Crispy
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Madrigal music is playing - Voices can faintly be heard, "Please leave this patient undisturbed."
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Post by Crispy on Jan 28, 2014 20:44:34 GMT
Hi Chris, thinking about large drives, here is my experience. I bought 2 x 3TB HDD to make sure I had room for expansion. I assumed my albums (thought I had around 1800 - turns out I was 100 out) would take up a good 2 TB's, so I would have an extra TB for expansion. Well, after ripping all my albums to flac (level 5) and even having a 20 or so GB's worth of music video documentaries and gigs on it, I have used the grand total of . . . . . 802Gb's. So I think I kind of over-estimated the amount of space I would need. No harm done though. A simple solution using large HDD's might be to buy a couple of 2TB drives, and install them in a cloning dock like thisBTW, I'm not endorsing this one in particular, just showing it as an example of what could be done very simply and cheaply. However, I would definitely advocate cloning, mirroring, Raid 1, or any other type of backup, so that your files will not be lost if your HDD dies. I know you may well have the CD's to hand to re-rip, but believe me, ripping a large amount of CD's is something I would not want to do again. Something to think about . . . Thanks Jeff. You are just a fraction late with that good advice - I have already ordered a portable 3TB desktop Hdd www.dabs.com/products/toshiba-3tb-canvio-usb-3-0-3-5--desktop-hard-drive--black--8L58.html?refs=52120000&src=2You might have misunderstood what I meant when I said self powered, I meant not USB powered because I have a 320gb USB powered HDD and that does not work so i am hoping this one will? If not the extra drive will come in useful for backing up my PC so no harm done if it doesn't work and I will look at something like you suggested.
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Crispy
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Madrigal music is playing - Voices can faintly be heard, "Please leave this patient undisturbed."
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Post by Crispy on Jan 28, 2014 20:59:38 GMT
Chris, the angle of that photo makes it look as though there's an upper shelf balanced on top of the X-Cans!! I do think that this is the way that hi fi will go fully in the end with downloads perhaps rather than CD's being bought. I presume that you can fit say, a portable hard drive in the front usb and off it'll go? Also, is that a headphone socket by the usb? Both Jeff's and your kit look fantastic. Hi Ian. Yeh I think discs of all kinds will eventually disappear apart from a few die hard collectors like my friend, who will only entertain vinyl and nothing else Like I said not the best photo's and it does look like the top shelf is sitting on top of my V2 but I can assure it isn't. A portable HDD is my next step through the front USB which hopefully will store everything I will ever own in one place, then playback should be simple like Jeff said - select - highlight - play. What you thought was a headphone socket by the front USB is actually the infra red sensor for the remote. All headphone listening will still be done through my trusty V2/DT770 combination. Thanks for the compliment about the gear - I may pull the lid off and post some internal pics for anybody who is interested in the guts of the machine?
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Crispy
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Madrigal music is playing - Voices can faintly be heard, "Please leave this patient undisturbed."
Posts: 776
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Post by Crispy on Jan 28, 2014 21:08:18 GMT
With some effort Foobar can be tweaked to astonishing levels but making it show cover art is extremely easy, if you need any help setting up yours send me a PM and I'll help. If you like how mine looks I can replicate it on your PC in less than 10 min. Thanks Javier. I think I mislead everybody when i said about displaying the cover art, - I actually meant on the N50 player and not foobar. But now that you have mentioned it I may as well have it displayed in foobar as well. Is there a way to have it set up with (List + Properties + Cover Art) I will have to look at your thread when I get some spare time and see how you have got yours set up - time just seems to pass too quickly? Regards Chris
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Rabbit
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Post by Rabbit on Jan 28, 2014 21:12:38 GMT
I'm seriously considering one actually Chris. One thing about digital is the blasted computer. I don't want a computer or aptop in the front room and that piece of kit looks great and I guess it's easy to even take the analogue out of the back into an amp or the digital direct into a digital amp.
it looks great to me and if it sounds good, could be a nice unit to have for (as you say) stashing all your music in one place (with a backup disc drive under the bed) with dead easy access.
A major step forward from that bloody thing that kept crashing on me from China. (The original Aune)
I gave up with it. If you went away on holiday or whatever and came back to switch on, it would lose its programming and refuse to boot up which meant reinstalling which was a real nuisance. Aune were appalling about providing help via 'Candy' (possibly a man?). All the help that was offered was .... buy the new one that we have just designed. It doesn't have this problem. I couldn't believe it!!
You sound as though you're happy with it, and presumably, the signal/noise ration is good via analogue out? Sometimes these units can generate noise on the conversion side in my experience. I tried one a few years ago that made you aware it was about to do something just before the music started - it produced a small amount of hiss, but then it was an early unit that i heard. I can't even remember what it was. It had a CD ripper built in as well I think.
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Crispy
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Madrigal music is playing - Voices can faintly be heard, "Please leave this patient undisturbed."
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Post by Crispy on Jan 28, 2014 21:42:49 GMT
I'm seriously considering one actually Chris. One thing about digital is the blasted computer. I don't want a computer or aptop in the front room and that piece of kit looks great and I guess it's easy to even take the analogue out of the back into an amp or the digital direct into a digital amp. it looks great to me and if it sounds good, could be a nice unit to have for (as you say) stashing all your music in one place (with a backup disc drive under the bed) with dead easy access. A major step forward from that bloody thing that kept crashing on me from China. (The original Aune) I gave up with it. If you went away on holiday or whatever and came back to switch on, it would lose its programming and refuse to boot up which meant reinstalling which was a real nuisance. Aune were appalling about providing help via 'Candy' (possibly a man?). All the help that was offered was .... buy the new one that we have just designed. It doesn't have this problem. I couldn't believe it!! You sound as though you're happy with it, and presumably, the signal/noise ration is good via analogue out? Sometimes these units can generate noise on the conversion side in my experience. I tried one a few years ago that made you aware it was about to do something just before the music started - it produced a small amount of hiss, but then it was an early unit that i heard. I can't even remember what it was. It had a CD ripper built in as well I think. I think the unit represents good value for money Ian and it certainly plays music to a level where I am more than happy to sit there for 4 hours at a time and not feel tired or wanting to switch it off, so up to now it has done what i wanted it to but it is not set up fully as I would like it, early days yet. Yeh analogue out straight to my V2/pre and direct to my mono amps. You may be best to audition one first against the stream magic if you have a local dealer who can do this - I can't in HULL that's why I bought it unheard. Pioneer isolates each section on its own PCB. So there is a main board that handles the processing, another board for the power supply, and another for the DAC section. The analog and digital sections each get their own separate EI core transformer. All three inputs can handle up to 24-bit/192kHz data streams. I thought when I first read their info that the inputs up-sampled to 24/192 but I am not so sure now? Anyway I am happy with the sound. Just found some shots of it on google. www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1302&bih=709&q=pioneer+n50&oq=pioneer+n50&gs_l=img.12..0j0i24l9.1782.4840.0.8465.11.7.0.4.4.0.123.681.4j3.7.0....0...1ac.1.32.img..0.11.701.lU_FBma5t6EThe unit has a standby button so you can leave it on but off if you know what I mean, so you should not lose any settings?
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Rabbit
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Post by Rabbit on Jan 28, 2014 21:56:35 GMT
Well, the Aune had its own set of problems. I remember one comment about it being 'cutting edge' made me chuckle. More like 'blunt edge' really. The only thing I'd like on the software for the Pioneer is the ability to stream Spotify which is a service I use quite a lot. I preview an awful lot of things there before getting them myself. (Although I don't really need to tbh) It has streaming on it but they've missed out on Spotify, perhaps because they might have to pay for a licence and so put the price up. Not sure really why they missed that, since it is a very popular service.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2014 9:03:23 GMT
The only thing I'd like on the software for the Pioneer is the ability to stream Spotify which is a service I use quite a lot. I preview an awful lot of things there before getting them myself. (Although I don't really need to tbh) It has streaming on it but they've missed out on Spotify, perhaps because they might have to pay for a licence and so put the price up. There is a simple solution to this Ian. Rather than Spotify, I use Last FM, not natively supported by the Stream Magic. All you do is enable it on your computer, tab, or smartphone, and send it either wirelessly or via Bluetooth to the streamer which then plays it out via your hifi system. I have been listening to Last FM on a daily basis in exactly this way.
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Rabbit
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Post by Rabbit on Jan 29, 2014 13:45:34 GMT
Oh, of course. I didn't think of that. It works wirelessly as well - I completely missed that!!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2014 18:33:38 GMT
Quite a complimentary review of the N-50 by 6-Moons here
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Crispy
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Madrigal music is playing - Voices can faintly be heard, "Please leave this patient undisturbed."
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Post by Crispy on Jan 30, 2014 9:58:41 GMT
Quite a complimentary review of the N-50 by 6-Moons hereThanks Jeff, I have just read that review and it basically says what I have heard with the N50 apart from streaming music which I haven't got around to yet
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2014 14:07:03 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2014 9:26:56 GMT
Review of S-M-6 by Hi-Fi World here
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Crispy
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Madrigal music is playing - Voices can faintly be heard, "Please leave this patient undisturbed."
Posts: 776
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Post by Crispy on Feb 17, 2014 15:57:34 GMT
Hi Chris, thinking about large drives, here is my experience. I bought 2 x 3TB HDD to make sure I had room for expansion. I assumed my albums (thought I had around 1800 - turns out I was 100 out) would take up a good 2 TB's, so I would have an extra TB for expansion. Well, after ripping all my albums to flac (level 5) and even having a 20 or so GB's worth of music video documentaries and gigs on it, I have used the grand total of . . . . . 802Gb's. So I think I kind of over-estimated the amount of space I would need. No harm done though. A simple solution using large HDD's might be to buy a couple of 2TB drives, and install them in a cloning dock like thisBTW, I'm not endorsing this one in particular, just showing it as an example of what could be done very simply and cheaply. However, I would definitely advocate cloning, mirroring, Raid 1, or any other type of backup, so that your files will not be lost if your HDD dies. I know you may well have the CD's to hand to re-rip, but believe me, ripping a large amount of CD's is something I would not want to do again. Something to think about . . . Thanks Jeff. You are just a fraction late with that good advice - I have already ordered a portable 3TB desktop Hdd www.dabs.com/products/toshiba-3tb-canvio-usb-3-0-3-5--desktop-hard-drive--black--8L58.html?refs=52120000&src=2You might have misunderstood what I meant when I said self powered, I meant not USB powered because I have a 320gb USB powered HDD and that does not work so i am hoping this one will? If not the extra drive will come in useful for backing up my PC so no harm done if it doesn't work and I will look at something like you suggested. Finally got around to trying out music on my 3tb portable HDD Not a sausage - it just says EMPTY in the display. I honestly thought a self powered HDD and not a USB powered HDD would have worked. So I am a bit pissed of with that little experiment. Any of you guys got an idea why large USB & Self Powered HDD wont work? BTW Jeff have you tried a large portable HDD in you SM6?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2014 19:45:33 GMT
Hi Chris, I have three USB sockets on my SM6. One 'A' on the front which I haven't used, and one 'A' and one 'B' on the back which I have. I have used up to 500Gb portable hooked up to the rear USB-A socket and it plays fine. If you look at this pic from early in the thread it shows it playing 24/96 files quite happily. So that was 500 GB hooked up to a type A Looking online at pics of the rear of your N-50 shows a type 'B' USB socket which as far as I know needs something to push the audio, like a pc or dap, or some other player. The type 'A' USB on the front should allow the player to pull the tracks off the HDD. Maybe 3TB is just too big for it? Maybe the HDD needs partitioned?. Does your N-50 prefer NTFS or FAT32 formatted HDD's? I reckon it will play fine but it needs configured correctly. Have you tried asking in the N-50 forum that I linked to?Javier would be the man to ask for some expert advice.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2014 21:18:49 GMT
Chris, looking at the specs for the HDD you have bought, it shows it is NTFS formatted, and has built in backup software and password protection. Could either of these be upsetting your N-50? Could you disable these features and try again?
I also note that under "Software and system requirements" it states "OS Required" and then quotes Vista/XP and '7'. Could it be that it only works with OS's in PC's?
Remember, I have little in depth knowledge of computer stuff, just throwing out ideas!
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