"Steven Sullivan" wrote in message
...
Harry Lavo wrote:
"Steven Sullivan" wrote in message
I've been in computers for 20 years; for the last fifteen of those I
won't
trust a computer any further than I can throw it; the bigger, the
less I
trust it.

You *do* back up your hard drive occasionally, don't you?


Yep, doesn't matter.


Really? I've found it to matter crucially.


It has to be offsite.

A three or four hundred megabyte backup becomes big business in terms of
equipment and dollar cost. And regardless, when you need the backup is
when
you'll find out that some bug has crept in between the time you verified
the
backup protocol and the actual backup you need to use. :-) Murphy's
Law
has a whole new wing on the Law School Building when it comes to
computers.

Harry, you're talking in today's terms, and I suspect you're just
spinning your wheels, and trying to spin mine.
In ten years time a 400 Mb backup will be trivial....
it's fairly trivial already (my PC's current hard drive is 80 Gb...well
under
the capacity of available backup drives.)


A hard disk is trivial. A backup system that is orderly, efficient,
portable, and is removed offsite is a different beast.

For that matter, right now, your CD collection is in danger of being wiped
out
if there's a fire! What will you do?



Along with my kid's pictures, they are the first thing out of the house,
number one (and if there is time, my records as well). Number two, my cd
purchases are documented and my cd and record collection is documented with
pictures stored at my son's house. I update it once a year. that's where
the insurance company comes in. Now what do you do about purchases over the
internet with no physical media present and a variety of not very meaningful
legal printouts for verification?

Steven Sullivan wrote:


Your suspicious and expectations arise because you persist in imagining
that things will stay as they are now. Yet one can *already* download
classical and jazz from the current services. It will only increase.
I predict the average person in ten years will find their media center
more convenient for playing their copy of the Ring Cycle than SACD
jukeboxes. Teh server also becomes an option for people like you,
when a device is invented that feeds 500 CDs into a ripper for
encoding, after which the CDs themselves can be stored away in a closet
as 'backup'. That's far and away the least convenient aspect of
archiving a collection today.


Here is a little reality check. My #1 son lives in a college dorm, and
there are about 40 students in his building. They can start iTunes, and
play any music from the libraries on any of the students' computers,
assuming the student gives permission. In effect, anyone on his network
already has access to days of music. The music is mostly in mp3's or
AAC, but there are some lossless wave files, too.

iTunes does not allow the user to download the music from the network,
but just to stream it in to play. Of course, knowing the creativity of
young people, that bug will be fixed in no time .

The beauty of this is that we already can have easy wireless access to
networks containing huge amount of music, now. I can take my laptop,
connect the SPDIF output to my preamp, and play music stored on any of
my PC's in the house, via the 802.11 a/b/g link. There is no inherent
quality compromise either. I can use lossless .wav formats if I want to.
And 256+kbps AAC/mp3 sound very, very good.

"Steven Sullivan" wrote in message
news:joeQb.134073$na.209807@attbi_s04...
Harry Lavo wrote:
"Steven Sullivan" wrote in message
too by then.


I've been in computers one way or another for the last 20 years...but I
suspect those Sony SACD jukeboxes that hold 300 or 500 disks, along with
titles and even tracks, are more convenient for the average person than
a
computer server, *assuming* that you are still willing to or desire to
buy
the disks. The server only becomes an option if most of your music is
downloaded. Thus, a server for pop. I expect a jukebox for jazz or
classical.

Your suspicious and expectations arise because you persist in imagining
that things will stay as they are now. Yet one can *already* download
classical and jazz from the current services. It will only increase.
I predict the average person in ten years will find their media center
more convenient for playing their copy of the Ring Cycle than SACD
jukeboxes. Teh server also becomes an option for people like you,
when a device is invented that feeds 500 CDs into a ripper for
encoding, after which the CDs themselves can be stored away in a closet
as 'backup'. That's far and away the least convenient aspect of
archiving a collection today.


Could be, Steven, that I'm just an old dog who doesn't like new tricks. But
I am very skeptical about people when it comes to computers based on years
and years of trying to get small business owners to take care of their
equipment, do a proper backup cycle, get things stored off-site, etc.

Stewart says he does a proper backup implementation...good for him. Of
course, he says, he has to feed in the blank media. Do you know what
percentage of small business backup systems don't get fed in the proper
medium for the backup?

So it may come, but it is going to bring its own raft of heartaches, is my
prediction. I'd do it as you state above, but I wouldn't do it without
physical media as backup unless I am left with no choice. And even then, I
would probably burn a cd after I had downloaded from the net, and use that
for backup.

"chung" wrote in message
...
Harry Lavo wrote:


Have you ever lost a hard disk with your email, your financial records,
your
first novel? How would you feel losing your entire music collection
with
no physical back up?

I've been in computers for 20 years; for the last fifteen of those I
won't
trust a computer any further than I can throw it; the bigger, the less I
trust it.


With the price of hard disks so low now, there is really no excuse for
not backing up critical data on external HD's or redundant internal
HD's. I bought a 120GB external firewire/USB2.0 HD for $120 last month.
And even before then, I have never lost important data because of a HD
failure, because I do back-ups and also because there are usually
warnings when a HD is about to go.


Any backup policy that doesn't include offsite backup is inadequate. What
happens if your house burns down. Or a tornado hits. Or lightening fuses
your protection and your computer including the hard drive. That is why
anything short of a removable, complete media for backup is just kidding
yourself.

I think music servers will become more and more common, although I am
not sure if they would replace CD's in the next 5 years. I believe
SACD's or DVD-A will always be a small niche market. The CD format is
really good enough, and mastering makes a much bigger difference than
that between redbook CD and any hi-resolution format. Today's consumer
dollars are heading in the direction of HDTV displays, home-theater
audio systems, and iPod-like portable devices. I can't get anyone
younger than 30 years old to be interested in SACD/DVD-A for audio
reproduction.

DVD-A and SACD will be bought for their multi-channel capability as
awareness of them increases and prices of both media and equipment drop.
With an investment in HT already done, the additional investment is
relatively small.

Who cares if they play the multichannel on not so great HT speakers and
receiver, as long as what is recorded is of sufficiently high quality to
satisfy we audiophiles?

"Mike Kozlowski" wrote in message
news:JeeQb.109004$nt4.407053@attbi_s51...
In article ,
Steven Sullivan wrote:
Harry Lavo wrote:

A three or four hundred megabyte backup becomes big business in terms
of
equipment and dollar cost.

In ten years time a 400 Mb backup will be trivial....

I hope you both mean GB, because a 400MB backup is already trivial --
burn it to a single CD-R and move on.



Oops! Of course. :-)



But yes, Harry's right that backup is an issue. Given that home
file/media servers are inevitable, home backup is going to get some
real attention soon.


Not impossible at all, but a good "system" will involve much more than a
second hard drive...at the very least two hot-swappable removable hard
drives. So one can be off-site. Documentation of purchases is going to be
a factor as well, given the lack of any physical, photographical evidence.

"Audio Guy" wrote in message
news:RleQb.134061$na.208532@attbi_s04...
In article Vh_Pb.103654$5V2.389223@attbi_s53,
"Harry Lavo" writes:
"Steven Sullivan" wrote in message
news:kDZPb.105306$nt4.342212@attbi_s51...

You *do* back up your hard drive occasionally, don't you?


Yep, doesn't matter.

A three or four hundred megabyte backup becomes big business in terms of
equipment and dollar cost. And regardless, when you need the backup is
when
you'll find out that some bug has crept in between the time you verified
the
backup protocol and the actual backup you need to use. :-) Murphy's
Law
has a whole new wing on the Law School Building when it comes to
computers.

Nowdays with DVD-RW discs holding over 3 Gigabytes and costing $2 and
with DVD-RW burners at $100, it's much cheaper than you think to back
up a hard drive full of music.


Well, I hope as individuals we then are better than the small business
people I have been dealing with for the last twenty years, then. Because
inevitably they "forget" (even when automated) or they screw up the settings
that have been established for them and do not re-verify. Or they back up,
but forget to take the tapes off-site...until the fire or the flood or the
tornado. Perhaps one in four do it right and take it seriously.

Harry Lavo wrote:
"Steven Sullivan" wrote in message
news:joeQb.134073$na.209807@attbi_s04...
Harry Lavo wrote:
"Steven Sullivan" wrote in message
too by then.


I've been in computers one way or another for the last 20 years...but I
suspect those Sony SACD jukeboxes that hold 300 or 500 disks, along with
titles and even tracks, are more convenient for the average person than
a
computer server, *assuming* that you are still willing to or desire to
buy
the disks. The server only becomes an option if most of your music is
downloaded. Thus, a server for pop. I expect a jukebox for jazz or
classical.

Your suspicious and expectations arise because you persist in imagining
that things will stay as they are now. Yet one can *already* download
classical and jazz from the current services. It will only increase.
I predict the average person in ten years will find their media center
more convenient for playing their copy of the Ring Cycle than SACD
jukeboxes. Teh server also becomes an option for people like you,
when a device is invented that feeds 500 CDs into a ripper for
encoding, after which the CDs themselves can be stored away in a closet
as 'backup'. That's far and away the least convenient aspect of
archiving a collection today.


Could be, Steven, that I'm just an old dog who doesn't like new tricks. But
I am very skeptical about people when it comes to computers based on years
and years of trying to get small business owners to take care of their
equipment, do a proper backup cycle, get things stored off-site, etc.


Lok, Harry, you're thinking *computers*, and while technically a device
like a media server is a computer of sorts, it's hardly differnet
than the thousands of TiVo boxes people are already using . It's a computer
dedicated to a very few tasks. It , tooo, has a vast amount of hard storage space,
and it's only functionis to record, store, organize, and serve up media files to a playback
system. The main differnece is that since video files are so large,
there's a lot of 'turnover' in the contents.

You can buy 'TiVos' for music, right now, today -- and also for archiving DVDs.
They don't have to do all the things a regular PC does, though a regular PC can
serve as a media server just fine, thank you. I've yet to hear much
in the way of complains abotu TiVo or other hard disc storage devices
crashing. Maybe it's because people aren't filling them wiht viruses?


Stewart says he does a proper backup implementation...good for him. Of
course, he says, he has to feed in the blank media. Do you know what
percentage of small business backup systems don't get fed in the proper
medium for the backup?

So it may come, but it is going to bring its own raft of heartaches, is my
prediction. I'd do it as you state above, but I wouldn't do it without
physical media as backup unless I am left with no choice. And even then, I
would probably burn a cd after I had downloaded from the net, and use that
for backup.

Whatever. Storage capacity of removable media will doubtless increase as
well. It may be that eventually you can take your whole collection with
you one one disc. (External large-capacity hard drives are already pretty
portable as is).



--

-S.

"They've got God on their side. All we've got is science and reason."
-- Dawn Hulsey, Talent Director

In article ,
Harry Lavo wrote:
"Mike Kozlowski" wrote in message

But yes, Harry's right that backup is an issue. Given that home
file/media servers are inevitable, home backup is going to get some
real attention soon.

Not impossible at all, but a good "system" will involve much more than a
second hard drive...at the very least two hot-swappable removable hard
drives. So one can be off-site.

I'm really not sure how it's going to go; if Internet connections get
fast enough relative to drive space needs, I can imagine
Internet-based backup services; if a higher-capacity removable media
comes along (tape is not acceptable; DVD-R is too small), that might
take the niche. But regardless of what happens with music, this is
going to be needed, because people are accumulating irreplaceable
digital content.

Documentation of purchases is going to be
a factor as well, given the lack of any physical, photographical evidence.

I suspect that physical purchases will continue to happen, the same
way they do in the computer software world and for the same reasons.
But the key, again, is that the format of the music won't be bound to
the format of the media, and most people won't play it directly off
the media when at home.

--
Mike Kozlowski
http://www.klio.org/mlk/

"normanstrong" wrote in message
...

If the "war" depends on people like me to embrace either format, the
way is over and both sides lost. I will never buy either SACD or
DVD-A or the equipment to play them. Is the *CD* in trouble? With
whom? From my consumer point of view, I can't think of any problem
with CD that will be solved by the high-rez formats. If CD is in
trouble it's with the industry, not the consumer.

I'll repeat what I posted a while ago: Proving the superiority of
high-rez is much more difficult than proving the inferiority of
16/44.1K. And so far nobody's done even that.

Norm Strong

I guess you are committed to a two-channel future? While I do very little of
my casual listening in surround I find that I'm enjoying my surround music
in an "event" sort of way that allows me to focus on the experience much
more than I usually do with two-channel listening. Something about being
tied to the sweet spot that makes me want to lower the lights and listen to
an entire disc without interruption. I don't think that the future of
recorded music is entirely multi-channel sound, but I think that for art
music it provides the possibility of a much more lifelike representation of
the sound stage and for more commercial forms of music it can provide an
energy and life exceeding that found in two-channel recordings.

"Harry Lavo" wrote in message
...
I've been in computers one way or another for the last 20 years...but I
suspect those Sony SACD jukeboxes that hold 300 or 500 disks, along with
titles and even tracks, are more convenient for the average person than a
computer server, *assuming* that you are still willing to or desire to buy
the disks. The server only becomes an option if most of your music is
downloaded. Thus, a server for pop.

I expect a jukebox for jazz or classical.



I can honestly say I've never enjoyed my collection of nearly 1000 Jazz CD's
more than since I finished encoding all of them to my computer as WMA9
192kbps files. Random, near instant access with artist and title information
has allowed me to finally listen to the music I've paid for all these years
in a way I never dreamed possible playing from individual discs. Seems one
usually grabs the same 10 or 15 CD's or listens to whatever the most recent
purchases are. With a music server you start listening to everything you
own. I have a 60gb hard drive system in my car with a good portion of my
collection available and am in the process of re-encoding my library in a
lossless format as I'm so sold on the quantum leap it has made in my
utilization of my collection and the price of hard drives has fallen so
dramatically.

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 21:27:14 GMT, "Harry Lavo"
wrote:

Could be, Steven, that I'm just an old dog who doesn't like new tricks. But
I am very skeptical about people when it comes to computers based on years
and years of trying to get small business owners to take care of their
equipment, do a proper backup cycle, get things stored off-site, etc.

You're right about this, although people who have been bitten are more
conscientious, and of course I work for a Bank, where such things are
a matter of standard operating procedure. A data warehousing company
called Iron Mountain stores daily backup tapes from our site, and of
course we use large hot-swappable 8-disk RAID mass storage on our
print servers (we are separated from the Bank's mainframe, which has
its own data security arrangements).

Stewart says he does a proper backup implementation...good for him. Of
course, he says, he has to feed in the blank media. Do you know what
percentage of small business backup systems don't get fed in the proper
medium for the backup?

I have the tremendous advantage of having had a hard disk fail on me,
about fifteen years ago, and also having had a PC stolen! :-)

It just gets to be a daily routine. When I leave for the office I take
out the overnight backup disk, load in a fresh one, and put the backup
in my briefcase for transfer to my office desk drawer. Doesn't even
cost much if you use CD-Rs for weekly full data backup, and CD-RW for
daily incremental backups, I just rotate two CD-RWs for this. I also
use a mirror RAID to avoid sudden HD failure being a problem. The cost
of all this was just the extra 120GB hard disk, as the RAID controller
and CD writer came with the PC.

Once my vital data gets above 500MB, I guess I'll have to switch to
DVD-RAM, but that's not a big deal either.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

Harry Lavo wrote:
"chung" wrote in message
...
Harry Lavo wrote:


Have you ever lost a hard disk with your email, your financial records,
your
first novel? How would you feel losing your entire music collection
with
no physical back up?

I've been in computers for 20 years; for the last fifteen of those I
won't
trust a computer any further than I can throw it; the bigger, the less I
trust it.


With the price of hard disks so low now, there is really no excuse for
not backing up critical data on external HD's or redundant internal
HD's. I bought a 120GB external firewire/USB2.0 HD for $120 last month.
And even before then, I have never lost important data because of a HD
failure, because I do back-ups and also because there are usually
warnings when a HD is about to go.


Any backup policy that doesn't include offsite backup is inadequate. What
happens if your house burns down. Or a tornado hits. Or lightening fuses
your protection and your computer including the hard drive. That is why
anything short of a removable, complete media for backup is just kidding
yourself.

What's the problem here? Music files are not files that need updating
frequently. Simply burn DVD recordables to permanently archieve them, or
back them up with external HD's. Every week or so, simply back up the
new music files ripped or downloaded, if you want your peace of mind. If
you are worried about power outages, get a UPS. Cost of additional HD's
and UPS, etc., probably is less than a boutique interconnect cable.

We're not talking about really important, mission critical, data here.
We can always go back to the original CD's or download again. The data
is always available somewhere whether you lose your copy or not.


I think music servers will become more and more common, although I am
not sure if they would replace CD's in the next 5 years. I believe
SACD's or DVD-A will always be a small niche market. The CD format is
really good enough, and mastering makes a much bigger difference than
that between redbook CD and any hi-resolution format. Today's consumer
dollars are heading in the direction of HDTV displays, home-theater
audio systems, and iPod-like portable devices. I can't get anyone
younger than 30 years old to be interested in SACD/DVD-A for audio
reproduction.

DVD-A and SACD will be bought for their multi-channel capability as
awareness of them increases and prices of both media and equipment drop.
With an investment in HT already done, the additional investment is
relatively small.

Sure, if it's free, it's a non-issue. At this moment, I couldn't find
any young people interested in buying SACD or DVD-A equipment just to
listen to 2-channel audio. That's my point.

Who cares if they play the multichannel on not so great HT speakers and
receiver, as long as what is recorded is of sufficiently high quality to
satisfy we audiophiles?

I would venture that CD's already are of sufficiently high quality to
satisfy audiophiles. Look at it another way: vinyl, with its obvious
technical shortcomings, are very satisfactory to quite a few audiophiles
on this newsgroup. Why wouldn't CD's be good enough? The important thing
to get right is the mastering, and the attention to details.

"Harry Lavo" wrote in message
news:iZYPb.100889$Rc4.641759@attbi_s54...
Have you ever lost a hard disk with your email, your financial records,
your
first novel? How would you feel losing your entire music collection with
no physical back up?

I've been in computers for 20 years; for the last fifteen of those I won't
trust a computer any further than I can throw it; the bigger, the less I
trust it.

Welcome to the future. Hard drives and DVD's for smaller archives are cheap
enough these days that there is no excuse save for laziness to lose your
entire music collection. In the same way that we all pay for automobile and
homeowners insurance without question, we now need to pay for reliable
backup and archiving. I still purchase my music on discs but I think it's
clear that sometime in the future when hi resolution audio is available
electronically I probably won't. In one more generation, kids will be
looking at CD's and DVD's the same way they look at vinyl today. I'd venture
a bet that most school age children today have never seen a working
phonograph player in any other setting than a disco.

On 23 Jan 2004 17:10:54 GMT, (Nousaine) wrote:

Steven Sullivan wrote:

...snip to content ....

Compressed digital formats are *already* on their way to replacing CD as the
dominant storage and playback medium.
And even if you are morally opposed to lossy compression, there are other
forms of encoding that are *lossless*, as others have noted here.

I presume , too that you don't watch DVDs -- they're compressed.

Not meaning to be argumentative DVD and mp3 formats are not "compressed" but
are subject to data reduction. The term compression has a different technical
meaning in audio denoting a different mechanism from data reduction.

Well, Bob Stuart of Meridian is happy to refer to 'compression' in
regard to data reduction, and I don't know of anyone who is confused
between the usages of data reduction and dynamic range reduction, so
I'm happy to keep using the term interchangeably.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

On 23 Jan 2004 19:38:01 GMT, Lawrence Leung
wrote:

Steven Sullivan wrote in
:

Harry, you're talking in today's terms, and I suspect you're just
spinning your wheels, and trying to spin mine.
In ten years time a 400 Mb backup will be trivial....
it's fairly trivial already (my PC's current hard drive is 80
Gb...well under the capacity of available backup drives.)

For that matter, right now, your CD collection is in danger of being
wiped out if there's a fire! What will you do?

What will be more likely? Your computer crashed, hard drive went bad,
everything gone; or house on fire? I will pick the first one. Because the
first one cannot be prevent, but the second one can.

Say, you want to copy all your CD collection into your hard drive, just the
plain format, without compression, will be at least 450MB (typical 10 songs
of 45MB each), a 120GB HD can hold about... 26 of them, a normal IDE
computer connection (the cheapest one, of course you can go for external
USB drive or even SCSI, but the add out cost will be very high) can hold
say eight IDE device (with an extra IDE card), minus one for CD-ROM drive,
minus one for the program drive, you can only have 6 IDE HD for music
backup, which will hold 156 CD, sounds more than enough?

Firstly, your maths is off by a factor of ten. You only need one 120GB
HD to store 2-300 CDs, and you can buy one of those with an external
USB connection, making it a useful backup device. I do know a small
company which keeps a pair of those in a fireproof safe for data
security, with the cables running through specially drilled holes with
lots of thermal insulation.

But what if one of the HD fail? Oh, yes, I've seen it so many times, a HD
can fail for no reason at all, the 100,000 hours MTBF will not warranty any
data lost, the most you can get back is a brand new HD.

Use a mirroring RAID, this will avoid any such data loss problems, and
is now very cheap. In fact many PCs (including mine) now have this
facility built into the motherboard, so all you need is an extra hard
disk.

What about play back ability? Are you going to connect your computer sound
card to a Pre-amp? I wonder what type of sound card can give you such good
quality?

Lots of them can provide output quality superior to most CD players.
Even the ubiquitous SoundBlaster Audigy provides a decent output these
days, while something like the Lynx Two exceeds the capabilities of
many 'project' recording studios.

What about noise from the computer transformer, case fans?

If you've set up a PC as a dedicated music server, you should of
course have used one of the many available 'silent PC' systems, some
of which have only one *very* quiet PSU fan. These will be no noisier
than my trusty Krell KSA-50 mkII amplifier.

Audiophile components companies tried so hard to reduce noise in their
components, but you want to hook up a computer that constantly generated
audioable: "wu wu wu wu wu..." while you listening to your music?

Might be someday, but not now!

This is all available off the shelf, today.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 21:17:45 GMT, "Harry Lavo"
wrote:

A hard disk is trivial. A backup system that is orderly, efficient,
portable, and is removed offsite is a different beast.

An automated CD-R or DAT backup system is trivial. I take my daily and
weekly backups to work, and they live in a desk drawer in my office. A
home worker could keep them in the garage or garden shed.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

On 23 Jan 2004 20:19:32 GMT, Lawrence Leung
wrote:

Ummmm... don't predict "in ten years" time. Because, by then, might be a
all-in-one mini system which everybody can buy from a local department
store can sound far more better than a Hi-End system that cost
$20,000.00... easily... I guess.

Nope, speakers will still set the limit.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

(Stewart Pinkerton) wrote in news:QFAQb.13131$U%
5.79305@attbi_s03:

On 23 Jan 2004 20:19:32 GMT, Lawrence Leung
wrote:

Ummmm... don't predict "in ten years" time. Because, by then, might be a
all-in-one mini system which everybody can buy from a local department
store can sound far more better than a Hi-End system that cost
$20,000.00... easily... I guess.

Nope, speakers will still set the limit.

Don't be so sure! What made you say that?

Which part of speaker's component(s) you think will not need to be
"improved" for the next ten years? I really want to know.

Lawrence Leung

Charles Tomaras wrote:

I can honestly say I've never enjoyed my collection of nearly 1000 Jazz CD's
more than since I finished encoding all of them to my computer as WMA9
192kbps files.

How do you get around the noise from the computer fans? Did
you buy a special silent computer, is it in another room, does
it just not bother you, or .... ?


Mike Prager
North Carolina, USA

"Mike Prager" wrote in message
...
Charles Tomaras wrote:

I can honestly say I've never enjoyed my collection of nearly 1000 Jazz
CD's
more than since I finished encoding all of them to my computer as WMA9
192kbps files.

How do you get around the noise from the computer fans? Did
you buy a special silent computer, is it in another room, does
it just not bother you, or .... ?

My home is networked both with ethernet and line level audio. My main
computer is in my home office and I send line level via my Sound Devices USB
Pre http://www.sounddevices.com/products/usbpremaster.htm to my Denon AVR
5803 receiver which provides all the whole house distribution from there. I
tried out the Go Video networked DVD player for it's network music
capabilities and found the sound to be excellent but the software sucked so
I went back to line feeds for now and will probably go with a Media Center
PC later in the year when the Media Center Extenders I saw at CES are
released. I may also try SPDF connections from my USB Pre to the Denon but
I'd need to get up in the attic and pull wire for that one and I'm fairly
satisfied with the quality I'm getting now from the line level feeds. Using
Remote Desktop I'm able to control my office computer from my laptop in my
listening areas via wi-fi if I'm so inclined but usually I just put my
entire collection on random play and enjoy being surprised by what I own.
I'm thinking The Media Center PC with extender solution at some point will
be the best for me.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/m...s/extender.asp

I'll also add that I still "laboriously" pull out my SACD's and DVD-A's and
actually sit in one place and listen to them from the actual devices god
intended them to be played from on a fairly frequent basis as well!

Charles Tomaras
Seattle, WA

On 25 Jan 2004 17:21:30 GMT, Lawrence Leung
wrote:

(Stewart Pinkerton) wrote in news:QFAQb.13131$U%
5.79305@attbi_s03:

On 23 Jan 2004 20:19:32 GMT, Lawrence Leung
wrote:

Ummmm... don't predict "in ten years" time. Because, by then, might be a
all-in-one mini system which everybody can buy from a local department
store can sound far more better than a Hi-End system that cost
$20,000.00... easily... I guess.

Nope, speakers will still set the limit.

Don't be so sure! What made you say that?

The plain fact that speakers are by a huge amount the most inaccurate
part of any replay system.

Which part of speaker's component(s) you think will not need to be
"improved" for the next ten years? I really want to know.

You seem to have totally misinterpreted what I said. Read it again.
Also, note that however much budget speakers are improved in the next
ten years (and they have improved a lot in the last ten years),
high-end speakers will still be greatly superior, since they will have
benefited from the same technology advances.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering