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suggest laptop for music storage

Can you please suggest a small inexpensive laptop? It must be easy to use, and easy to set up. The Mac or pc’s sole function would be for music storage; it must have remote control to control music selection and volume. I plan to go usb dac to amplifier.
I would like download music to it in the best quality format.
hemihorn
sufentanil's avatar
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sufentanil
782 posts
 
Jax2, I believe that iTunes is supposed to be offering lossless downloads for selected labels. Also, check out magnatune.com, which has become my favorite site for downloading music. You can download in FLAC and it sounds great.

Michael
jax2
3,031 posts
 
Jax2, I believe that iTunes is supposed to be offering lossless downloads for selected labels. Also, check out magnatune.com, which has become my favorite site for downloading music. You can download in FLAC and it sounds great.

Thank you, Michael. I wasn't aware of the magnatude site - looks great (but for very limited selection), and the price is right if they really do offer WAV as they say. I couldn't find anything on the iTunes site about downloading AL files. Could you point me to a link. That's good news if the higher resolution files are indeed being offered. I wonder if they'd necessarily be of identical quality to a file you'd otherwise rip from a CD?

Marco
jc51373
538 posts
 
Based on the criteria you listed a MAC seems like the best candidate for you. I can say from experience they sound better than ANY pre-vista based machines, and it is heavenly not having to configure the ASIO driver. MACs also assert better control over the hardware because their drivers are written very well. Ultimately they sound better in my experiences, and I heard the Vista machines need a patch for the USB as well.

GO MAC, and you will never look back.

Best of luck!
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sufentanil
782 posts
 
Marco, there is iTunes Plus, which is a high-resolution download (but maybe not quite lossless) that's free of DRM -- but I think costs a little extra. That's the great thing about Magnatune: I can set my own price for the download, even in a lossless format!

Michael
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Jeffreybowman2k - this depends entirely on the USB interface. They are not all equal. Some require jumping through alot of hoops to stop pops and ticks and the ASIO plug-ins that bypass kmixer are not that good. Some dont support 24/96.

If you are stuck on iTunes, and want to do USB, then you must use a MAC. PC mucks up the sound with kmixer and iTunes.

Steve N.
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