I've chatted a few times with Benjamin Zwickel of Mojo audio who sells modified mac mini based music servers and an R2R DAC based around the AD1865 chip.
http://www.mojo-audio.com/d-a-converters/Here are some of what Ben had to say. Ben seems like a very nice fellow.
Hi Andy,
Well it seems we have similar paths.
Prior to starting Mojo Audio I was doing non-oversampling conversions and upgrades to "heavyweight" TDA 1541 DACs with CDM and BU1 transports. I could take a $400 used CD player from eBay and put $200 in parts into it and have something that would blow away anything I'd heard in a modern audio salon showroom. I was selling these upgraded vintage decks all over the world.
Name the "whose who" vintage deck: Revox, Philips, Marantz, Sony, etc and I've likely either upgraded it, owned it, or both.
So when I tell you our media sever will give you literally DOUBLE the digital resolution of your transport you know I'm speaking from experience. I also believe you will appreciate where this higher resolution is experienced - in better time, tune, tone, texture, musical flow, and emotional content.
You won't believe you are listening to the same system.
Hi Andy,
I can't say that you're too far off with everything you wrote.
Personally I find most digital reproduction, especially the modern HiRes stuff, to sound like what a computer thinks music should sound like as opposed to music.
The more "advanced" they get the clearer, cleaner, more dynamic, more extended, and more transparent they sound but the less emotional content and musical flow they actually have.
I'll let you in on a little secret: sampling or playing back anything over 20-bit is theoretically impossible due to the noise inherent in any system.
The ONLY reason they are using 24 and 32 bits is that the more "data" they throw at the cheap single chip "closest approximation" single bit modern DACs they are using the better their algorithms can give the illusion of error correcting in real time.
The fact is that no algorithm can tell the difference between "errors" and "emotional content" so what they do is "homogenize" the music making it a clean, dynamic, and extended computer's interpretation of music as opposed to reproducing the actual music in the recording.
I consistently blow minds at audio shows playing any old ordinary 16-bit recordings through my digital front end where my competitors are playing HiRes and customer after customer tells me how much more "musical" and "emotional" and "analog like" my system sounds.
Don't even get me started on how noisy and crappy sounding most power supplies are.
The only way I've found for digital reproduction to sound musical is to use non-error correcting, non-oversampling, non-upsampling ordinary 16-bit digital files played back on a classic R/2R DAC.
Considering how many companies are still manufacturing modern non-oversampling R/2R DACs using vintage DAC chips I must not be alone in this belief.
In order to get a whole other layer of error-correction and noise out of the way our media servers provide a near bit perfect digital source.
I always tell my customers: "if it doesn't come from the source, it can't come out of the speakers."
That being said, a proper media server is the most important part in a "musical" sounding digital audio system.
If the bits are not stored and transferred correctly there is no way that any component farther down the signal path can correct the damage done at the digital source.
As for interfaces like touch screens and iPads, you can use ANYTHING that is either Mac or PC compatible. I have a small touch screen that I used at shows like RMAF that works quite nicely but the best sound would be from a "headless" or "monitorless" system where it is controlled by an outside device like an iPad, smart phone, or other computer.
Once you hear our media sever you will likely want to hear our NOS R/2R AD1865 DAC.
Let me know if you have any questions.