super confused?!

[amanoud]

hi, just created my account. Hello Chris and everyone. I am pretty new to to all this and i have been ripping all of my cds into my mac with itunes using apple lossless. (no mention of ALAC, FLAC or AFLAC in iTunes there really are no options when you choose lossless in importing so i always assumed that this is the best quality i could get. I did notice that the music does not have the life that it does from my cds and so i started searching and found CA.

 

I've noticed that you guys are all mentioning different sample rates which are much higher than what i now see as standard (44.1) and you guys are working with 96.... i believe or higher. I'm sorry to sound so lost but i was hoping you could point me in the right direction to kinda "catch up" with the audiophiles.

 

can i convert the cds in my hard drive to higher quality or do i have to re-rip them? i'm afraid it'll be the later of the two.

 

how do i get higher quality to play from itunes?

 

i also use an apple tv that i stream my music to from i tunes into my living room system. I don't keep any music on it though (not for any reason other than I just haven't bothered).

 

thanks for any help. maybe a point to some beginner forum or page might help.

 

 

 

[PeterSt]

Hi amanoud,

 

The most imporant message I can give you is that nothing is wrong with 44.1. Anyway this is no reason at all to find things lifeless, or more without life than you may be used to with using a CD player.

Additionally, upsampling to 96KHz or anything sure won't change anything about that.

 

Your next question obviously will be "so what is the cause then ?" and I'm afraid here it kind of stops.

The easiest approach would be letting go of iTunes, because the player really matters. Whether that is enough to bring back the joy depends on many other things. Just plugging in the DAC you normally use with the CD player into the PC's motherboard usually doesn't bring a satisfactory solution. Let alone using the sound device from your motherboard which you possibly do.

 

But if you have everything right, PC playback outclasses anyhting else. Not as a teaser, but just to let you know what you stribe for.

 

Peter

 

[BEEMB]

Amanoud,

 

Welcome to the CA forums.

I'm guessing that you're using a PC, in which case, inless you're using the Airport Express I'd like to steer you towards MediaMonkey, XXHIghEnD, Foobar or JRiver Media Centre.

 

You say we're all using "96" on here. Nope ! We're all probably using a mix of formats. I have everything from 320kps MP3's to hi resolution material and I'm sure most of the other forumers do too.

 

I'm not sure there's much of a benefit to be had by ripping your CD's to a higher resolution. In terms of sound quality there'll be no difference but I understand that by ripping to say 24bit there can be other advantages. There's more on that on the CA forums somewhere.

 

First things first though; iTunes on the PC will not allow your music to get to your DAC unaltered, in its original form. The other software players mentioned all allow you to do this though there are some soundcard and driver implications too. If you're using a Mac then you can stick with iTunes and enjoy it's ease of use and begin having fun right away.

 

If you have enough disk space, and let's face it disk space is cheap, then rip your files to uncompressed AIFF format if you intend to use iTunes to import your music.

 

Matt.

 

[PeterSt]

If you're using a Mac then you can stick with iTunes

 

Maybe not the whole idea of a Mac, but I think you can run Vista on it ?

Not for every Apple OS I think. I just don't know that.

 

?

 

[amanoud]

hi everyone and thanks for the replies! well, here's my setup. i have basically two systems connected wirelessly. the living room has an apple TV with a ps audio link dac III (still waiting for the dac to come from shipping). these two will be connected with toslink (optical). form there, it all goes into a modifed dynaco all tube system pas3x and modified MKIII monoblocks out to my KEF 104/2 speakers. all of my music is stored on my main computer in my office on a mirrored external firewire hard drives. i only use macs. i also only use itunes. and so far i've imported all of my music with lossless. does this look right so far? also since my apple tv can't hold much music, i've been streaming music to it from the office computer with my iphone controller. however, i've read that some people are syncing entire albums on to the apple tv to get better sound. i'm not very clear on this. perhaps someone can explain