outputs and the Ethernet cable plugged in - that's all that's required on the hardware side.

In my study, i have the NAS and a 10 port Ethernet switch for the wired Ethernet connections. One of the ports runs to a wireless router and onto the cable modem for Internet and wireless connectivity. I plugged my Mac Mini in to one of the free ports on the switch and then VNC'd in from one of my other Macs to install a UPnP server on the Mini. I'd originally tried Twonky but this didn't work too well with my exisiting iTunes managed library so used Chorus DS, a free UPnP server for the DS players. Installation was painless, i pointed the server to my iTunes library on the NAS and started it running. 5 minutes later and its all done.

Next was setup of the DS. Using an application called Konfig, the network is scanned for UPnP devices - in a couple of seconds it finds my UPnP server and the Akurate DS in the lounge - you can set various settings on the DS from here from display brightness, to player name, to control of other Linn products (such as preamp volume) via the RS232 interface on the Akurate. A couple of minutes sorting the settings and all is done.

As it was just a loan of the DS, i didn't bother with any iPod software, i just used the Kinsky desktop application on my laptop to select music - its a pretty nice interface and does the job quite well. Again, it's a download from the Linn website and its quickly up and running. It can see the UPnP server, it can see the DS and so it's time to play some music.

It's very good and (IMHO) really gets to the heart of the music and majors on pulling out the rythmic structures and melodies. Its a different presentation to the DAC202, which majors on detail whilst still being very musical. The Akurate isn't so revealing but on a pure musical level it's an extremely enjoyable player and throughout the loan i found myself listening to tracks i hadn't heard for a long time and hearing a whole new perspective on some of them. Overall i found it a very engaging music maker and certainly in my system i prefered it to the Weiss which whilst extremely good, would sometimes, due i think to its very revealing nature, leave me concentrating more on the mechanics of the track playing rather than the musical content. Again all IMHO.

So some hard decisions were made, and an order placed for a black Akurate DS. The Weiss has gone to its new owner and Amarra was sold on to a nice chap in Hong Kong and he's very pleased with it.

So 3 weeks down the line and the box fresh Akurate has run in nicely and is sounding as good as the well used demo unit. An iPad has arrived and runs an app called Chorus DS HD which is a fantastic way to browse and control my music collection. Operation has been absolutely seamless. No crashes, no restarts and perfect Itunes integration.

I'll keep an eye on Naims progress in this area and will be interested in hearing the NDX and future products. - i think its a very exciting time for music what with new high quality ways of accessing it and the increasing availability of hi-res recordings. For now though. the Linn does all that i want and i'd recommend the DS products as worth a listen against the Naim alternatives.

James