Blu spec CDS

[Stephen Smith]

I've used Devolo network over powerline units for some years now. At least 4 Computers in the house, Virgin fibre broadband. I went for the, then, best possible - "200mbs" units (max, as ever, less in practice) and it has worked with no flaws, but I haven't used it for anything other than internet (so no streaming of audio or video/TV) - no time to get embroiled (yet) in these.

I have an original ring main, which the electrician established was a figure of 8 (rather than 2 rings -upstairs & downstairs) in the 1959 original, he found this when he installed the wiring (2 or 3 more rings) in a large extension and a new consumer unit (its a detached house). No problems with the devolo anywhere - although I presume there can be problematic wiring situations which can't be predicted. The Devolos are more expensive, there are lots of other brands now, but their website has a lot of info and they give good support - including a phone number where a real person answers ! Per the website http://www.devolo.co.uk/consumer/faq....html?l=en#616

"

Will the devolo solution work if the devolo adapters are on different electrical circuits in the house?
Yes. So long as there is only one electricity meter for the house, then devolo adapters generally can be plugged into any of the sockets related to the house."

BTW, I will install a streaming system - just not sure which (Sonos - expensive; Squeezebox - no longer in production; Apple TV or Airport express seems the best bet - as long as I can use a WindowsPC with iTunes and an iPod touch to stream to the audio system - yet to be certain that is the case). (I'm hoping the latter is possible - I won't be buying costly branded streaming units - the iPod touch is my portable music player and the Apple TV/ Touch come in at about £100 or less each - when all is said and done, they, and any digital units can only deliver 0's and 1's to the DAC).

[richardfinegold]

I think the recording quality of the Mendelssohn is poor. No amount of DSD encoding can rescue what is fundamentally flawed.

agreed

[richardfinegold]

I have had little problem with downloading high resolution files totalling a gigabyte and more. And a recent upgrade to a fibre optic connection gives me even faster download speeds. The files should not have drop-outs - I don't think that is a result of a slow connection, rather a faulty file, but may be talking through my hat. The only problem I have had, and this is some time ago, was with a slow connection to HDTT when some tracks had to be downloaded again as they got cut short.

That said, I would prefer to have my high resolution music on SACD as it's less of a PITA to manage. At the moment, someone is dealing with one of my two NAS drives set up as RAID and recovering the data. The unit has failed so the drive and its backup cannot be accessed. Of course, I ought to have kept a backup of the backup.

Exactly, the PITA factor. I would much rather deal with discs. Having said that, I am in the process of backing up my discs to a hard drive. The plan was to discard the less frequently played discs. I am already missing some of the ones that I have discarded and have already had a hard drive playback issue and I am relatively early in this process. At any rate, these are standard def CDs, and I will never trust high res material to such a process.

[richardfinegold]

Are these dropouts on playback or on the file itself? You might get problems trying to stream 24-bit files wirelessly, quite a lot of Googled evidence for that, I've only ever listened to them hardwired via optical (usb asynch is fine too of course). Anyone else successfully streaming 24-bit here? Do tell...

1GB downloads usually take under 30 minutes here from eclassical or TCS. It used to be much longer but their onsite download managers are much better now.

But yes, storing them can provoke some thought. I've just been researching a scenario with a mac mini running ssd for 24-bit only, hardwired close to the dac and controlled by an iPad... one can dream...

(I've been enjoying Dausgaard's Schumann Orchestral survey on 24/44.1 BIS, yet here am I with the recently-arrived CDs as well! Don't do this often... I just wanted the comparison, will try to report back...)

Wired. Wireless was a disaster. I do need to upgrade my home Internet connection.
Re: Dausgaard; I've been listening to both the Barenboim and Karajan Schumann sets a lot lately. I would be interested in your views of both the performances and the SACD sound compared to your downloads.