56 AustralianHi-Fi http://www.aushifi.com
INtervIew BRIAN ZOLNER BrIcastI DesIgN
supply on digital stuff because you can’t
afford to lose it. In analogue, analogue
power goes down low, OK maybe distortion
goes up a little bit but it still works—you
don’t get as much power out of the
amplifier or something. But with digital
it’s dead. So getting back to the computer
world, that’s why all the regulation on the
board is digital. There is no way you’re
going to create all these voltages linear. And
so you didn’t really win anything. So that
was the reason I found. But primarily it was
the convenience of getting that thing out
of my room and saying, well, OK, then you
gotta have something like this.
JF: Back the 1990s you wouldn’t be seen
dead with a computer in your hi-fi listening
room. Now we live with them next to our
hi-fi, inside our hi-fi.
BZ: Well everybody’s been making re-
cords for the last 20 years with a computer.
Some people maybe make token tape
recordings. But that’s just token.
JF: So are we cursed at source with this?
BZ: Well no, in professional use, you
know, you aren’t using USB most of the
time. But there are issues like that through-
out the chain. But nonetheless, all we can
deal with in this situation is what we’re
playing back. But that’s what I noticed, that
it was done initially because of conveni-
ence, but then once we got it going I said,
wow that’s better. It’s a lot better. Because
that data can be anywhere on the network,
it can be on my phone, can be on a NAS,
could be from the cloud, wherever the serv-
er’s going to pick it up from. So I certainly
use this as my ‘server’, I use that word be-
cause it’s where I let the app reside—here.
I find I prefer to just do that. People think
they want to get around that and they say,
“Oh, I just want to play from the NAS”, and
you can kind-of do that, but then there’s a
processor in the NAS. There’s a computer in
there. People think that “Oh I don’t need
that computer”, but they have one in the
NAS and then they’re kind of hamstrung
because you can’t do anything.
JF: And there’s the variable server soft-
ware, where the DLNA won’t order albums
in the right way and so on...
BZ: All that stuff—let’s call it library
management, you’re going to have to flip
your computer open and straighten this
out. Right. So my life and the way I do it, I
gave up. I just love this little laptop I’ve been
using for years. It’s just running Windows 7
and all I ever use it for is audio. When I get
home next week, I’ll go upstairs, plug it into
the network, turn it on, change the library,take that M21 that I’m carrying home with
me, turn it on, and ten minutes later I’m
playing. And it just sits there, I leave it on,
it’s got a solid-state drive, it’s just on. So
I never turn my system off and on—it’s
stable, it’s all IP addressed, all that stuff gets
sorted out. I come here today, I turn it on,
bang, spot on, it’s stable.
So basically we’ve made our own Linux
player. We could, with a bit more work, turn
it into a server. But why do that? Because
then I’m in the app business. I don’t want
to be in the app business. We could stick
it on there, license an app from somebody
or put jRiver on there, license it from those
guys. But then you’re supporting that.
And it doesn’t have to live there, that’s the
point. There’s no real advantage for it to live
there because you’re still back to the same
problem—I’ve got to keep my database
sorted out, how am I going to look at it,
how am going to rip a CD, all this stuff, all
this maintenance. However you do it, it’s
not magic—it’s like organising your albums
in the old days, you have to be able to find
it, get it, and play it. People make it more
complicated than it is.
If you use Roon, that’s what Roon tells
you to do, Roon says you use a core. That’s
how you do it. Well that’s what I’m doing,
this is my core. It’s the same thing, I’m using
this as my core.
JF: Nobody’s explained to me what the
criterion for ‘Roon Ready’ actually is.
BZ: All it is saying... OK, all it is... is it’s
their version of DLNA. So they took that
type of a protocol and made little tweaks.
Then they said “OK now you have to make
it work our way, and comply with us, and
we’re going to test that it does...” yada,
yada... the whole thing.
JF: And they go through a testing pro-
cedure?
BZ: Yes, and then we have to give
them a unit and all that crap and, arrrgh,
it knocks on to all kinds of things, because
they want to do all kinds of shit that you
don’t really want to do.
JF: So that’s a tough decision, which you
choose to license...
BZ: Very expensive and, for us, costly
time-wise in development. It’s not Roon, it’s
us implementing what they want.
JF: Do they change criteria or is it a
pretty fixed protocol?
BZ: It’s fixed, but the point is we had to
do a lot of work, we had to re-invent stuff
to do it. Is it worth it? I don’t know. I tell
guys, use what you want. I find that the
most important criteria for users is that oncethey get used to an app, they don’t want
change. That’s far more important here than
some twiddly little—maybe does it sound
a little different? It shouldn’t really matter.
You’re just sending the files over. And the
rendering is done here. We do the render-
ing. So the app isn’t doing it. In our testing,
I got my guy in L.A., he’s got a Mac and a
PC, I let him have all the apps—I don’t want
to waste my time with that, but somebody
has to do it. But he’s got Roon, he’s played
with Audirvana; he says it doesn’t matter.
JF: So preferred connection between the
M5 and the DAC? Not USB then?
BZ: That’s another point of discus-
sion, because the idea was not to use
USB. And I tested it in a way that no user
can—well a user could, but no user typically
can—because everything with that is very
speculative and very subjective. You have no
grounding point in anything, so to change
something—sure it changed, but is it better
or worse? Theoretically you’re sort-of after
the truth; that’s the whole idea, right? Well
it’s supposed to be, but it’s not. The prob-
lem is, how do you ground yourself?
So in this case I take the same file,
same cables, simultaneously playing to the
M5 and say in this case to the M21, same
streamer, same everything right, in both
products. I go into the M12 or the M1 or
the M21, the same streamer card’s there
and it drops I2S right to the DSP. And then
out to get converted. In the M5, I2S right to
the DSP—AES, S/PDIF, USB. So you can play
the same track at the same time and switch.
And of course the level is perfect because
it’s digital, you don’t have that issue, and
then you start listening, and the conclu-
sion I come to is that the truth is very close
between the AES and the SPDIF. The USB
is not, and you hear why—you hear the
noise and the hash. And the USB sounds
more exciting, more lively, because of the
noise. Noise does that; distortion does
that. Various types of distortion will create
thickness, loudness, apparent loudness,
apparent width of the stage, you know,
because it’s kind of ‘shaking guys up’. If it’s
still, what you’ll have is a more clear deeper
soundstage, looking at it that way. And if
it’s bit noisy it’s going to go wider and excite
things more—maybe you think it’s detail,
but it’s not resolution.
The best resolution is hearing nothing,
it’s transparency. But most people don’t
understand that, they think something’s
missing. But my listening says that it’s the
closest to the original, OK, and that’s the
only thing you can hang it on.