Antoine, I am afraid your post not only doesn't help me at all but it is every bit as arrogant and condescending as Devialet's own.
The naysayers always have two arguments:
Argument no.1 What's the big deal with this NAS and UPnP business, my computer works as well?!
Obviously you don't know what a NAS is and what it does if you compare it to your low power computer. Let me tell you: the NAS works 100%, 24/7, until it fails (after many years) or becomes obsolete and then you buy another. Like a streamer, whatever is inside the box, whatever software works in the background - you don't need to know or worry about. You pay a high admission fee for a decent box because you actually buy the work of a competent team of engineers who's sole purpose is to make sure that your box delivers the goods. You don't have to tweak anything (although some people do). You just transfer your media onto the box and all your files become available, whenever, wherever, at the push of a button. In my many years of QNAP ownership I have never had a failure, touch wood. I have never had to restart anything, I have never missed a note. And I have never spent more than 30 seconds clicking "update" every few months.
Argument no.2 I had the X streamer and I had soooo many problems, like having to restart it once a month or having to go through a complicated routine to update it once a year. I repeat my personal experience: with a proper network I have never had as much as a glitch. I had to restart my NDS which was on an early firmware (I was one of the first to have one) once.
I am not a novice in computers, I have to use them a lot at work and yet I hate them for anything other than...computing.
If I would take them seriously as multimedia centres I would have to have one optimised for video playback, one for audio playback, one for storing my media, one for every day computing, one for...
The unfortunate soul who tries to stream audio content soon finds out that some software players sound better than others, some drivers / interfaces / inputs are better than others, some drivers are better than others, some hard drives are better than others, some CPU's are better than others - should I continue?
Then of course optimising the computer for playback is an endlessly time consuming business where one has to disable as many services as possible, maybe tweak one or two things in the registry, try various drivers and configurations, update various drivers and programs every few months and so on. This forum and others paint a clear picture of the phenomenon - people try various players with various drivers with various interfaces with various... and they always look for more. And they always spend a little fortune in the process, this USB card and that 3000£ USB cable and the 900£ fanless power supply and...
I personally went as far as a Hammerfall DSP if you know what I'm talking about and a truly wonderful digital interface that was. Except I spent a good couple of months of my life and quite a bit of money building a computer from scratch for it and when the job was done and I sat like God admiring my creation I had to accept that the no fuss digital output of my then NDX sounded at least as good.
And don't even get me started with my video experiments.
Yes, that low power computer of yours will do the job. But I don't have the time and energy to fiddle with it anymore. I don't want a computer in my lounge. I don't think computers belong to a hifi rack, whether Mac Mini's, Maxi's, low power or supercomputers. I don't want the hassle of incompatibilities, blue screens of death, driver updates that break the sound chain, white noise, pink noise or any other sort of noise beyond music. I want to press play and play my music.
Even if someone had to restart his / her NDX every 4-5 weeks, I find it much more acceptable than this hell of trying to get something like JRiver working. I already had a catastrophic failure of my OS soon after I installed 19 and the only solution was to restore the computer from a Time Machine backup. Even when it works, it is a mixture of crashing, playing music in slow motion when switching to a HD format after listening to RedBook, ignoring commands, breaking connection with my iPad etc. And it takes a good couple of seconds, on my i7 iMac, between a command and a response from the player, if any.
And no, I am not planning to go back to Windows any time soon.
In the end put it this way: the computer spoils the experience for me. If you want to spend your life fiddling with your Windows computer feel free to do it. I want to enjoy my music in my lounge and the only piece of IT tech I accept in my music sanctuary is an iPad. Unlike many of you I love the Linn interface. I think their Klimax DSM line is the best streaming experience money can buy. And DAC. And HDMI player. And Airplay player. But I don't want another box. Another power socket. Another couple of cables. My Devialet can do it. Why doesn't it?
The naysayers always have two arguments:
Argument no.1 What's the big deal with this NAS and UPnP business, my computer works as well?!
Obviously you don't know what a NAS is and what it does if you compare it to your low power computer. Let me tell you: the NAS works 100%, 24/7, until it fails (after many years) or becomes obsolete and then you buy another. Like a streamer, whatever is inside the box, whatever software works in the background - you don't need to know or worry about. You pay a high admission fee for a decent box because you actually buy the work of a competent team of engineers who's sole purpose is to make sure that your box delivers the goods. You don't have to tweak anything (although some people do). You just transfer your media onto the box and all your files become available, whenever, wherever, at the push of a button. In my many years of QNAP ownership I have never had a failure, touch wood. I have never had to restart anything, I have never missed a note. And I have never spent more than 30 seconds clicking "update" every few months.
Argument no.2 I had the X streamer and I had soooo many problems, like having to restart it once a month or having to go through a complicated routine to update it once a year. I repeat my personal experience: with a proper network I have never had as much as a glitch. I had to restart my NDS which was on an early firmware (I was one of the first to have one) once.
I am not a novice in computers, I have to use them a lot at work and yet I hate them for anything other than...computing.
If I would take them seriously as multimedia centres I would have to have one optimised for video playback, one for audio playback, one for storing my media, one for every day computing, one for...
The unfortunate soul who tries to stream audio content soon finds out that some software players sound better than others, some drivers / interfaces / inputs are better than others, some drivers are better than others, some hard drives are better than others, some CPU's are better than others - should I continue?
Then of course optimising the computer for playback is an endlessly time consuming business where one has to disable as many services as possible, maybe tweak one or two things in the registry, try various drivers and configurations, update various drivers and programs every few months and so on. This forum and others paint a clear picture of the phenomenon - people try various players with various drivers with various interfaces with various... and they always look for more. And they always spend a little fortune in the process, this USB card and that 3000£ USB cable and the 900£ fanless power supply and...
I personally went as far as a Hammerfall DSP if you know what I'm talking about and a truly wonderful digital interface that was. Except I spent a good couple of months of my life and quite a bit of money building a computer from scratch for it and when the job was done and I sat like God admiring my creation I had to accept that the no fuss digital output of my then NDX sounded at least as good.
And don't even get me started with my video experiments.
Yes, that low power computer of yours will do the job. But I don't have the time and energy to fiddle with it anymore. I don't want a computer in my lounge. I don't think computers belong to a hifi rack, whether Mac Mini's, Maxi's, low power or supercomputers. I don't want the hassle of incompatibilities, blue screens of death, driver updates that break the sound chain, white noise, pink noise or any other sort of noise beyond music. I want to press play and play my music.
Even if someone had to restart his / her NDX every 4-5 weeks, I find it much more acceptable than this hell of trying to get something like JRiver working. I already had a catastrophic failure of my OS soon after I installed 19 and the only solution was to restore the computer from a Time Machine backup. Even when it works, it is a mixture of crashing, playing music in slow motion when switching to a HD format after listening to RedBook, ignoring commands, breaking connection with my iPad etc. And it takes a good couple of seconds, on my i7 iMac, between a command and a response from the player, if any.
And no, I am not planning to go back to Windows any time soon.
In the end put it this way: the computer spoils the experience for me. If you want to spend your life fiddling with your Windows computer feel free to do it. I want to enjoy my music in my lounge and the only piece of IT tech I accept in my music sanctuary is an iPad. Unlike many of you I love the Linn interface. I think their Klimax DSM line is the best streaming experience money can buy. And DAC. And HDMI player. And Airplay player. But I don't want another box. Another power socket. Another couple of cables. My Devialet can do it. Why doesn't it?
