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Computer Audio

Have a CD based system with an Audio Research LS2BMKII pre, Sony 5400ES SACD driving 2 Sumo Andromeda II's which (one each) drive Acoustats 1100's. One channel each side for base, one for the panel. Fully treated dedicated music/office.

Have about 700 CD's on iTunes in the format iTunes records them. The latest Sony with a 1T memory was interesting but I think the way iTunes takes digital is not the way I want to go for files and would need to reload everything, but that new Sony does not have provisions for input. Any ideas? and thanks.
midareff
lewinskih01
910 posts
 
You are faced with one of the highest switching costs in computer audio: re-ripping CDs. It's a pain in the rear!

Not sure if you are aware iTunes is not very good in audiophile terms both for playback and ripping. I assume the Sony box you mention is the higher end DSD unit that has been much talked about. I understand that box is capable of very good sound, but of course you need to feed it good files.

Think about gradually re-ripping your CDs. The best approach I know of, and pretty future-proof so this doesn't happen again, is described in computeraudiophile.com "Guide to Ripping CDs". It's a great tutorial based on dBpoweramp. I follow it to a t and works great. In one shot, I rip the CDs to wav and flac and aiff, and the software checks online a database to confirm the copy of your CDs digitally matches other same CDs - so you know is a perfect digital copy.

I know re-ripping 700 CDs is a rather daunting task. But it's worth to do this over time and have an uncompressed library. I believe iTunes compresses everything and you don't have a way of verifying how good the copy was, let alone moving to a different software given the proprietary format.

I hope this helps despite not answering directly your question.

Cheers!
doggiehowser
672 posts
 
iTunes doesn't provide an error log but if you have no issues, the rips should be bit perfect as long as you rip to you use Apple Lossless, WAV or AIFF.

And iTunes sounds very good with a plug in like Audirvana Plus/Amarra/PureMusic.
sfar's avatar
sfar
1,768 posts
 
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"Have about 700 CD's on iTunes in the format iTunes records them."

The first thing to do is figure out what format was used to rip the CDs into iTunes.

Click on your Music library in the left column of the iTunes window and look at the column labeled "Kind." You may have to scroll to the right to see that column. If you don't see a Kind column you can turn it on by going to the View menu in iTunes, choosing "Show View Options" and clicking on the Kind and Bit Rate boxes under the "File" section in the window that opens.

If the songs were ripped as mp3 (MPEG audio file) or the similar AAC format you might want to consider re-ripping at least your favorites. If they were ripped as AIFF, WAV or Apple Lossless any improvement you get by re-ripping is probably not worth the effort, all will sound essentially like the CD.

You choose which format iTunes uses for ripping by going to Preferences under the iTunes menu, clicking on Import Settings under the General section of the preferences and making a choice from the drop-down menu.
peter_s
1,348 posts
 
Years back I did an experiment comparing music ripped with Exact Audio Copy (to wave then converted to ALAC) against ripped directly to lossless within iTunes. The EAC version was audibly better. Has iTunes improved it's ripping procedures?
davide256's avatar
davide256
400 posts
 
Buy a Synology intel processor based NAS; they support both iTunes and Minimserver (DSD/FLAC capable) server software. Look at Auralic Aries, Naim or Linn streamers to feed digital to your DAC. Use an iPad with Kinsky as your remote control sw. Export your itunes library to the NAS and use EAC for future ripping.
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