Why would anyone ever listen to iTunes in the first place. Try Tidal Hi Fi and hear MQA. Worth the $20/month. Hi res makes a huge difference.
Giving up on Itunes! Alternatives? I want to run my hardrive with a dedicated tablet.
After having my archives completely disorganized by itunes once again i’m throwing in the towel. I want to know everything about setting up a Tablet as a player for my digital music on a remote hard drive so i can do it right the first time.
I want a simple player (not Itunes) that can handle all file types, I have everything from mp3’s to lossless cd rips, over a thousand albums, not looking to spend alot of money, I work on my own equipment.
Lots of newbie questions! Why a dac? is there any real benefit or is this just a way to get people to spend more money. seems like this is more for av equipment? Cables? What are the benefits in terms of fidelity, should i be using usb to run my system? I’m currently running my digital through .999 silver minijack to rca and it definitely picks up noise from a computer or phone power cord and case. Seems like a lot of newer digital equipment gets signals pretty dirty, but i don’t know anything about it.
What kind of tablet, any fidelity drawbacks as far as this goes? I use Macs but don’t care if It’s an Ipad or whatever, just want the best sound, least interference. Does the material of the cables connecting the tablet to the hardrive or dac have an effect on sound?My system; It’s a pretty crazy set up of whatever I could get my hands on, predominately set up for vinyl but I have a huge collection of rare albums on digital and would like to begin archiving from vinyl. I’m running a Dynaco St70 (tube) through a dynaco pat5 (ss), JBL’s, all plugs are rca, solid silver interconnects, no shielding, ferrite beads.
The sonic qualities that are important to me are imaging and range, don’t want to sacrifice the extreme highs and lows to rule out a little emf interference, my amp is ancient anyway. You know, the vinyl sound. Please give me all the help and advice you can, brutal honesty preffered! There are just too many opinions and too much unhelpful information out there to wade through, just want to get started with something simple that sounds good. Not into expensive toys just listening to great sounding music!
I want a simple player (not Itunes) that can handle all file types, I have everything from mp3’s to lossless cd rips, over a thousand albums, not looking to spend alot of money, I work on my own equipment.
Lots of newbie questions! Why a dac? is there any real benefit or is this just a way to get people to spend more money. seems like this is more for av equipment? Cables? What are the benefits in terms of fidelity, should i be using usb to run my system? I’m currently running my digital through .999 silver minijack to rca and it definitely picks up noise from a computer or phone power cord and case. Seems like a lot of newer digital equipment gets signals pretty dirty, but i don’t know anything about it.
What kind of tablet, any fidelity drawbacks as far as this goes? I use Macs but don’t care if It’s an Ipad or whatever, just want the best sound, least interference. Does the material of the cables connecting the tablet to the hardrive or dac have an effect on sound?My system; It’s a pretty crazy set up of whatever I could get my hands on, predominately set up for vinyl but I have a huge collection of rare albums on digital and would like to begin archiving from vinyl. I’m running a Dynaco St70 (tube) through a dynaco pat5 (ss), JBL’s, all plugs are rca, solid silver interconnects, no shielding, ferrite beads.
The sonic qualities that are important to me are imaging and range, don’t want to sacrifice the extreme highs and lows to rule out a little emf interference, my amp is ancient anyway. You know, the vinyl sound. Please give me all the help and advice you can, brutal honesty preffered! There are just too many opinions and too much unhelpful information out there to wade through, just want to get started with something simple that sounds good. Not into expensive toys just listening to great sounding music!
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- 24 posts total
Larry - i think maybe you are confusing itunes ( an app) with music formats? if you are clear on the difference, please make it clear - not everyone will take the correct learning from simple statements. You can play HD in iTunes/bitperfect - the decoding occurs in the DAC. For those who don;t know how to play HD on iTunes - either use bitperfect (strongly suggested by me and all of $10) or rad this: https://www.pooraudiophile.com/2016/02/how-to-play-high-resolution-audio-with-apple-itunes.html As to MQA MQA- no. It does not support the first unfold to the best of my knowledge. But I’ll also debate the value of MQA on most recordings. And in fact I’m listing to Tidal based MQA right now as I type, and have compared it to my own FLACs of the same masterings. note that FLAC and ALAC are the same except one is big-endian and the other little-endian. note I am not getting the 2nd unfold because none of my DACs contain the licensed MQA chip. You didn’t mention what DAC you are using and whether yours does. Note also that the DACs that do support MQA in the hardware are not among my fav’s at their price points -- so this is a trade off too. Now back to the original question - you can get very good performance up to CD quality out of iTunes with bitperfect (necessary for the best performance). As to why you would want to? Well, i don’t. Its cataloging is terrible for classical, and it has real issues with multiple versions of ANY album. And its interface is simplistic. But fundamental sound is not its weakness. Now this brings up a good point about files - you certainly want to avoid MP3 for the best quality - even at 320 kbps they are quite lossy. Sometimes euphonically so tho.... As to HD in general (24/96+) - this is a can of worms. Its probably necessary for the studio where a) levels may be mis-set and b) post processing will be done. In the final playback - its at best a 2nd order issue. Great masterings of 16/44 can be superb. Ive noted many such recordings in he past (and many are 50 years old by the way). And crap recordings (listening to velvet underground in MQA at the moment) cannot be saved by HD. they just suck. I think that roon and audirvahna are good suggestions. G update - i see that Roon now supports both unfolds, or so it seems, so I may be GTG simply by updating settings for each DAC device/endpoint. I'll report back. |
Nice, thanks, definitely getting some real info now that's helping me understand what I'm getting into. itsjustme and djones51, I really appreciate the tehnical info and understanding, its great to have the advice of someone who has really invested time and energy in these things, so that i don't have to!Checked out audirvana and roon, i'm not about to spend $700 on software, you could get a lot of great records for that or a new preamp, or a lot of good beer, or a motorcycle! Maybe audirvana, anyone tried doing listening tests on the same system with these different players. Any players with notable cataloguing issues i should watch out for? Those specs on the dacs are great, it really looks like there's plenty of dacs on the low price end that perform comparably to the best of them, i'm sure there are other factors as well...I'd definitely like to hear more peoples experience trying and actually testing different players, what they think is best and why. I can't keep using itunes because of the cataloguing issues. Thanks for all the info, please keep it coming. |
- 24 posts total