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[WolfAudioSystems]

Hey Guys,

I am doing some A-B testing between a couple of DAC's on a system without a monitor or TV (using a tablet only) and need to figure out the best way to send albums to one DAC or the other.

Right now, I have two zones set up already to manage "plain" 16 or 24 bit 2 channel audio as an 'Audio' zone using ASIO and no mixing or DSP, and then a 'DSD' zone where I specify 4xDSD Native (Parasound Halo Integrated - USB Bitstreaming).

I am going to add an Ayre Codex into the mix, and need to find the best way to send a song, playlist or whatever to the DAC we want to listen to at the moment.  Thinking it through, it seems the most straightforward way will be to create a Parasound Zone and an Ayre Zone, and then send the album to the zone of our choice. 

Does anyone have any other ideas on how to accomplish this?  Remember that we don't have a monitor, mouse or keyboard in the room and the activities of playing to different DAC's (utilizing a tablet as the controlling device) will often be handled by guys who aren't the most tech savvy, so I really need to make this as fool proof as possible.   

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

Joe from Wolf Audio Systems

[Arindelle]

don't have the time for a guide but as you already know how to set-up zones, just add a third zone for the Ayre. Use the JRemote app and just switch zones. Or am I missing something specific you'd like to have happen? Adjustment for output gain ?

[blgentry]

I can think of several different approaches.  In no real particular order...

First, yes name the Zones for the DACs.  That makes the most sense to me.  Then one of the following:

1.  Pick your zone from JRemote or Gizmo (depending on what kind of tablet you are using), and send the songs to the DAC you want.
2.  Two tablets.  One set to each zone before you start a listening session.  This is the ultimate in separation.  Color coded tablet cases, or just a printed label with the name of the DAC would make this SUPER easy to differentiate which tablet controls which DAC.  This seems very foolproof.
EDIT:  I just realized I've never tried to use two remote control programs with MC at the same time.  I would need to test this to make sure it works well.
3.  Link the zones for the two DACs.  This is easy to do from MC's standard view.  But, as far as I can tell, neither JRemote or Gizmo support zone linking.  I've read that EOS remote has zone linking, but I've never tried it.  So, you'd probably have to set this up ahead of time using some kind of display, OR remote access.  Teamviewer, splashtop, etc can be run from a tablet for true remote access.  In any case, once the zones are linked, any tracks added to the first zone will be played in the second zone at the same time.  There will probably be some slight timing differences, so if you're trying to do very quick A/B switches, you'd want to play with this to see if it was usable for your purposes.

BTW, are you doing this testing in Florida?  Just curious after reading a bit on your web site as I live in Florida.

Brian.

[WolfAudioSystems]

Hey Brian and Arindelle,

Making different zones and choosing the zone you prefer to play in from the tablet works, however, it creates an added layer of complexity for the end user.  As you mentioned from seeing my site Brian, I have started Wolf Audio Systems, and House Of Stereo in Jacksonville is one of our pilot stores. The issue I have is that clients of the store are seeing a Media PC and JRiver and Hi-Fi file formats for the first time... now add in the  concept of zone switching on a tablet app (pick any one of the tablet apps, they are still alien to the uninitiated) and getting it to play with some degree of reliability - it is a huge learning curve! 

What I ended up doing in the interim is this:  I remembered that MC20 was still installed on the system, so I configured 20 (and its' different Media Network key) to be in charge of the Ayre.  I then left MC21 in charge of the Parasound, and created two different server entries in JRemote and EOS, one named Ayre and one named Parasound. I did it this way because it is easier for the average guy to switch between servers than zones.  Both 20 and 21 are set to startup with the machine, so that the listener can pick his DAC source at the tablet, adjust the input on the Parasound integrated and get playing.  Both 20 and 21 use the exact same library sources, so there shouldn't be too much difference to the end user, especially as this system is configured for two channel listening (as opposed to my house where I play every file imaginable, audio and video) At the weekend I will do some more playing around with managing zones with one instance of the tablet apps to find the easiest path to adjust so that we can just utilize MC21. 

Brian - If you are close to Jacksonville, Private Message me and come give the Wolf Audio System a listen.  Bill Gibson owns House of Stereo here in town and he is one of the most brilliant guys I have ever met, and is also a damned good musician.  Putting the machine in his mid-level High End room was a transformative experience for me, coming from my home setup to a true professional room, and once we do the official launch party, the machine is going into the bad-ass Super High End room. Exciting stuff. 

While we have a handful of sales under our belt, we have purposefully kept the pool small because the initial adopters are part of our beta testing network where we are perfecting our support model.  The Wolf Audio Systems machines will have a full-blown IT support back-end, where we will manage pretty much everything computer-ey so that our customers can treat the machine like any other audio appliance.  We don't want you to have to have a Computer Science background to use it, but we have left it open enough where if you want to tinker or branch out what the system does in your home, that is possible too.  It's been designed so that my Mom can use it, and in that we have been successful.  We are currently gearing up to launch the product officially before the end of the year, so we have a lot of hard work ahead of us in terms of finishing the site and finalizing some of the specs for the machines.  If we could get the prices on SSD's down a bit, that would be a major win.  I really don't want to ship these systems with less than 1TB of SSD storage. 

Anyways, back to it!  I will update this page with the path I eventually take, and guys, please! Keep the ideas coming.  Someone on here always mentions something that I hadn't thought of before, and it often leads to bad-arse breakthroughs.