I just made a major switch for my source-I've gotten rid of the Sony jukebox CD changer and have moved to a computer-based music server-I got this idea from Paul McGowan's newsletter on his PS Audio website. I am using iTunes on a Dell laptop with an external harddrive to store the files. I am ripping the CDs using AIFF (no compression). The digital info is transmitted via AirTunes to my Linksys router then to the Apple Airport Express (this has a mini-toslink jack). I feed this to the Theta TLC and then to the Audio Alchemy DTI and then over to the Ack! dAck!. The Theta and Audio Alchemy takes care of the high jitter from the Airport Express. I have to say that everything they say about music coming off of a harddrive is true!! I notice more body to the voices/instruments as if they are right there! There is more air/space around the performers; pacing and rhythm are easy to discern; the treble is smoother, the bass lines are tight, etc, etc. In short, the music sounds so much more realistic/musical than coming from my CD player. I know this set up is not optimized but if this beginning stab at a music server yields this kind of improvement in sound quality I have so much more to look forward to. The kicker to this is that it only cost me a total of $220 to move over to this (I already had to buy a new computer since my desktop went DOA)-now that is amazing. The other cool thing is I now have all of my music at my fingertips...I am really enjoying my entire collection!!
This system is a result of over 20 years of upgrading. My recent additions were the Jolida and Ack! dAck!2.0. Before that, I had not upgraded a component for over 8 years (not counting the PS Audio Power Plant). I decided to switch over to the tube camp and I am enjoying my music like never before. You cannot beat the tube sound at this price level!
