suggest laptop for music storage

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

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!

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

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.

Like Jeffreybowman2k & Jax2, I also own a Wavelength DAC, which is non up/over sampling. Just don't lose sight of the fact that over/upsampling is not always synonymous with "better" like most people are led to believe. In fact in alot of implementations it is often quite the sonic opposite, and Gordon's DACs validate this as fact.

My Cosecant is the best and most musical digital I have ever heard and it doesn't over sample a thing. No harshness, no hollowness, not analytical. You will find alot of people that have heard these DACs or own them agree. The buck can stop with non oversampling as well, so just keep this in mind.