Here I didn't yet know how slick or not Kevin's GUI would be compared to iTunes; and how multi-tiered his display functions. The bigger a library, the more vital become sort options by artist, album, track, favourites, genre, playlist and custom fields (and if you're a classical capt'n navigating choppy seas of multiple readings of the same works, by conductor, orchestra, period, solo instrument and such). Was I optimistically cynical or cautiously hopeful? Delivery would tell. Whilst sound-über-alles extremists prioritize audio over convenience often with astonishing abandon, for me convenience is part of the performance equation. It's not separate or lower tier. It's synonymous. Especially with a modern digital library controller sitting at the helm of 10s of 1'000s of tracks. Hardcore sound freaks willing to suffer will disagree. But those are my biases. They're why I'm already on my third iMac for music and still not with any audiophile-approved server. I'm mature enough not to give a toss about what others think. I trust my ears and must please only them. Just so, I'm genuinely interested in better performance. If something serverish came along that eviscerated my current iMac front end, I'd applaud it. If it offered equivalent or superior functionality on top, I might even buy it. In the next email, Kevin explained his thinking in more detail.


"We built this device as a pure player. It doesn't have a PC motherboard so it doesn't perform functions like ripping or managing your library. Those sacrifices equate to a cleaner more natural sound as I’m sure you’ll hear. I wanted to improve on my old Windows-based system and found that I couldn’t. Most manufacturers, myself included, were using the same set of workarounds. We had great linear power supplies feeding commodity pico power supplies to make the connections to the PC. Those added noise. We were using PC motherboards with tons of regulators and overkill specs also adding noise. Many folks use SOtM filters (SATA, USB) to try to take that noise back out. But filters don’t get all of the noise. A couple of years ago, I was watching a video about 3D printing and how it was an additive manufacturing process. They made the statement that an additive approach is less wasteful and overall better than a subtractive build. That’s when it hit me.

"We’re all building these monstrous PCs, then try our best to kill everything off and reduce it down to an audio player. We’re tweaking the registry, killing services, adding filters all to remove things that shouldn’t be there in the first place. They’re there because they come in the box by default. What if we built the audio player from the ground up? That’s what I did this time. This was a little long-winded but I wanted to convey that what we’re doing is different. We’re not a UPnP streamer which requires a relatively complex setup and an active connection between the renderer, controller & library. (I tried that for a few months and found that the typical audiophile would be overly frustrated with the complexity. Plus, the best board I could find, from ABC-PCB, didn’t sound all that amazing.) We’re not a PC-based server/player with all the issues that come with PC hardware and operating systems. We’re a network player. We’re simple to use. We don’t need filters because we’re not adding much noise ('none' wouldn’t be true) in the first place. We don’t need to kill services or throttle extra CPU cores because they’re not there to begin with.


"Any computer you already own (call this the library management PC) can rip, download tracks, manage your library etc. I suggest that customers put their music in a NAS enclosure that uses RAID to protect their data. I also suggest they back up their NAS. We have a library server for this purpose but an off-the-shelf NAS works quite well. Some people just share a folder on their library management PC and forego the NAS. They rip or download and put the tracks on the storage device, making them available to the A Cappella II. They tag from that PC, organize folders all from an electronically noisy device but one with a keyboard, monitor and mouse. The typical arrangement then is Ethernet to your library management PC (laptop, desktop, something with a keyboard and mouse is usually best), Ethernet to the A Cappella II and often WiFi (Ethernet is fine) to the remote control device (typically an iPad in your lap). And yes, we do Spotify. I started to incorporate Tidal but after the Jay Z buyout and a lot of media coverage that Tidal was dying, I put that project on hold. I’ll pick it back up soon and do Qobuz at the same time. I'm targeting the holidays for that rollout. I’ll push it out to existing customers. The system displays album art on the playback screen. It pulls the image that is encoded in the file (in FLAC for example) or in the folder with the track." To recapitulate, this machine moves just the audio out of the computing environment but doesn't simultaneously replace other computer services which are essential for building and managing a digital file-based library. Our designer believes that anything less than full apartheid is a compromise. Hence a standard computer remains a necessity and intended companion for the A Capella II. As I began to wrap my head around this notion frankly new to me, my curmudgeonly inner peasant relaxed his grip on my spleen. Sure, this was no money-saving proposition. Neither the iMac nor the DAC would be retired. One had to add one more box whose narrow work load didn't exactly come cheap. Ah, doth hope not eternal springeth whenever the promise of better sound is hoisted on that petard? Or as a true New Yorker would say, there's a sucker born every minute. Which would it be?