help with getting started

[samwisesam]

hi,

 

this is my first post as I am a complete novice when it cones to computer audio. I have recently bought an Audiolab 8200 CD/DAC to replace my Cyrus CD7Q CD Player. I wanted to start to move into PC Audio ideally as it is clear that is the way music is heading. I am really impressed with the Audiolab as a CD Player but now want to know what I need to to do to set up a PC based system that will allow me to start to use HD music files too. At the moment I have a stand alone PC but I am also in the market for my first laptop. Currently, I have about 50% of my CD's saved in ITunes as lossless files. But do not have any back up. What should I do now;

 

1. Do I need a NAS or external hard drive? I know I should really back up my music anyway.

 

2. Do I connect this wirelessly to a laptop which would be connected via USB to the DAC? My PC/Router will not be in the same room.

 

3. Should I be bothered about whether I got A PC or Mac? ITunes is easy to use but can it save and play HD files? I think a normal laptop is more likely due to cost but how would I synch something like I Tunes with other software that could play HD files?

 

As you can see I don't know a great deal about this and as I am looking to buy a laptop anyway any advice now would be really helpful. Another thought is that being able to link the PC/NAS through to a second system would be useful moving forward.

 

cheers Jamie

 

 

[jnoneiliv1]

Jamie,

 

Oh boy, you've started a journey now. I'm only about 6 months ahead of you. Luckily many of my decisions were made for me since my wife had a spare MacBook Pro lying around, a $1,000 plus piece of equipment generally regarded as good for computer audio.

 

One thing I did, which I think was a really good idea, was to start with the CA Ripping guide available here at CA. If you follow the guide to the letter, you'll never regret it, although there are many good ways to rip and store music that might work equally good, IMHO.

 

There is no short way to answer the PC versus MAC debate, but if you use CA's ripping guide including storing you music in AIFF AND FLAC for backup, cross platform, and ease of meta tag management reasons, you can always switch between, or use both PC and MAC.

 

One thing I was amazed to find in the MAC/Itunes/Airport Express solution, was how easy and cheap it would be to send digital music around the house at good quality using the Airport Express for very little money.

 

It can be very confusing to decide where to spend your money to get the best performance when starting out, but one thing to consider, among many is that there are a bunch of new USB Adapter type products on the market that allow you to use older DACs with the USB output of your PC or Mac. I think any of the reviews in this forum of products like the Halide Bridge or M2Tech Hiface will cover the relevant points.

 

Regardless of which direction you take, I think you are going to be amazed by the quality (and quantity) of the information in these forums. Some of the debates can get a bit tiresome, but there are a bunch of people who are building audiophile or pro equipment who are posting answers to questions and sharing what they have learned. You can never tell when someone answering your question might really be an incredible electrical engineer, well known in equipment design.

 

There are design debates I'll never understand, but everyone is really generous about helping us(well at least myself) Newbie's figure things out.

 

If you use the CA Ripping Guide, you'll never need to regret any decision you make, (unless you spend a bunch of money on budget solutions like I do that never really work, but I did learn something after all.)

 

Cheers,

 

Jamie (also).

 

[souptin]

1. Not really. Your CDs can be your backup unless you feel you've done a lot of work organising, tagging and adding artwork which you don't want to do again. OTOH the extra space is handy, as would be accessibility from other computers on the network if / when you add them. If you find yourself buying high res downloads, then definitely think about getting yourself an external hard drive to back them up.

 

2. Yes, wirelessly is fine. Wired does have some advantages, it can be faster, more reliable and may have sonic benefits. As you can imagine, the sonic benefits are hotly debated in terms of the whys and hows etc, the other benefits are more straightforward if for some reason your home's construction or layout makes wireless problematic. I'd suggest trying wireless before you start making holes in the walls.

 

3. Whichever you feel more comfortable with. Itunes on either platform will play higher resolution music than redbook (cd resolution). If you decide to try out alternative playback software then you'll very likely find sync issues, but remember that your music files get stored within the file / folder structure of your hard disk with a fairly standard naming convention and small range of file formats. So it may not be as hard as you think to locate the music you want regardless of syncing - certainly easier than picking a cd off a shelf.

 

[samwisesam]

thanks for the last two helpful responses. I am finding the whole computer set up a bit difficult to get my head around as I have always focused on getting a quality CD/AV set up in place. The idea of using the guide on this site is a good one so I will start with that, thanks Jamie for the suggestion. I have invested some time in getting the CD's on the system so I will look to add an external hard drive for backup. I didn't know I Tunes supported higher resolution audio (24 bit?)so if it does that's a positive.

 

I'd better start reading up I guess and keeping an eye on the January sales! Thanks again for the tips

 

cheers Jamie 2

 

[jnoneiliv1]

Jamie,

 

Maybe I can do a bit better about making some "specific" suggestions.

 

If I understand correctly, you have your music already on your PC Hard Drive, but you might also want to use your laptop to control the music? or play the music?

 

Here is one set of specific suggestions, for what they are worth.

 

1. Use your PC and PC Hard Drive as your "dedicated" music Storage and Player. Don't worry too much about NAS at this point, or backup, etc. or even ripping your CD's again. Apple lossless is "good", and you have your CD's as final backup.

 

2. Buy a cheap USB Hard Drive IMMEDIATELY to backup your music files. I am using a 500GB Western Digital My Passport, but any will do. In a way, they are all good and they are all crap, but ALL hard drives are crap in a way and you should expect they are all going to fall when you least expect them. The point is to keep at least two CHEAP copies of your data at all times.

 

3. Starting with Windows XP Professional, Windows PC's come with a built in ability for remote control. The "client" or "dumb terminal" is variously called a Terminal Server Client, Remote Desktop Client, etc. and the host or target PC, a Terminal Server, or Remote Desktop Server, etc. Usually you must go into the host PC (your dedicated PC Player and Storage machine) and enable Remote Desktop Support, or RDMS, etc. actual instructions vary and you might not be able to do this with XP Home.

 

You can also use some free or cheap tools like VNC or the Citrix Go To MYPC and other remote control products. They will all let you see your PC desktop on your Laptop so you can browser your music, etc. I don't think your wireless network would be fast enough to actually play music over wireless, etc., but the remote control software is optimized for low bandwidth connection.

 

This can solve a lot of potential issues and complexity of having multiple PC's or Laptops access the same Itune's library. There are a bunch of ways to do this, but I think my recommendation is good.

 

4. Don't worry about NAS storage, etc., just plug the biggest hard drive you can find into your PC. There are some good reasons to keep your music disk "close" to your actual machine as music playback can be affected by disk access bandwidth. As you get into this hobby you can decide whether the convenience of a NAS, or external array outweighs the sound quality trade-offs etc. Just remember point 2!

 

5. If you want to send music around your house wirelessly, it can be done, it's not so clear what the best way to do this is, but I would suggest taking a strong look at the Logitech Squeezebox line of products. Logitech bought this technology from a company called Slim Server, I believe, and from what I can tell, it is very highly regarded for sound quality which is unexpectadly good for PC/consumer electronics. For the money, they do a lot, and I would dare say it is the best combination of a media server, streamer, and remote on the market, for the price. It is a very open architecture in that it can read an Itunes library and stream it, while not needing to put any proprietary stamp on it. Not sure it handles Apple lossless. It might not be Hi Fi, but I think even with the Squeezebox system you can connect an audiophile DAC at each end point where you might want audiophile sound. There are a lot of other ways to do this, but not so easy to pursue hi end and have a lot of convenience, cheaply, or easy to setup. Sonus is another system but at the next tier of cost.

 

6. Finally, worrying about bit rates, music players, USB versus firewire, DAC's etc. and sound quality is a bit of nightmare for the newly initiated, IMHO. There's a lot of debate about the sound quality of computer based systems and whether "bits are bits" and jitter, and so on. As best I can determine there IS a lot of nasty crap that goes on inside a computer and you don't really want any of it going accross the wire to your DAC, etc.

 

I think it might be a good strategy to buy a good Asynchronous USB Converter as a way to get the bits out of your computer in the easiest and cheapest way, while being able to provide your DAC the cleanest, best clocked stream of bits to then work with. You can then use a lot of great DAC's to do the DA conversion, Line Out Amp, Head Amp, and even Pre-Amp signal processing without worrying about finding specific computer audio DAC's, etc.

 

Gordon Rankin of Wavelength Audio and Steve N. of Empirical Audio post frequently in these forums about their products and the theories behind the benefits of Asynchronous USB. These posts are great primers on theory of clocking, DAC's etc. This technology is now available in some very inexpensive devices, some of it with software licensed from Gordon etc.

 

Once you get into this zone, the debates can run hot and I've probably already said three stupid things, but if I had it to do again, I think I would have bought a state of the art Asynch USB Adapter then gone into the vintage bin for a highly regarded DAC with Pre-Amp out to directly drive an Amp. And, don't forget the PRO gear markets. Read about the ULN4, ULN8 equipment. The Pro guys keep everyone honest since they are using this equipment to record the music, they can help debunk the playback fanatics.

 

I was first amazed at how good my music sounded on Itunes using the MAC with a DAC, and now I'm on a quest to fix all my other stuff and have really good sound for the first time. The convenience of CA is just awesome and I think I've finally found a strategy for cheap good sound using flea amps and efficient speakers, at least that's my plan for today.

 

If you have any problems with Windows and your network, etc. please don't hesitate to ask. I don't know audiophile, but I know MS Sys Admin, at least up until Vista and Win7 was released.

 

Cheers,

 

Jamie

 

 

 

[jnoneiliv1]

Well, I now see what I've said doesn't apply to your question at all.

 

I'm not sure how you plan to use your PC and Laptop.

 

I would just say that it's not impossible to stream a music file over the wireless to play music remote since you've got 3 to 5 minutes per song to move the data, but trying to actually access music files wirelessly from a NAS or other storage is a bit clunky.

 

I am using a NetGear ReadyNAS Duo to store all my music in my basement. I can connect to it over Gigabit Ethernet using my MacBook Pro, or other PC, or laptop. I like the Duo. I think it works well and it comes with SlimServer or SqueezeBox Server included. So, I can browse the NAS with Itunes just like any other hard drive, or I could use any device that can "see" a SqueezeBox server.

 

I think several people would recommend that the bandwidth for accessing the hard drive even over Gigabit Ethernet isn't the best for audiophile music playback, wireless is another animal altogether.

 

But, you can stream music wirelessly, and you get around the bandwidth limits by trickling out the data to something like a Squeezebox Touch or Mac Airport Express or other client. I'm not sure how this should work with your laptop. If you can get a hardwire connection from your laptop to your router, PC, and/or NAS, that would be much better.

 

I'm just guessing that if you're using a DAC separate, you'd at least want a hardwire connection to your music files at a minimum. Heck, just copy the files into two places, and use something to synch the folders like SynchToy, or other backup, synching software. But, of course now we need to take about the Itunes library. Doable, and not really difficult, but you'll want some step by steps.

 

[samwisesam]

hi again and thanks for the further comments. I think my first priority is to be able to utilise the Audiolab DAC USB connection for playing computer based audio. I believe this connection is asynchronous. I wanted to do this to take advantage of any emerging HD audio market via downloads. My main hi fi is separate from my PC and router. Reading through the helpful comments I believe my next steps are to get a USB hard drive as backup for the main PC. I obviously need a laptop to connect by USB to the DAC. Do I then simply connect the USB hard drive to the laptop? Or does the laptop then speak wirelessly to the main PC to access I Tunes etc? Again, please excuse my ignorance. I will deal with wireless audio further down the line as this didn't really relate to my main hifi.

 

By the way my hifi is currently; Audiolab 8200cd/dac, Rotel RSP 1068/RSM1075, Pioneer BDP70, Denon 2900 DVD/SACD.

 

cheers Jamie2

 

[souptin]

If you're serious about backing up, then I'd recommend you don't use the usb external drive for playback as well as backup. You could always get two drives.

 

Simple answer to your question though: You can either connect the drive to your new laptop, or leave it connected to your main computer and have the laptop access it over your network. If you take the second option, you can either set up file sharing for the drive to allow the laptop to see it, or (if you have iTunes running on the main computer) set up sharing within iTunes.

 

Connecting the external drive to the laptop is probably the simplest, so try this first. If you find the drive is annoyingly noisy then consider the second option. As a general rule I've found the small bus powered external drives to be quieter, also I don't have to deal with an extra power brick adding to the spaghetti of wires behind my hifi. For me that makes them worth the small extra expense.

 

[samwisesam]

thanks again. Are there any makes in particularly you would recommend for bus powered external hard drives? There are so many to choose from. I guess as a starter it is not too critical as storage does seem pretty cheap anyway but good to know what to look out for.

 

cheers Jamie

 

[jnoneiliv1]

Hey Jamie,

 

I'm thinking that if your PC is not close to your HiFi rig, that you'll just want to plug the hard drive directly into your laptop and the DAC into the laptop.

 

I would suggest just buying one of the 500 GB or 1 TB My Passport USB drives and just plug into your laptop. These are the Western Digital brand drives. I'm not sure they are the best, but I researched all the Amazon reviews and found some things I didn't like about the Seagate and Toshiba USB Drives, but I'm not sure they don't all work the same.

 

With all of these USB drives, the hard drive always wants to run some program when it is plugged in. I just say NO to all the prompts and let windows mount the drive. I generally avoid any additional software and Windows can mount any USB drive.

 

You may end up wanting a small program to take care of backups or copies, but you can always just copy and paste an entire directory of music between drives. I also use a program from MSoft called Synctoy 2.1. It is free and keeps multiple drives synchronized. I carry a USB drive from work to home and I use Synctoy on my work PC to keep my entire set of business folders synchronized. After I work from home on the USB drive, I just sync the drive back to my work NAS. The same brand of NAS I use at home for music, etc.

 

The issue with noise and PC audio can go in a lot of directions. The quality of your DAC and the connection to the DAC may take care of a lot of this. The newer Asynchronous USB DACs should theoretically eliminate a lot of jitter and other noise induced problems which can come from the laptop, etc. There are different theories on this, one being the laptop is noisy, the other being you can run a laptop from the battery (and the USB disk) and avoid noise from your home AC line. Don't try to decide who is right on this through research, it's impossible.

 

I wouldn't worry about the noise of the disk until you hear noise, then try to get rid of it. The USB disks are so convenient and it makes it really easy to unplug the USB disk from your laptop, then plug into the PC to copy the entire contents to another disk, etc. for backup just with the USB connection.

 

Eventually you may even decide the laptop, or OS, or music player, or, or, or, is what is causing noise, etc. The tweaking goes on forever. Your DAC and other equipment is your biggest investment. As long as you rip new music in a good way, you can always swap out cheap disks, operating systems, etc. if you hear something you don't like or don't hear something you think you should hear.

 

Cheers,

 

Jamie

 

[jnoneiliv1]

Oh, and search for posts from Gordon Rankin or Steve N. on this forum and visit their companies websites for some good information about how DAC's and other equipment can eliminate PC/USB related problems. In theory, a good USB DAC can solve most problems with the PC, and you can treat music as 1 and 0's in the PC. These theories are debated, and in reality PC music playing isn't just 1's and 0's but they provide strategies that are a good place to start, then you can dig into the tweaks and perceived SQ differences of hard drives, PC's, music players, etc.

 

[Audio_ELF]

Jamie,

 

You didn't say which version of the Audiolab 8200 CD player you have, but if you can return your current and get the 8200CDQ model then you can bypass your Rotel RSP1068 which has the potential to improve sound quality - the 8200CDQ has a built in pre-amp so could connect direct to your Rotel power amp. (This maybe impossible for you so if it is don't worry - rest assured the Audiolab 8200CD is very capable and your Rotel RSP1068 capable as an analogue pre-amp)

 

My advice would then be a USB connection from laptop to DAC. You have two options for getting the music files to the laptop: (a) use a wireless network connection back to your PC or (b) copy the files on the PC to an external USB drive which you can take to the laptop. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages. If you can get a laptop which allows you to connect a drive via eSATA or FireWire so much better.

 

A couple of other thoughts / suggestions. iTunes is not the best software player on the PC, especially if you are using mixed HD downloads and CD rips. The current favourite appears to be J.River's Media Center. A guide to setting your computer up for computer audio can be found by Googling "dCS Guide to Computer Audio".

 

An alternative method of setting a computer audio system up is to use a Atom-based mini PC (see the article on the C.A.P.S. device) and remotely control this with a laptop or handheld device. This can be a quite convenient system.

 

Eloise

 

[samwisesam]

thanks for the advice. I can't really change the Audiolab 8200CD to the CDQ at this stage. I went down the route of the CD due to cost and at the time not feeling I needed the functionality. I have considered the issue of using my AV pre-amp for my serious music listening (which I have always felt is not letting me get my best from my source) but have always come to the conclusion that the compromise is acceptable. Rotel tend to tweek their AV equipement with audiophiles in mind so I don't think I am losing a great deal. When I get around to replacing my processor I will probably re-consider. Perhaps Audiolabs next processor may be a better match for my 8200CD.

 

I have been continuing my reading and feel like I am starting to get my head around it. I will probably go with external drive linked to the laptop and then USB cable to 8200CD. One question I have is if I were to adopt JRiver as the media centre would that compromise my use of my IPOD/ITunes? I am thinking particulalrly around syncing files and my ipod.

 

thanks again

 

cheers Jamie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Audio_ELF]

Jamie, first off great purchase of the Audiolab CD/DAC. Was just a half turlough really about the CDQ version. I used to have a Rotel RSP1068 myself so know it has good capabilities. One thing to try is (if not using it for multi-channel) to try the 5.1 multi-channel input which has a marginally more direct signal path. The "normal" stereo inputs work well though - as you say Rotel pay attention to the analogue / 2 channel performance.

 

Using J. River for playback you'd still want to use iTunes for syncing music to iPod / iPhone. The issue comes that J.River doesn't support ALAC natively so you'll need to use AIFF and either transcode to AAC for your mobile devices or allow iTunes to transcode to 128kbps AAC files. Or you'll have to maintain two libraries. If you want to stick with iTunes for playback it maybe worth considering a 13" MacBook or a MacMini (new or second hand) rather than Windows.

 

Eloise

 

[samwisesam]

Eloise

 

thanks for taking time to respond. I am starting to get a bit confused over the best course of action to take. I would like to use JRiver if that is considered the best software (is that in convenience terms of sound quality?)but don't really want to re-rip all my CD's into AIFF. Is there a quick way of converting ALAC FILES to AIFF? Does a MAC working with ITunes give better sound quality than using Windows and ITunes?

 

The Audiolab guide talks about enabling the ASIO drive when using Windows but doesn't say anything about this in relation to ITunes/Mac - is there something I am missing here?

 

Apologies, for my ignorance on this but I just need to understand the best way to get started as mistakes now could cost me more in time terms later on.

 

cheers Jamie

 

[Audio_ELF]

Apple Lossless files can be converted (perfectly) to AIFF within iTunes using software such as dbPowerAmp.

 

iTunes under Windows can sound perfectly good, the issue is that there are several options that need setting correctly to ensure correct bit-perfect playback and even then the audio has to pass through the Windows mixer. With Mac OS X and iTunes a single setting selects the correct bit rate (which still needs setting manually). With Mac OS X you also have the option of adding Amarra (Mini) or Pure Music to improve playback quality.

 

J.River is considered the best software for Windows balancing audio quality and functionality / convinience. Some software such is considered by some as better sounding but looses out on the user interface and iTunes is considered by some to have better user interface and has arguably the best remote control app (on iOS devices)

 

ASIO is an alternative method for Windows audio software to talk to audio hardware. There was a version of ASIO for Mac OS X prior to the introduction of Core Audio.

 

Eloise

 

[samwisesam]

thanks again Eloise,

 

assuming I stick with a PC and windows then I will look to convert the files to AIFF using the software mentioned. My first step is to make sure all the files are lossless currently as I think I put some on originally in AAC. I will re-rip these so the library is fully ALAC and then convert. Lots of work ahead I think!

 

thanks again

 

Jamie

 

[Larryken]

MacMini (with outboard firewire or usb hard drive) usb connect the Mini into dac then analogue cables into preamp or integrated.

 

Use PureMusic softare in conjunction with Itunes and an Ipod Touch with Apple's remote app to access.

 

Record in Apple Lossless with error correction on.

 

[jnoneiliv1]

Jamie,

 

If you are ripping again, I would highly recommend ripping to AIFF and FLAC using dbPowerAmp. AIFF is lossless and NOT compressed, which means the files are larger, but AIFF is compatible with iTunes and the Ipod and I believe supported in the PC environment as well.

 

ALAC as Apple's lossless compressed format, makes a smaller file, but it may not be as portable as AIFF and I think most folks would agree that at this time there is not much advantage to conserving disk space which is cheap.

 

Itunes will compress AIFF files to AAC on the fly when synching to an Ipod such that you can get more music on the Ipod, but not need to store or organize another set of music files in compressed format. It takes a bit longer to synch, but it's a very convenient way to store your Mac music in full lossless, uncompressed format, while using on your Ipod in a compressed format. You can also use the AIFF files on your Ipod as well, you just won't be able to store as many files.

 

The CA Ripping Guide discusses all this, and I forget the details, but there was a lot of thought that went into the AIFF and FLAC recommendation. Not the least of which is the portability of the tagging you will create when ripping. I believe that with FLAC the song titles, artist, and possibly even the album art is store IN the music file, so even if the song files became scattered on your hard drive will nilly, any good music library management software could re-assemble them into artist, album, genre categories complete with album art.

 

I'm not sure how the tagging is done with AIFF versus ALAC, etc.

 

I'm not saying Apple Lossless is a bad format, or sounds different, or getting into that debate, but I tend to avoid proprietary formats whenever possible and although AIFF is supported or used more frequently on MAC and WAV or FLAC more frequently on the PC, AIFF has been around a long time and is supported across many platforms.

 

If you are going to rip again with dbPowerAmp, you might as well go all the way and really build a digital library that will stand the test of time.

 

[Erwin S]

... are both Apple formats I believe, AIFF is older. If you want AIFF, rip straight to it instead of going via ALAC, no? I would not worry about these being proprietary to Apple since there are free programs such as XLD that convert from one to another (I use it to convert FLAC downloads to AIFF).

 

Thing is that there's only about 35% difference in file size and a 2TB HD like mine can store mucho musico! I now rip to AIFF, but see no direct reason to convert my older files from ALAC to AIFF. I tested a few, but still can't detect a difference in SQ. I also downloaded a 16/44 WAV album (Poésie Noire on discogs) but could not detect a difference on my system vs ALAC or AIFF.

 

I also see no difference at all between both regarding tagging (for which WAV is useless: I read someone deal with it, but it did not involve proper embedding)

 

[jnoneiliv1]

Over on the dBpoweramp forums it looks like dBpoweramp will encode trouble free including all tagging to ALAC. It would appear that maybe a year or two ago there were a few problems with the third party encoder db was using. It looks like folks are using Alac to get lossless files that are also compact for iPod and reporting good results.

 

[samwisesam]

thanks everyone,

 

there seems so many options here that it is a bit daunting. I will contemplate the info and come up with a strategy moving forward. To start with I know I need to a) re-rip my CD's that are encoded in AAC and b) look to get the rest of my collection loaded. In the meantime I will look at the various software packages mentioned.

 

cheers Jamie

 

 

 

[jnoneiliv1]

Don't get discouraged. If you rip to any of the lossless formats, ALAC, AIFF, or FLAC, you won't regret it. I'm not sure Itunes rip to ALAC wouldn't be indistinguishable from a dbPowerAmp rip, but dbPowerAmp is cheap and I think you'll be glad to use it. After you've ripped good files and have them tagged, you'll be able to use them with a bunch of players (FLAC isn't supported on MAC though), on MAC or PC, whatever and in most respects you won't notice the difference with a good Firewire, Asynch DAC or USB Bridge, etc. Theoretically and in practice ANY of the lossless codecs will store a CD bit perfect and a good player will decode the file into a bit perfect digital stream for D/A processing downstream. (The streaming of bit's part is the real problem, not getting the bits out of the file.)

 

Itunes is a really good application, there's a reason the Pro Audio companies like Amarra are building their add on software to the Itunes code base.

 

PC's and maybe MAC's are not always doing their job perfectly, with small enough latency, without noise, etc. and various software and hardware solutions are available to "optimize" the operation of the PC/Mac, but you don't really know if you'll get a different result until you've tried some simple setup first to see if it works.

 

I was really concerned about getting "perfect" rips of my CD's and used dbPowerAmp, but I'm sure the Itunes ripper is also very good, and if the CD is damaged there may not be a whole lot you can do anyway, so it's not but so useful to know if the rip was "perfect".

 

When using any of the major software packages like Itunes, Foobar, Media Monkey, JRiver, dbPowerAmp (really a small group of dedicated developers, not a big company), I really don't think you can go wrong. As long as you rip to FLAC, AIFF, or ALAC, you'll have every bit of music and the tags will be stored in the file. Some people prefer WAV files as a purist tweak, but it's getting really esoteric and if you're not recording music professionally, I think it's not something to consider.

 

Have fun, it's really all amazingly good stuff right out of the box and you may just want to see what it sounds like with a cheap DAC, just for kicks and enjoy it for a while. I've read so many reviews, I'm always thinking I've got something wrong, and it's usually something very basic like speaker efficiency, amp, cables, AC power noise, etc. Some folks here at CA have been great about bringing me back to earth and getting some basics of audio right before worrying about technical tweaks.

 

For example, I was just introduced to Blue Jeans Cables. Not that there aren't a lot of good products, but I could have bought very good cables for all my connections as a good start for cheap for the money I've wasted on spotty buying of this or that.

 

Cheers,

 

Jamie

 

[samwisesam]

Jamie

 

great post thanks, that has put things in perspective for me. I have spent so much time over the past few weeks pondering this that I haven't listened to any music!! Something not quite right there. One thing that threw me was the guidance that came with the Audiolab 8200CD that only referred to using JRiver or Foobar software to generate music froma PC. I Tunes was only discussed in the context of MAC. That got me thinking that I really need JRiver but JRiver doesn't support ALAC. Hence having to encode my library into something like AIFF. It seemed a daunting prospect just to get started.

 

All the responders have been really helpful to a novice like me and I am grateful that people have taken the time. Eloise in particular has provided some really good advice.

 

It sounds like I could use I Tunes into my DAC (leaving the files as ALAC) but it would perhaps be compromised by signal passing through Windows mixer. I obviously want to get the optimum sound so if there is no way of getting a pure signal to the DAC I will ultimately move towards some software like JRiver or buy a MAC I guess.

 

I am going to rip some music now - AIFF I think, or perhaps ALAC, no wait FLAC...OH SHIT!

 

cheers Jamie

 

[jnoneiliv1]

I know the feeling, and yes I think Eloise always has some good common sense advice, and I'm always envious of the elegantly simple system in Eloise's signature.

 

About the Kmixer. I think several players for the PC can bypass the Kmixer by using their own Kernel Streaming mode (XXHighEnd does this), or I believe you can install AISO4ALL which is some pro code that replaces the windows codec driver which I believe works for all players as they see the AISO driver as just another audio device.

 

With Vista (which I think is a nightmare) and Win7, MSoft has fixed a lot of their audio driver problems with WASAPI as they have made a concerted effort to become more media friendly. It may not be perfect, but it could be perfectly use able. Peter, the developer of XXHighEnd invested considerably time and effort re-writing XXHighEnd to use WASAPI on Vista/Win7 thinking it would actually be the holy grail of sound quality. He's writing the player from scratch to optimize playback to esoteric levels of high end and now even building his own DAC, but it just goes to show there's someone who care's a lot about sound quality.

 

You might start a new thread called "ALAC on PC?" and see what solutions folks come up with. It's a focused question, and I'm sure there's an easy solution, somewhere.

 

Trying to choose the perfect format is probably a waste of time as ultimately you'll want the ability to play all of them as you might find a hi-res, or other downloadable file in any of several formats.

 

Whatever the current situation with players, PC Operating System, and file formats will not be the situation in 6 months or 1 year as things are developing so rapidly in CA. Your ALAC files are "good" files and with the support of Apple behind them, you shouldn't ever need to abandone them. I incorrectly said I don't like proprietary formats, and that's a bit bogus. Apple has been a friend of professional audio for some time and their success in the consumer space is unquestioned. If Itunes doesn't run perfectly on the PC, someone will fix it eventually, that I'd wager.

 

Cheers,

 

Jamie