Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Opinions on future of standalone music hard drives

I'd like to know what people think as to when, or if, standalone digital music hard drives will rival CD transports as a preferred component for playing music. And how will they sound? Portables can now be had for about $300 with line out and 40 GBs of storage -- enough for about 70 complete CDs at uncompressed file sizes. Combine that with the spread of TiVo-like devices, and the incredible low prices on external hard drives -- it just seems logical that there will soon be a step up from the portable digital music player to a component-style player, one that rips CD-sized files (not talking compressed files here), has a nice interface, ample storage at 120 GB or higher, a 7200+ RPM hard drive, and all the necessary DACs and lines out for at least analog stereo, if not SACD and DVD/DVD-A. Do these devices already exist? I suppose a TiVo is like this?

With 120 GB you could get 200 CDs on one machine -- a mega-changer without disks, and most likely at a significantly lower cost -- a cost closer to a portable, external hard drive of the same size, which goes for $100-200 today. With the right software -- which costs very little -- the machine could play DVD, hi rez -- any format.

Can such a machine deliever high-quality audio? And can it do it without heating up like my laptop (on which I'm listening to music through powered bookshelf speakers as I write)? On the face of it, it would seem that money put toward the right DACs and a few other key pieces would be able to create a killer app here. I mean, if they can already make a 40 GB portable, then a 120 - 200 GB standalone seems doable. Will expensive CD, DVD and Universal players soon be obsolete?

Birdman

I'd love to see this as well. I'm going to suggest that 'the future is (almost) already here'.

Just a few thoughts:
The connection from such a beast to a receiver: The ipod's dock *could* be fitted for optical-out, as far as anyone I've talked to has said. I wonder if the analog DACs on such a device could ever equal that in a CD-player or receiver due to the interference from the hard drive spinning? (just taking a shot, I know there's a substantial amount of 'noise' that's bad for DACs inside a computer case)

Getting from CDs to a hard drive: The preferred audio extracter (CD->WAV) on Windows is EAC (www.exactaudiocopy.de). It reads each audio sector at least twice, and if it gets different results, re-reads up to 81 times and averages.

3. Compression: I'd suggest that quality lost to MP3/AAC/OGG compression is minimal compared to the variation in discs' mastering quality (for more popular music, at least). Depending on your tastes, don't count out compressed files as it opens up many more options in making this work- i.e. portable hard drives like the ipod (that the loss is trivial is controversial, and it hasn't always been the case if so).

Reliability: CDs get scratches. Hard drives die. Pick your poison. A 7200+ RPM hard drive will wear out faster than a 5400 or lower RPM drive, and be louder (I believe the phrase is it'll 'raise the noise floor'? Must get into this terminology). Even with DVD-A or SACD data one wouldn't need a 7200 RPM drive (in fact, such a device might want an even lower RPM drive).

Interface: I like my ipod's interface, but something that could interface with a remote and a television would be nice. The stuff that isn't so portable.

I want to say that, given a few tradeoffs, this device is already pretty close.

Are these tradeoffs ones you're willing to make / what would you like to see on the market that's not out there now?

I like to keep hard drives in computers. They're noisy, they fail, and they're easier to back up when they're in a computer. Also, you can rip CD's directly onto the comptuer hard drive quite easily. Maybe when quiet memory cards get to hold tons of stuff...

In the meantime, this is a product that I covet:
http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/audiotron/producthome.asp
Only works if you have a home network (LAN), but it's quiet, relatively cheap, and looks like a good stereo component on your rack. Also allows for your music files to be distributed among many computers (if you're a geek like me and actually *have* many computers)

Wow..great product link. Even better they reference why you should buy theirs...which means there are other options to look into. I haven't done much research on these.

-Nick

I definitely think we should see more of these in the future. I've given some thought to such a device, and here are my ideas on it...

Hard drive noise is a non-issue. Seagate and others have hard drives that use fluid bearings which GREATLY reduce noise.

Also, there's one critical point to the way the ipod works that affects the noise and longevity of the hard drive. The ipod doesn't play music off the HD - it plays music from RAM. It spins the HD up for a very short period, fills it's buffer, plays off RAM, and shuts down the HD. This, coupled with the fact that it's a DC device without fans and decent DACs is what makes it sound pretty darn good, IMHO.

I would personally use very large HDs - like 250g, and use the FLAC audio format - which is a lossless but compressed format. You get a bit of the best of both worlds this way. Then, just to reduce complexity, cost, and "audiophile-ness" - I wouldn't include DACs in a device like this at all. Leave that to an outboard DAC or receiver, since almost everyone uses one these days. Just use optical out.

And finally, like a REAL audio component, I want to be able to operate the thing without a remote control. I'm an oddball here, but I HATE remote controls for anything but TV. I usually spend more time looking for one than it takes me to get up and change things.

I think the time for a device like this has come. It makes 200+ CD changers obsolete and helps you preserve your CDs - use them on the device once, then store them away.

Maybe I should start a company....

Thanks for the link - I have looked at these. The Turtle Beach product is approaching the future, and yet it seems strangely out-of-date before it even gets up a head of steam. When a portable costing $279 can offer line out AND 40 GB of storage, it seems rather odd to consider a $200 component that would essentially just sit between such a device and the stereo, or between your PC/laptop and the stereo ... and one can purchase soundcards for PCs (they are often built into the PCs, they are on both of mine) that come pretty close to accomplishing what this component does. Unless you have an intense home network, the main benefit of the TB component appears to be that it allows you to keep a noisy PC in the next room while letting you control the music selection. That is a step in the right direction, but you still have to store the music on the PC.

When they add 120 GB of nearly noiseless storage to one of these devices, and the ability to play back many more file types, with digital video outs, then you've got a solution. And perhaps this already exists, in TiVo or other digital media players?

Birdman

Yes, you SHOULD start a company. You've got the features down. I'm ready to early adopt already.

Let me know if you need marketers or, of course, in-home product testers.

Bman

I feel kind of stupid answering my own post here, but I had not done any research before making the original post. Now I see what's out there, and on second thought, nowave, maybe you need to work for one of these companies. Seems the Japanese, as always, are way ahead of us, and the major manufacturers are right behind. Based on this quick tour, it appears the products are out there and approaching us -- with audiophile quality according to Yamaha -- very fast. Yamaha targeted audiolovers with 2002 and 2003 products, but the new wave is driven by DVD recorders with hard disks offering as an added bonus multi-format playback and CD-quality DAC.

These beasts may very soon make dinosaurs out of the recent $900 single-disk universal players. And the Gateways and Dells of the world are going to drive these prices down quickly.

Bman

• Yamaha CDR-HD1300 CD Recorder/Hard Drive



• Test report on Yamaha CDRHD1300 from Sound & Vision



• Yamaha CDR-HD1000 CD Recorder/Hard Drive



• Pioneer DVR-510H-S Slim-Type DVD Recorder with Built-In 80GB Hard Disk Drive



• Panasonic Introduces DVD Recorder With 120GB Hard Drive



• Panasonic DMR-E100HS Progressive-Scan DVD Video Recorder with Built-in 120 GB Hard Disk



• Straits Times article, "Bye bye VCR, hello hard disk recorder?"



• DSstar (industry rag) article: HARD DISKS BOOST DVD RECORDER GROWTH

nice links austinbirdman. Looks like things are definitely starting to happen. Also, thanks for the info nowave. I like that the iPod runs from RAM. RAM is cheap - you could get a CD worth of RAM for not much money. Ultra quiet.

I still think a hybrid of the two devices (built-in hard drive and network server) would be fantastic. I personally would prefer to keep my music on the computers, for a few reasons. First, different people in the family have their own "personal" computers with their own music collections. It would be nice to keep the music organized that way. Also, it would be nice to be able to listen to music through the computer speakers *gasp!* if the computer was not located in the listening room. The second (and more important) reason I would like to keep the music on the computers is that all of the manipulation of music (ripping / burning / modifying) I do is done through software on the computer. It would be nice to not have to hook up a USB cable to the audio device. Would also be nice to be able to back up the HD...

I think all that needs to happen is for a HD to be put into the turtle beach product, or a network interface to be put into the HD / DVD products. I'd be all over that.

On a side note, you can also get an external sound card with remote for your computer, but then your computer has to be in your listening room

I agree..I'm quite happy to use the PC as an interface and have a receiver as the go between. Perhaps I'm being stupid, but being able to put the music in the format I want (as long as it's supported) in one place fits my eye better. One step further...the ideal for me would be an external hard drive so that if I then wanted to take my entire music collection with me I could!

Later,

Nick

Just to add another idea on the topic - a lot of the scratch-built arcade game guys (like myself - I have a home-built arcade cabinet) also build scratch-built jukeboxes. You can get monitors and touch screens from Happ Controls to address not wanting something that looks like a computer.

Bren R.

I think Apple's "digital hub" concept encompasses the general desires you're talking about here. I'm not saying that's the best solution, but I think they're heading in the right direction. I currently use iTunes and an iPod to organize my music and play it through my home stereo. I used to just pipe it in directly from my home computer over a very long analog audio cable, but I rearranged the living room and now the cable doesn't reach.

My ideal solution would be a stand-alone music server device. It would have room for 4 internal (hot-swappable!)hard drives. It would come either pre-configured/pre-loaded with a RAID 5 (3 + hotspare) array or empty so that geeks can do their own RAID arrays. (RAID 5 is a great compromise between redundancy and least waste, with a hotspare, up to two drives can fail before you start losing data.) It costs about $500 to buy a half-terabyte array. That's enough to store over 700 CD's worth of uncompressed music.

The back of the device would include a removable power cable, ethernet jack, firewire port, and both optical and coax digital audio outs. The unit would be fanless as well, relying on ample heat-sinks to dispense heat from the drives and power supply.

To get music onto the server from your computer, you'd either connect with a firewire cable (like a giant iPod), or over the network with ethernet. Any management of the device would be done via a web interface over the network. (This avoids the headache of having to support software on multiple operating systems.)

The device would naturally also be able to stream music over the internet.

I think that covers my ideas.

pmbuko, that sounds awesome. I'd just add

• Analog outs for people who don't like the stereo DACs on their receivers and for those who want 6-channel audio (SACD, DVD-A), since most receivers have to get 6-channel this way


• Bass management, for hi-rez audio


• And, as an alternate feature, a single-disk transport built-in that can read and rip files from CD/DVD/DVD-A/SACD media, burning them of course to the massive hard drive.

The Yamahas have this approach, minus bass mgt and hi-rez, b/c they only seem to function on CD right now.

Basically I'm seeing what you see, but as a combo of your hard disk array (love the RAID setup and flexibility for upgrades) with a universal player for ripping, at least as an option. Clearly some people will prefer to save money by avoiding a transport on the server and just ripping files via their PC -- but it would be a nice convenience, and a necessity for thousands of buyers.

Apparently the industry is handicapping all these variations as we brainstorm. This series on Multimedia Network Players recently written for "Tom's Hardware" says there are three approaches pending right now on PC-audio-video convergence:

• Network media players


• Multimedia servers


• Media center PCs

Network media players are an early adopter thing, but without hard drives they are not the future. Multimedia servers would appear to be the audiophile way, while Media Center PCs looks like a mass market solution .... With Universal Players on the horizon at <$150 and hard drives similarly cheap, some form of a mid-fi multimedia server would seem to me to be the natural first champion here. While a multimedia PC is not a bad idea, and may be the ultimate future, it seems easier for people to adopt multimedia-digital components into their systems than to have to go out an buy a PC system for the whole deal.

So I guess this means that once again Apple gets it on the design side. Of course, they won't make any money on their brilliant innovations, but that's another story ....

Birdman

If only Steve Jobs would hire me as an idea-guy....

One of the worlds highest quality audio company also has been an entrant in this field. I think that they have been involved for quiet a few years.

http://www.linn.co.uk/spec_sound/products.cfm?range=knekt&refererURL=http://www.linn.co.uk/

Linn has been known for several things - audiophile quality products, especially sources (turntables, cd players).

Just doing a search for "htpc" will get you into a whole evening's worth of diy fantasies. Here are a couple of mine:
http://www.cappuccinopc.com/dg1.asp - I kept this under $900.00 with 160GB drive and Windows XP Home. Don't even need XP home if you're savvy enough to take linux on. Or, if you really want redundant RAID, go with a custom case like this.

Funny how it seems expensive if it's an audio component, but cheap if it's a computer, eh?

Drool.

Oops. Redundant RAID is...well...redundant.

I saw a sign in a store today that read "ATM Machine". I thought to myself, "morons".

"Funny how it seems expensive if it's an audio component, but cheap if it's a computer, eh?"

No kidding. Here's hoping "convergence" means lower prices and commodification where appropriate.

Reminds me of the "La Brea Tar Pits" in Los Angeles. "La Brea" means "The Tar" in Spanish. So when people say "let's go to the La Brea Tar Pits museum" they're saying The The Tar Tar Pits.

Ok, back to the topic now...

or there's my personal favorite (and I'm guilty too) the PIN number.

Peter-- Let me know when you start putting these together. I'll be more than happy to help out with assembly (and in home testing). Hell, I'll shave and try my hat at selling them too!
I think austin has some great ideas as well. The only thing I'd add is make the ethernet port 10/100/1000 since gigabit hubs are getting cheaper and cheaper...

Gee I miss having 5 pcs networked at home....

Looks like the future is getting closer. Check out this sign of the times -- a 120GB, somewhat-DVD-Audio-capable DVD hard-disk recorder available at Best Buy for $699.

• Panasonic 120 GB DVD / HD player

This thing does the expected with 5.1, pro-scan, etc., without TiVo expenses neccessary for hard disk recording, but it only plays "2-channel DVD-Audio." (What is the point of that?) And it's unclear how optimized it is for audio, or even high-quality video. But the price point suggests that within a year, we may see some truly affordable hard drive component players. Can audiophile hard disk storage playing true hi-rez audio and storing hundreds of CDs of true CD-quality audio be far away?

Birdman

These systems are getting cheaper and better but there are two main issues to overcome before they completely eradicate DVD and CD storage.

First, in order to get the same level of sound or video quality you have to copy the original bit by bit or use a lossless compression algorithm. I'm not sure what the compression ratio of FLAC is, but it is probably not as high as MP3 (about 10:1). Please correct me if I am wrong on that. This means mega storage space for your music and video. I have 60+ DVDs and DVD-A's - if you assume that each takes only 50% of the 9GB of storage available, this equates to 300GB just for my DVD's. For my CD's, another 300 * 0.6GB = 180GB of space. So you are pushing 500GB of storage space which needs to be backed up somewhere incidentally.

Secondly, sound quality. If the massive amounts of storage required are not overcome in some simple and robust fashion (anyone who has used any Unix variant should know what rm -r * at the root can do) then the audio and video signals need to be compressed. Typically, the compression algorithm with sacrifice parts of the audio spectrum or even the data itself in order to achieve a smaller package. I have the ability to play MP3 through my stereo and it does sound good, I must admit. But comparing a Fleetwood Mac MP3 to the DVD-A version is noticeably different. If the lossless compaction algorithms can achieve the same sort of compression ratios as MP3 and others, this will become a non-issue.

Here's what I did .....

My wife and I have collected in excess of 300 CD's over the years and are still buying more. In order to improve our access to the music, I started to Rip our CD's to MP3 and store them on our server (yes I have a home network). To date, I have in excess of 4,000 files. Once we started to get exposure to more of the music that we liked, I got the itch to start piping it through the stereo again. I bought a used IBM laptop PC, installed Linux and a wireless Network card in it and set it up to access our file server and the MP3 files. I bought a Creative SoundBlaster Extigy (external) hooked it to the USB port on the laptop and linked it to one of the digital inputs on my reciever. I can now access any of the MP3's, set up play lists that can play through the stereo for hours, and so on from any PC in the house. It works for me but the quality of the audio still does not compete with a DVD or DVD-A.

Sean

EDIT: I forgot to mention, just for the he** of it, I will be converting an X-Box into a media system complete with 120GB HD to replace the PC (probably with Linux). That will give me a system capable of playing MP3's, DVD's and CD's that I can control via remote and view on my TV. Why? I just gotta ...

That's excellent Sean.
I've been looking at some mp3 playing options myself but the home LAN is quite far away from my basement system.
I will probably wait until we move sometime in the next year most likely, before working anything together to do something like what you did. Mind you, i may not rip all our discs to mp3 (or other format). That would take me quite some time....

Took me a week or so to rip all of our CDs to AAC. Worth the effort, though. You could use 802.11 to get the network to the basement, too...

A friend of mine is putting together a system exactly like yours and I managed to convince him to spend the extra dough to build a home-brewed tivo into it. It was in my best interest as he is most likely my future roomate That seems to be the only way (ie: DIY) to get the level of functionality that people want in such a unit these days. Now the real trouble is trying to pack all that into a quiet micro-atx case...

I'm not too keen on the wireless yet.
I'm also not sure whether the signal would make it through the house. I have trouble getting a decent cordless phone to work here.

Thanks all - it's a passion. Well more like an addiction really.

Chess, the wireless I am using is 802.11b D-Link Airplus hub and wireless card. It is supposed to be good for up to 300 ft indoors. I manage to keep the music seamless by setting up the host server on the laptop to buffer 100% of the data before it starts playing.

When will the factory tour report be ready - I'm dying to read it. EDIT: Wow - that was fast. I just scanned the General Questions and there it was.

Sean

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When will the factory tour report be ready - I'm dying to read it. EDIT: Wow - that was fast. I just scanned the General Questions and there it was.

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Yep.
You ask and i finally delivered.
Coincidence or no?

You are just too gosh darned efficient. Excellent report by the way - I really enjoyed it. Hats off to Axiom for taking time to show you around.

Sean

Sean, that's very interesting. My own interest is in placing exact replicas of CD-files (i.e., uncompressed CD audio files) on a hard drive. I don't want even the higher quality MP3s. My assumption (correct me if wrong) is that this will be facilitated by larger hard drives. Each audio CD, uncompressed, has an exact size, something around 650 MBs if I recall. So my thought is you could get about 150 CDs-worth of uncompressed, CD-audio onto an 80 GB drive (not MP3 "CD-quality," which should be rephrased as "almost CD quality).

Storing DVDs sounds too much ... the storage capacity would have to be so high. What I want to do is store a CD-audio music library on a hard disk.

Birdman

I have thought about this myself, and ultimately just got a mega cd changer because I am lazy and don't feel like building a dedicated machine to serve as my jukebox.

A 74-minute cd holds 650MB, an 80 minute holds 700MB. Taking the ratio of MB/min on the 80 minute cd is slightly less (8.75) than on the 74 minute so lets use that. Since many cds do not occupy the entire disk it is more useful to think about minutes of music stored at cd quality.

(100GB disk)/(8.75MB/min) = ~11,400 min
Assuming cd's average 50 minutes, that's 228 cds. Not too shabby storage really.

Birdman

Based on the research that I have done on Music Servers, that is precisely how the music is stored, uncompressed. Your math is also correct, it is the equivalent of about 125-150 CDs uncompressed.

Sean

I would much rather use a lossless form of compression (such as FLAC) to use my space more efficiently than to store uncompressed audio.

FLAC's compression ratio is around 2:1.

I've been copying to hard drive for quite awhile now and was aniticipating the day when this would become a reality for the mass market. I've got my preamp's record out to an M-Audio Firewire 410 which is attached to a PC. The unit is extremely handy with an optical input/output and coaxial input/output. It also has 2 analog ins!

Based on that math, we would need about 240MB of hd space to be added before ripping all of our present discs.
Eeech.
I don't know if i want to open up the pocketbook for that just yet.

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Based on that math, we would need about 240MB of hd space to be added before ripping all of our present discs.
Eeech.
I don't know if i want to open up the pocketbook for that just yet.

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I think you may have a typo in your reply...if not, I've got an extra 240 MB drive (actually I have a few 540's not doing anything at the moment) lying around here somewhere...you're welcome to one...

WhatFurrer

Most major brand (Maxtor, Seagate, WD) internal drives retail for close to $1 a GB when you look at drives 100GB and up. That means on average you can expect it to cost you maybe $0.60 a disk to store them digitally (ripped as .wav files). (That is, just for the storage space.) Now with something like FLAC you can compress them almost another 50%, which pushes the per disk cost down to pretty much the same cost as buying CD-Rs in bulk on sale ($0.25/disk is pretty reasonable for a sale on a spool of 50 name brand disks, although I have seen less.)

Assuming to put together a relatively cheap dedicated computer to house this you need an additional $300 or so for: case, MoBo, proc., ram, and sound card on top of the cost for storage. It's definately still on the expensive side although not unreasonable for what you get. This system is assuming your mother board has built in LAN and you can upload everything from some other machine to this one, as it will have no cd drive, keyboard, monitor, etc.

There are other things to consider too like data protection (RAID/Backup? increase your storage costs), fan noise (all those hard drives spinning will get hot, water cooling amounts to additional costs), I'm sure I could come up with more but I'm getting lazy.

Wow...that $1/GB part made me feel old. I remember well when people were happy that prices got to $1/MB for hard drives.

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I think you may have a typo in your reply

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Yes indeed i do or did.
240mb would not get me very far at all in saving our 400+ cds.

Just as a word of caution, in case anyone is thinking about getting a large (external) drive to store their music, avoid the LaCie Big Drives (or similar). They've been getting a lot of press of late, because they have huge capacities (400 GB - 1 TB) all in one box without a fan. Except...
It's really 2 or 4 drives crammed in a tiny case without a fan and RAIDed together in firmware. RAID 0. As in striping. As in, "Yes, I'd like to double or quadruple my chances of losing ALL of my data at any point in the future, thanks!" Don't succumb to temptation. You have been warned....

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"Yes, I'd like to double or quadruple my chances of losing ALL of my data at any point in the future, thanks!"

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Been there. Done that. Had it happen.
Luckily i figured the drive was going so i backed up my stuff constantly. Only lost 2 weeks of emails.
I really did not notice much difference at all in computer performance so i've gone back to non-RAID. However, the extra onboard IDE channels are an absolute necessity now. So many components...so little space...

unless you go with a RAID1 - simply for the mirroring - it's overkill for audio files. Getting a good firewire drive and daisy-chaining as storage requirements increase would probably be a better idea...

^billy

Stbean - that sounds very cool. What is the M-Audio 410? How much does it cost? Are you able to transfer analog source material like LPs to digital via this card or device? Please give more detail on how it works and what you do with it.

Birdman

Here are the details on the Soundblaster Extigy and Audigy

http://www.creative.com/products/welcome.asp?cat=2

Sean