Computer Audio

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.

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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.

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?

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.

I'll second the re-ripping with dbpoweramp. If you can put up with the inconvenience, ripping tracks to .wav files will yield the best sound quality results. You may lost some tags and album art though.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio