Yep -
All those are, are external drives. If you are using a tower, I strongly recommend you add a PCI SATA card, especially if you are going with that kind of storage. Simply much faster and more robust then Firewire or USB.
Good question about the AES/EBU output - I personally haven't come across that. I am sure it is doable using an add in card from Lynx, Apogee or the like. Remember that Mac is the computer of choice in recording studios...
Apple Lossless is equivalent to AIFF and WAV just more compact. Also - and this comes in handy - Apple Lossless does a much better job handling metadata (additional kinds of information about each song) then either WAV or AIFF
The key thing I try and get across to people is the overall superiority of iTunes. It provides an integrated approach to all the functions you need for computer based music - ripping, metadata, list management, archiving in a world class package. There are some very good apps for PCs but they are not integrated and the support is nowhere near at the same level - how can freeware be... It's great if you are very savvy and like to fiddle but if you want to just play music this is much more straightforward.
All those are, are external drives. If you are using a tower, I strongly recommend you add a PCI SATA card, especially if you are going with that kind of storage. Simply much faster and more robust then Firewire or USB.
Good question about the AES/EBU output - I personally haven't come across that. I am sure it is doable using an add in card from Lynx, Apogee or the like. Remember that Mac is the computer of choice in recording studios...
Apple Lossless is equivalent to AIFF and WAV just more compact. Also - and this comes in handy - Apple Lossless does a much better job handling metadata (additional kinds of information about each song) then either WAV or AIFF
The key thing I try and get across to people is the overall superiority of iTunes. It provides an integrated approach to all the functions you need for computer based music - ripping, metadata, list management, archiving in a world class package. There are some very good apps for PCs but they are not integrated and the support is nowhere near at the same level - how can freeware be... It's great if you are very savvy and like to fiddle but if you want to just play music this is much more straightforward.