itunes/foobar/windows2000

[johnnyturbo]

i have no need to upgrade from w2000nt EXCEPT for the audio kmixer issue. will w2000 support foobar? if not foobar, any other i tunes bypass? thanks in advance for your help.

 

by way of comment: this is a most needed site: helpful and civil. what a combination.

johnny turbo

 

[PeterSt]

I am not sure why nobody answers this, and since I'm hanging around here anyway, let me have a kind of "commercial" go ...

 

My own player, XXHighEnd, runs on W2K, and I have 3 or 4 users who claim it is the best they ever auditioned. I never heard it myself though on W2K.

While many say it is the best already on XP - (Engine#1) where it is not bit perfect - I indeed can imagine that under W2K, where it *is* bit perfect, it is unbeatable. W2K has the same "lean" character Vista has (but use Enginge#3 there) which I recognize as a necessity to have good sound.

 

If this is too much of a commercial, I'm sure it will be thrown out. That's ok.

Peter

 

[BEEMB]

 

Peter,

 

I'm curious. How is your system setup in terms of usability ?

I mean, XXHighEnd is well known to be a great player but ...

 

My comp is plugged into my plasma - speakers a distance either side of the TV and I sit at the tip of the usual triangular arrangement ! ... so user friendly is top of my list. Scrolling through lists of music is easy on iTunes ... Not so easy on Foobar ..

 

Not comparing other media players to yours - I'm just keen to know how you're setup for skimming through your music etc etc.

 

 

 

[johnnyturbo]

peter:

please clarify your email: will the software you recommend 'play' alongside itunes, using aiff/wav and apple lossless. simply put, i would be pleased to use itunes as a pass through, using othefr softwar to play and that will bypass kmixer? hey, i would buy the damn player if that is the case!!!!

 

[BEEMB]

SAME HERE.

 

[BEEMB]

SAME HERE.

 

[PeterSt]

johnnyturbo,

 

any other i tunes bypass?

 

I am sorry, but I didn't get what you meant by this;

Although "XXEngine3" is setup from the ground to be controlled by another player (this is what XXHighEnd as the GUI does herself), currently this is not possible yet. And I must say honestly, because it didn't have priority so far. As you may know, XX is still in beta officially, and it should be all right in itself first (though that point is near now).

 

AIFF/WAV it just plays of course, and Apple Lossless is a matter of adding the conversion (which would be a days work at the most).

 

Sorry !

Peter

 

[PeterSt]

Matt,

 

Not comparing other media players to yours - I'm just keen to know how you're setup for skimming through your music etc etc.

 

How to explain that in words ?

 

As said, it is explicitly made to handle over 10,000 albums, meaning that e.g. searching in them by various means (a.o. "hot search" -> narrow down in real time during typing of phrases occurring in artist or album title) just works fast enough to find *anything* within a second or so.

 

All CoverArt is automatically found (but not shown as nice as in iTunes -> just 2d) and shown at the size you want, and it includes everyting that can be recognized as coverart (100 booklet pages or more if you have them, per album).

You can get CoverArt from all Amazon sites in one go, all the albums from an appointed artist, blahblahblah.

 

Search in track titles work just the same (I have over 150,000 here).

 

The most powerful are the "Galleries", which let you have the albums physically whereever they are and as mixed up as you want, while the Galleries structure them into as many groups as you like, redundantly if you want. And what about one logical drive, while all recides on 8 or however many you have. This includes physically copying the albums, convert them to/from FLAC (or whatever is supported), matching one pile of albums against another, resulting in a list "you don't have".

 

You could well say that all is in there to manage and organize the huge pile, which I already needed for myself, and whenever something disturbs me with organizing or friendlyness to that regard, I add it when time permits.

 

Also, and this is another matter, I so far add *anything* a user may come up with, unless it is really not wanted because it goes against a strategy or may attack sound quality (which happened two or three times so far).

 

For me this is just a job besides my normal job, but nevertheless I now spent some 5,000 hours over it.

A next project could be integration with iTunes, but it will be a tough job because XX plays from memory, and as you may be know, completely by itself without control, while at the same time the control must be there when you want it (skip a track, stop, change volume, etc.). This is what a large part of the GUI program does, and this is far from simple.

Btw this is one of the reasons why I left Remote Control to be the last project before it's out of beta.

 

But you never know ... :-)

Peter

 

 

[johnnyturbo]

hi: can someone please give me a direct answer to my original question re w2000/itunes and whether using an application that will provide kmixer bypass is a feasible approach. would it be easier to just convert my aiff files to wav files and lossless files to mp320? i just want better sound.

 

thanks.

 

[BEEMB]

Johnny,

 

You're not being ignored.

 

You can use iTunes with a plug in allowing it to sit on top of Foobar.

 

There is one downside to this - firstly, you need to roll back to an older version of iTunes. Secondly, there is sometimes a delay when flicking between your songs.

 

Otherwise it's great though. All the user friendliness of iTunes and the configuration options of Foobar. You'll be missing out on some of the features present in the later versions of iTunes, but - to me that's been no big deal.

 

If you need more help give me a shout.

 

 

Matt.

 

 

[johnnyturbo]

matt:

mille grazie!. just a bit of frustration, as you accurately perceived.

ok: which version of itunes should i install? which version of foobar? i am running 7.6 at this point. if a prior version of itunes, where can i get a prior version?

and which plug in? i assume it will be some type of asio ( and where i can download it) if you lay out the sequence for installation of the plug-in, that would be super fine.

 

again, thanks for responding to my plea.

johnny

 

[BEEMB]

Johnny,

 

I missed your post, sorry, and have been away all weekend, hence no reply.

 

Anyhow, back to your question.

 

You need to roll back to an earlier version of iTunes. But easiest way is to uninstall your latest version and download the iTunes and multiplugin from here : http://www.aqua-soft.org/board/showthread.php?t=41373

 

Now, you may get a problem when you go to load up iTunes. Removing your newer version may leave a library file on your commuter .. the error message tells you the file name which I can't remember, but simply note it and search for it on your C drive - then change the name to backup or something (you can delete it but just in case, you know) . On reloading iTunes you should now receive no such error message.

 

The plug in is easy to use. You need to setup Foobar on your computer first of course. Whether you choose to use ASIO or WASAPI is up to you and depends on which version of Windows you're using, which soundcard you have and your own personal preference of course.

 

Let me know how you get on and I shall try to respond more quickly in future.

 

Regards,

 

 

Matt.

 

 

 

 

 

[Lizard_King]

Johhny,

 

Let me enlighten you on what I feel you should do. This is based on my experience as well as a friend of mine. You can stick with windows 2000 as your OS and yes, the Kmixer will limit you. To avoid the Kmixer, you should install ASIO4all. This with a good front end player will give you what you seek. I suggest you avoid Itunes and windows media player. Both of those free apps do not have the fidleity and force you to use their designers thoughts.

 

J. River Media Center (not free) is a wonderful program that is suited for audiophile playback as well as your mp3 listener. It can also rip and convert to FLAC and APE formats. I use the full version and it has support for ASIO. I looked on the web page and could not confirm that the free version J. River media Jukebox supports ASIO yet another buddy who uses it says it does.

 

I tried Mediamonkley and I just did not like the way it sounded or the lack of ASIO.

 

I am a AUDIOPHILE AND MY EARS TELL ALL. Use J. River, as your front end player. I like to use EAC to rip to wav then I will use DBPoweramp Music converter to convert to any one of all the formats. J. River can rip and convert on the fly so it is convenient.

 

I am currently using my desktop and my M-Audio sound card. I did not have to install ASIO4all as the M-Audio supports it in their software. I did have to chnage teh channel offest to get the signal going to my HT preamp. My friend instaleld ASIO4all on his laptop, told J river to use ASIO then had to change channel offset. Since he did that, he staopped listening to Cds and prefers his laptop with his Bel canto 3 Dac.

 

Soon my Dac wil be ready and I wil use my laptop with J. River and Asio4all and be like a pig in mud!

 

Hint, USB cables do make a difference.

 

Liz out

 

I hope this helps you?

 

[BEEMB]

 

Liz,

 

Media Monkey can be used with ASIO - there is a plug in available from the Media Monkey webpage.

 

Johnny likes the iTunes interface, as do I. Outputting through Foobar provides you wish all the audio tweaks that Foobar allows plus the ease of use provided by iTunes.

 

I'm currently comparing iTunes with the Airport Express to iTunes through Foobar with C-Media drivers. I'm then giving XXHighEnd a go.

 

Mind you, why not try everything. The process is pretty good fun.

 

EEK - once I can find some time.

 

 

Matt.

 

[Lizard_King]

BeeMB,

 

I checked that and it was in another language and i could not get it to work. Gordon @ Wavelenght, IMHO, the Digital Guru shows on his web pages that J. River is the best for the windows platform.

 

I am an audiophile with a high end music system and J. River sounds the best!

 

[BEEMB]

 

Lizard,

 

Sorry, but without being rude that's quite a sweeping statement. Even Chris uses Media Monkey, considering the best sounding option for the PC. So I guess everybody has their own opinions. I'll check them all out , something I'd recommend everybody does - and let their ears decide.

For example, Peter, the programmer of XXHighEnd believes his player to be far superior to all others.

 

You say high end yet I understand you're using an M-Audio soundcard, not normally regarded as high end. I'm assuming you're simply using this card to ouput a clean signal into an external DAC?

 

Could you give me a little more information regarding your setup?

 

Does JRiver support AIFF ?

 

I'll take a look at the Wavelength website too for a read.

 

 

[Lizard_King]

Bee,

 

Until my tube based Audio note Dac ios ready, I am using my desktop to connect via along run of digital coax. The improvemnsts in sound qulaity just by switching to j. River Media Center using Direct sound was significant. Once i swiitched over to ASIO without any other installs, i was amazed how much betetr the sound is.

 

Gordon Rankin is the digital audio guru in audiophile America and you can read on his web pages http://www.usbdacs.com that for the PC he gets the BEST results using J. River media.

 

As far as AIFF goes, I have good news for you, YES!

 

I prefer ripping with EAC then using DBPoweramp Music converter to convert to Flac. I simply stun the members in my audiophile club by this methodology.

 

J. River can also rip and convert, even the free version does too.

 

Simply put, this is the best app to use and ther other twop tools are what I like to term, "audiophile approved." To further the great method, I use a Plextor burner and Taiyo Yuden Discs.

 

Even the few I know with their macs can NOT get the sound better than me in either Audio cd copies or playback.

 

I suggest you learn from me should I decide to enlighten you.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

This is really an interesting take on J River. All of my experience and the experience of people who I talk to regularly suggests MediaMonkey is the best PC application. In fact my friends would say you can substitute the word MediaMonkey for J River in the above post and they'd agree 100%.

 

One thing that really turned me away from J River was the lack of support for Reference Recordings 24/176.4 WAV files. I talked to J River myself and they were no help at all.

 

Again, interesting experiences and conclusions on two different applications.

 

[BEEMB]

 

Must agree with Chris there but as I said, I shall give it a try and report back once I've had enough time to compare both.

 

Sure it'll be great.

 

Must say I have a tough time deciding between Media Monkey and Foobar at present.

 

Matt.

 

[Lizard_King]

Hey,

 

All my Cds are Redbook 16 bit, HDCD and SACD. The player I have plays HDCD and SACD and it is awesome. Music that you buy is not higher bit rate. Why would I want to play these files? I do have some higher sampled files (24 bit , 2,116 kbps) that are higher bit rate and J. River plays them from my PC to my HT system.

 

Trust in Gorden and myself, J. River Rules!

 

 

 

[BEEMB]

 

But other people may wish to use such software to play higher resolution files which can be downloaded from a few websites now.

 

So, rather than trust - we hear you !! and we go off and we test !! ...

 

Come to think of it I think I've created my last topic in the wrong forum .. (doh - sorry Chris - it's the one titled File Types, Conversions etc etc)

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hey BEEMB - No worries about posting in the "wrong" forum. Stuff happens and there are no needless rules around here.