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
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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
"You may lost some tags and album art though."

You will loose A LOT of that with .wav.

I just converted my entire library over to FLAC finally after years of .wav.

Can't honestly say one sound categorically better than the other. Both sound very good, though I have not done careful a/b comparisons.

Steve, DBpoweramp can supposedly create and confirm perfect rips or not with any format, right?

Any good reason why .wav is really better sounding than .flac? Assuming the playback is doing its job correctly in both cases, of course.

I stuck with .wav for years just to be safe, but gotta say I am not missing it now that I have jumped ship.

I still have my original .wav files. I am almost ready to forget about them and delete them.

So now would be a good time to convince me I should keep them. :^)