I was drawn to this site at first by its skeptical, scientific orientation. I occasionally lurk here. I've even posted a few times on very general audio subjects. A few ppl here have linked to documents on my Website. But even after reading all the faq's I still have one big question:

What in the H - E - double-hockey-sticks are you all talking about??

Or, more precicesly, what does all this about codecs and other techy stuff have to do with a person of a certain age who just likes to sit in a quiet room and listen to music? Is it mainly about portable music via iPods and the like? What are you all doing with this technology?

I know that some sort of HD or flash memory based players are probably the next step in music reproduction for the home - devices like the Olive Symphony are very interesting to me and once they come down a bit in price I'll probably get one. So should I stick around here and get schooled for the coming Brave New World? Hey, I'm still a long way from the nursing home...

Partly developing things so that persons of a certain age who just like to sit in a quiet room and listen to music can do so

I wouldn't dissuade you from reading, or contributing, to your heart's content, but if you are indeed mystified as to any relevance to yourself, you might as well ask the identical question, no words changed, on a forum dedicated to the use and maintenance of metal detectors.

Trying to make it possible to have our entire music collection available, everywhere we go, at all times, in a small form factor, and preferably in a format that sounds identical (or actually is bit identical) to the original CD. For some it means having their entire collection backed up and available at the touch of a button in their home.

Depending on the size of you music collection, we may be there already. In my case that would mean having several thousand CD's available to me at all times. As it stands now, I have about 1100 cd's available to me everywhere I may go, in a format that sounds 99% identical to the original CD. At home, that would be 100% identical.

Ah, now we're getting somewhere. That's what I'm interested in too, at least the second part, but my understanding is that, so far, this is the province of techies or extreme early adopters. But it does interest me. Content on shiny plastic discs is going to be replaced by something being discussed here.

Of course I knew that much here is developer to developer.

So maybe a better question for me now is: What technologies might I begin to look at? As a Mac user (for instance), can iTunes be used as the basis for a good, high fidelity Mac music server? Something else? So far I haven't been able to ascertain that. Maybe I'm reading the wrong threads. A gentle nudge in right direction is appreciated. No, not to metal detector sites, please.

I mentioned the Olive Symphony earlier. Drawback for me right now is the expense of that and similar units.

BTW, I think it's an 'age thing' but 20 years ago I would have been all over the iPod. But now having music with me at all times is just not that big a deal. I did own a Walkman back in the day! OTOH, can an iPod or other player fill the job of a home music server - maybe with some simple hacking?

I tried to be a bit jocular in my first post. Some might have taken it amiss. Sorry. This stuff interests me a lot -- just not on the level of a computer scientist or electrical engineer.

And I must say, it is nice to find an audio site that is free of the inane "do cables make a difference" threads and respects (demands!) ABX testing of subjective opinions. That's what attracted me in the first place.

To see where I'm coming from, visit my audio page: http://bruce.coppola.name/audio/index.html It's bare bones for now. Some here may be familiar with my "Audio Wisdom" links page.

That's not entirely true, the greater benefit comes from developers interacting with users, and users interacting with users.

Um, DNS is pointing me to http://127.0.0.1/audio/ when I click on your link. Just me?

And in replying to your original post, I think most people here are audio hobbyists/enthusiasts/geeks. There is a lot of information to be taken from HA.org (the search function is your friend.)

EDIT:

This seems to be the right link...http://bruce.coppola.name/audio/index.html

I get 68.61.72.54 for the DNS but the page still isn't loading.

And the wiki! Don't forget the wiki!

Yes, sorry for the incomplete URL. I fixed it in my post.

Thanks all. I'll search and check out the WIKI (somehow I totally missed the WIKI here), and lurk more. Then hopefully I will be able to post intelligent questions.

In the meantime, welcome to HA...!