About
Hi, I'm Walter Hartman and I'd like to share some of my experiences exploring setups for an audio playback system based on Foobar2000.
This is about 2 channel audio systems with a digital front end and tube amp back end. But much of what I talk about here is applicable with any other type of amp as well.
I use Foobar2000 as a music server, running on small footprint PCs and feeding audio to a tube amp. I remote control the Foobar2000 server over Wi-Fi using my Windows Phone running a mobile app I wrote -- Foobar2000 Copilot.
My life has been enriched by music, and I've directly benefited from the work of so many people, who have crafted tube amps, DACs, speakers, and software such as Foobar2000, and all those artists out there creating and recording great music.
I'm not a maker of audio hardware, nor do I sing or perform, but I do write software -- so writing Foobar2000 Copilot is my small way of hopefully contributing to and giving back to the audio community.
I'd also like to prefix all of this by saying there is no one 'perfect' answer -- especially when it comes to music, which is so personal and subjective. So each of us in the end has to find what works for us -- go on our own personal journey -- but we can all benefit from sharing experiences.
I'd also like to say for me it is more about the enjoyment of the music, and not about spending countless hours setting up and tweaking systems, chasing diminishing returns...
When setting up my systems or A/B'ing different components, I've often found myself more into my left brain being all analytical and technical -- analyzing and dissecting-- but I find in that mode I'm not really in my right brain just enjoying the music...
That after all the tech talk, that I have to at some point turn off all that analytical chatter, and say things are good enough, and just open myself to the pure beauty of the music... that I have to not think about it, but just feel it...
That in the end like any art, all the machinery has to dissolve away so you don't see it at all, and what remains is the purity and beauty of the music...
The Quest
I think it all started with me questing for a home audio setup that would reproduce music as close to 'live' as possible, as if I were actually there listening to the music... shades of that old Memorex commercial 'Is it live or Memorex?'...
I wanted to hear an artist take in a breath or smack their lips or where I could hear the instruments in 3D space.
When working long hours, often I just wanted to get home, sink into my sofa and turn on the music -- let it carry me away...
I looked at it not so much as an audio system, but as a teleporter machine of sorts that would musically transport me to a place where there is no space and time... Where the music and me would like become one... and be interwined in a deep conversation of sorts, but with no words...
Because in a sense music is a non verbal language onto itself -- that it more speaks to our hearts and emotions rather than our analytical brain. And even before we had spoken language, we likely had music of sorts.
It's in our DNA, and elementally connected to the ebb and flow of sounds all around us in nature... from the sound of ocean waves or water running in a river to the sound of rain in a forest...but also connected to us inwardly like the sounds of our breathing or our hearts beating... and that these inner and outer sounds are fused into some kind of orchestral whole... It's like we found our own voices to join in the chorus surrounding us.
Think about it, think that every one of us has music, something we carry with us wherever we go... It's something woven into our daily lives our whole lifetime... and connects us all...
