Music Servers - Baetis vs. Music Vault

While I am very happy with the sound that Baetis is sending to my DAC, I think the simple truth is that music server designs & options have come a long way, and we now are fortunate to have several viable choices.

I very likely may have been just as happy with the Vault, or Salk or Antipodes, etc.

I did not have the opportunity to compare. I pulled the trigger with Baetis and am very happy with how my system sounds.

I don't think that it's a case that only one is good and the others are bad. I suspect that many of the options are good. And, that's a good thing for us - the consumers, and the industry.

I joined a'gon almost 15 years ago. Back then, I had the time to chase my tail with every last detail. Today, I just want to push the power button, and enjoy the music.

With the server options that are out there today, and will continue to rise, I/we are one step closer to that.

Barrelchief, that's exactly what I was alluding to in my last post. I suspect that, based on all the positive reviews for virtually every server out there, most servers do a very good to excellent job at "serving", even though they may use different methods to achieve their results. My specific comments about the Baetis lacking "special sauce" refers to the voluminous reviews and comments I've read that focus on Linear power supplies, fanless designs, sotm usb cards, stripped down OS and no bloated applications like Jriver, etc, as some of the keys to better server sound. The Baetis has none of this and yet still seems to offer very good sound. Perhaps, as I said earlier, just about any server can sound very good. I guess the only way we will know is when people actually compare these purpose-built servers to each other, and not to basic or even tricked out Apple products and Windows-based laptops.

Actually, let me not sell the Baetis short, as if they do nothing special. They do indeed, but differently, and claim their different methodology sounds better. They specifically focus on a "perfected" SPDIF-BNC output directly from a special motherboard. That's THEIR special sauce, but it is significantly different than most other server architecture.

Hi Erndog. Are you using the Off Ramp 4 with the Salk Stream player? Which DAC are you currently using? Thanks in advance.

Yoby,
No, I'm not using the off ramp anymore. I sold it to fund the Salk stream player. I would love to hear how it sounds with the Salk, maybe in the future.

I'm using a modded MHDT Stockholm dac. Other dacs I've had are: Nuforce Dac-9, Empirical Audio Oversrive SE, and the Chord Qutehd. All were great sounding dacs, but the MHDT sounds the least digital and the best match for my rig.