Re: Media player buying confusion
Actually I should try wireless and cat6 before knocking it. To be honest I have not. My existing audio system is old school. A CD player or turntable spins discs and send an analog signal to the amp that amplifies it and sends it to the speakers.
To be honest, I use only use any sort of networking to the hifi because running cables is not physically possible. Back in London, I had analogue and optical-digital input
and output running the short under-carpet distance between the two.
But, that is not because I have any doubts about networking, just that the cables were a lot simpler and cheaper!
I did try sending this analog audio signal to another room via a product from RF Link and the results were NOT pretty. From your post, Thad, I understood that in the "kibbles and bits" domain the audio information is treated as data. Question I have is does this data not get distorted (dropped bits or a 0 becomes a 1) while be transmitted over wireless? Where is the error correction introduced? What sort of error correction is it? Which device does it - the AVR?
I don't know the product so cannot comment on it. I'm a retired systems manager, with enough knowledge and practical experience to connect up all the things in a medium-sized office, plus a bit. I could throw a few acronyms around, but I am
not a network engineer. Actually, the structure of network data packets, and how network devices know that data sent has been received, and how they know that data received is complete and accurate is not
that complex, but I'd still have to get the book off the shelf and, frankly, there is no point in our going to that level of detail. The
OSI Model demonstrates the concepts, and the thinking that each level communicates with the same level. Error correction and flow control is done pretty low down on that list of levels.
Always assuming that nothing is wrong, we have no need to worry about the data at that level.
To be honest I am NOT interested in accessing audio data on the various PCs in the house. It would be chaos for my fragile mind.Information overload if you will.
If your machines are networked, and you share data
at all between them (Windows file and print sharing?) it's easy. Your software is just playing a file: it doesn't matter where it is. On the other hand, no, it's not compulsory :lol:
Anyway let's get back to the topic on hand - media players. Lord knows we have digressed enough.
The digression is probably inevitable. Not only does the hifi world have an obsession with how things are connected together, but that obsession is sometimes justified. For instance, all methods (optical, coax, usb, etc etc etc) of transmitting music in digital form
should be equal, but they can only be as equal as the circuitry that handles them. Thus, "my DAC sounds better with S/PDIF than USB,"
can be justified.
