New member - Would appreciate direction please

[Elprior]

Hi,

 

I'm too using windows XP, and ripping my CDs through EAC (I have not tried iTunes, but considering your comments, that seems to do the job perfectly).

Anyway, my sound card is quite old, and limited to 24bits/48khz resolution on its spdif output.

 

And of course, in the process, I'm stuck with this (bad) upsampling attitude of my PC.

I am quite sure this issue is addressed somewhere else in this (fantastic) place since you are all mentioning the bit-perfect reading grail.

 

At some point, I was told to use codecs packs to tune the resolution output, but that did not work with playback from Winamp. Then someone from Crosoft even told me to use GraphEdit to tune my Flac reading process, and make sure I can disable whatever I dislike in the chain. As you can imagine with Crosoft, the damn thing has been deprecated since august 2005, and is no longer delivered with the directx sdk. I have successfully dl a version of this tool, but it does not even know what Flac means, and does not display any graph associated with Flac files.

 

I think I'm loosing everybody here with my annoying details.

So to wrap things up, I simply need to play 16bits/44khz to 24bits/48khz Flac files from Winamp bit-perfectly. Still I would need some of the magic when playing 24bits/96khz files, that I would like downsampled to 48khz (this parts works perfectly so far ! ).

 

Can someone point me to the correct thread ?

 

Thanks in advance,

Elp.

 

PS : Actually, I am thinking about changing my PC. I'd just like to make sure I can play files with no contribution from windows XP, before definitely moving to the Apple world (that in the end, I find quite expensive).

 

PS2 : As an audiophool geek, I have come up with an interesting conclusion (that is always the source of long debates in audio-equipments). I have tried to play the same music from my laptop, and my desktop computer (this one is having a very good power-supply). Guess what, the desktop computer digital output is way better than the laptop one, even if the sound card is much older. I wonder if it has anything to do with this power-supply difference...

 

[Monk]

Look into dbpoweramp. As a newbie I spent a lot of time researching an as-close-to-flawless rip as possible. This program and its support group stood out. I have now used it for hundreds of rips and I feel very secure in the quality of rip.

 

My two pennies.

 

Chris,

You stated: "iTunes playback on a PC is not bit perfect, but it will rip albums exactly the same as on a Mac."

 

Can you elaborate? Can a PC be made to play via iTunes bit perfectly? How imperfect is it?

 

Thanks.

 

[Elprior]

Hello,

 

As for my part, I was speaking about playback issues.

Ripping with EAC just works fine.

 

Anyway, I have dl Media Jukebox 1.2 (as recommanded here), and will test this tool right now ! I'll keep you in touch with my findings.

 

Elp.