Melco Audiophile NAS

[Martin H]

(13-01-2015 20:04)Martin H Wrote:  [quote='simoncn' pid='13263' dateline='1421175645']
[quote='Martin H' pid='13258' dateline='1421166062']
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Quote:Will post when I have had the demo. Looking forward to it even more now

My strong warning before reading is that this is more of a description of events and I would urge you NOT to draw any conclusions from this. LONG POST


OK this is a preliminary post because this afternoon was inconclusive.
Unfortunately I woke up with a cold and a thumping headache which were both going strong during the demo. This was never going to help the listening process.
We had a few stumbles in the setup process which wasn't particularly difficult but in my man flu (it isn't the flu but) state I first of all plugged the Exakt cable into the Melco - which did not harm but not likely to see the LAN that way - hmmmm.

Re connected everything and Reset the boxes etc. but had a weird period where Konfig kept losing sight of the Klimax DSM (exakt - whatever that's called now). The Melco wasn't highlighting the drives properly either. I won't list it all out but it was a case of now you see it now you don't all around. There was some queston over whether the Melco and DS were turned on in the right order too.

At that point we decided to reconnect everything and start again on the grounds of - even if the boxes weren't confused, we were following my bad start and I list the above in case it happens elsewhere but I suspect it won't occur regularly.

Having reset everything - things did start to work OK and we demo'ed Melco playing from it's disk using the in-built Twonky and then by using the Melco but served by minimserver on the QNAP. We then compared all of these with the current set-up of minimserver on the QNAP to the DS without the Melco involved.

I am not sure if it was my cold, the confusion before but I finished simply not being sure if there was a material difference, which way any benefit might be and even whether it was a consistent benefit.

We played these tracks repeatedly

24 bit versions (except jamiesaysmile) of

Stevie Wonder's:
-----Love's in Need of Love Today (SITKOL 1)
----- Superstition
Kate Bush
----- Running Up The Hill (HOL)
jamiesaysmile
----- Mint Green (Outside Now - EP)
Joni Mitchell
----- All I want
Eva Cassidy
----- Songbird (S)

My trusted dealer - who I genuinely trust more than anyone I know on this topic and with my cash - was with us (wife and I) and he was genuinely surprised I was uncertain as he had thought every track was clearer and noticeably so. I hear the cynics nodding and thinking, "I bet he was" but as I say I trust him and have never known him to be wrong. I suspect he is right this time but I couldn't be certain. Some things sounded different we thought but my wife and I both independently thought something didn't sound quite right with Superstition in the crowded middle section. I hesitate to describe it in more detail as I am more of a 'it's right or wrong/worse or better' sort of chap and too often without the right words. We did 'lose' the DS a few times on the ipad after that which was disconcerting but i can't be certain why.

Anyway a long story captured for posterity.

There is a further context and that is what did I expect beforehand. Well logically - not a lot.

If you have a dodgy or extended network or one that is overloaded/extended - some odd and disconnected power supplies etc. then it seems obvious that putting the files source adjacent to the player allows the best result with minimal overhead on the boxes themselves and obviates your network problem.

Countering that - I struggle to see how the design of the Linn wouldn't anyway already compensate by buffering things. Also data is a 0 or a 1 and data has a bit check (apologies if I use the wrong label) and so I can see how the music might stop due to network issues but I am unclear how it's quality can be impacted. But there may be a rational explanation as there was when we moved from CD to DS and got an up-lift due to the removal of the transport.

So despite the above - my experience is that I don't care about the logic if I can hear a difference because it probably means that I don't know all the facts and logic is irrelevant.

So where does that leave me - open-minded. I hear folk on here reference an uplift and my trusted dealer and his equally trusted colleagues do the same. I think there is something that I need to discover and understand and so I am asking for a short term loan of a box so that I can test it to death to determine the answer. As ever my dealer is such a rock star that has agreed to do that despite having driven across today.

So I will update further but keen to hear any other experiences in the meantime.