AAC or AppleLossless

Question for all you PC and iTunes users:

Do you have bit perfect playback? Or are you listening through kmixer, which upsamples everything to 48 kHz, then usually back down to 44.1 kHz again in the output device.

I have a fairly hi res 2 channel rig (Benchmark DAC-1/MC 2200/MC2102/Vienna Acoustics Beethovens) and can definitely hear kmixer. It is NOT subtle. It is bad.

I understand iTunes is soley a DirectSound/Waveout device, meaning (I think) that ASIO and KS output options are not possible with iTunes. Which means kmixer, baby. I have heard that some soundcards/USB adapotors {RME/M-Audio Transit} work, but no one has verified.

Anybody have a DEFINITIVE answer?

To test, you should be able to play a DTS encoded .wav file via iTunes to an HT Pre/Pro and have it decode properly. If it decodes, it is bit perfect. HDCD would be another way.

I have been unable to do this.

Which means that Apple Lossless, and iTunes are, for me, a non-starter. Big problem as I have multiple iPods, use iTunes, and would like to use apple lossless to rip my collection.

Damn.

Anybody have a workaround?
(Buying a MAC is not an option!)

Regards,

Tom

I have 1,500 CD's ripped with Apple Lossless. They are stored on three external firewire drives hooked up to an Apple iBook, which runs over USB to an M-Audio Audiophile USB and then an Audio Research DAC5 w/jitter correction. I have an Airport Express for the bedroom system upstairs, and through iTunes sharing I'm also able to play them on any of the other three computers in our home. Digital bliss :)

Before transferring all my files, I did a lot of listening tests with friends over to try and tell the difference between wav, aiff, direct from cd, Apple Lossless, and other various jitter correcting and upconverting DAC's. Apple Lossless was a no-brainer storage format as none of us could hear a difference between any of these bit-accurate formats. Jitter correction seemed to have a massive effect on "pace, rhythm and timing", and the upsampling affected the soundstage and imaging.

W9tr, why should ASIO matter to you? There's going to be no additional sound quality vs. DirectSound and you're only doing two-channel (not multichannel) so what's the big deal?

The big deal is that with a PC based platform running XP, I can't get decent quality out of iTunes because, as a directsound/waveout device, it goes through kmixer.

ASIO matters only because it is one way to bypass kmixer. So there is a sound quality difference with ASIO.

Since you are running an Apple iBook, you don't have the problem.

The Chaintech 710 with the Evvy 24 chip is a good source for bit perfect output on a PC. Price is about 25.00. I am using this with Via's latest drivers to my Tri Vista 21 DAC. I am using foobar2k with kernel streaming. Kmixer has been bypassed with this setup. Cmedia also outputs 44.1khz on the 8738 based card. I think another important aspect is the last device to output the clock signal to the DAC. If it introduces jitter and you cannot control it, the sound is crap.

Racernet,
Understand, there are multiple ways of getting bit perfect from a PC, but iTunes is problematic.

As iTunes/QuickTime is a Directsound/Waveout device only, (so far as I can tell), kernel streaming and ASIO are not an option.

Do you know of a way to use either ASIO or Kernel Streaming with iTunes? That is the problem I'm trying to solve.

If you could test this I would be eternally grateful.

Tom