Considerations for hardware to optimize sound reproduction...

[BillE]

OK, my components consists of a pacific Valve and electric company highly modified Lite DAC 60, a Ming DAMC7R pre amp, Rotel 1080 power amp and Magnepan 3.6's. Now I want to build a computer or buy one built which specifically will allow for a) The best ripping of existing CD's and 2) The best sound reproduction to the DAC. It would seem most logical using a large internal hard drive such as the seagate Barracuda® 7200.11 might be a excellent choice but what other components etc. make that much difference? Or would anyone suggest companies that might have mother boards and or softwares internally tweaked to optomize things such as pcaudiolabs.com

 

thanks!

 

Billy

 

[BEEMB]

 

Hi there Billy,

 

I'd recommend that you take the Mac route (I'm a PC owner but have owned a Mac until recently) for ease of use and simplicity, and refer to Chris' CASH List (see the link on the left of this website) regarding hard drives and the like.

On a Mac, iTunes allows you to RIP bit perfect copy of your CD's and manage your library with ease.

 

If you take the PC route then you'll need to be up for a little tinkering around but you can achieve the same levels of audio quality.

You'll need to use software that allows exclusive mode in Vista or a soundcard that supports ASIO. Media Monkey is a great media player but check out XXHighEnd, JRiver and Foobar too. If you wish to use iTunes on the PC you'll need to output to Apple's Airport Express and link that digitally to your DAC.

 

 

Matt.