Digitalmeisters - Thoughts on Olive.....

Do you need any special kind of software to do this? Perhaps my questions are so basic that I am going to have research the rudiments here.

There are plenty of free programs out there to do this. EAC is a very popular one that tries to correct for read errors and make sure you get a good rip. However, I just purchased a copy of dbPoweramp ($38). It has multiple methods for ensuring a good rip but the thing that sold me was the fact that it gets metadata from up to 5 different databases and compares the information attempting to make sure it's accurate. There's a lot of crap in the metadata databases and making sure you have accurate and correctly spelled song titles/artist/album name is a HUGE investment in time.

For this to really go mainstream, it does seem it really has to be more idiot proof, more standardized, and the availability of a large library of fast and easy hi-rez downloads. I see the appeal, and perhaps the inevitability of this, but the more I see where we are at this point, the less I feel ready for this kind of change. It really has to be almost as easy as buying a CD, putting it a CD player, and hitting play. The ideal would seem to be a universal music library stored externally (the cloud) and accessible for a monthly fee via a wireless 8G connection to a device in the home that receives and streams hi-rez digital data into a DAC (or built into the DAC box) - a variation on Netflix I suppose.

Pubul57,
You're right. This will need to become more standardized and easier for this to take off ... and I believe it will. As an example, compare how easy it is to purchase and install an app on your smartphone these days with integrated app stores. Something like this used to be a royal pain.

I've given up trying to predict where the computer industry will go next and/or how fast it will get there. I just sit back and am amazed at the pace of progress. This area will be that way too. My interim solution was to buy the inexpensive but VERY good and versatile Logitech Touch. This allows me to experiment with how the music is delivered, different formats and, eventually, different DACs while I'm waiting for things to settle down.

The Touch has been a lot of fun. I particularly like Pandora through my main system. Even though it's not what we would consider hirez, it sounds pretty darn good and I've heard a lot of good music I wouldn't have heard otherwise.

It's a brave new world!

Re: software. For folks who have been at this a while, is the pursuit of hardware that can handle 24bit, higher sampling rates, worth it? Seems like the promises of higher-res music is nearing the end of its first decade and still hasn't gained a firm toehold. Do folks with a longer history feel like momentum is building and it is a matter of time for recordings, new & old, to be available in high-res glory? Or will we resort to recordings of obscure classical groups to hear the full potential of our purchases?

I already have a Squeezebox product and love it! The ability to listen to far-flung radio stations (KHUM to WXPN) plus Pandora & Slacker is awesome. But if streamed compressed audio is going to be it, no need to saddle myself with the hassles/maintenance of a RAID setup, hunting down cover art files, etc.

The Logitech Touch does seem like a good way to dip one'stoe in the water and internet radio is also an appealing possibility. I think there might be a very legitimate issue of how much it would cost to create hi-rez versions of all the music already available in Redbook, and I'm not sure we have much of an emerging audiophile culture to drive the demand for it by the masses accustomed to MP3 players. It is an interesting question on the prodcution side, and whether or not we need greater bandwidth [?] for providing fast downloads - like a minute for a typical album. I'm not even sure the download model makes sense over time - why take of the space, it does seem like a real time music stream, on demand is where this should be heading one day, ala Netflix. I would pay $10/month to have that kind of universal, wireless access. Though at my age, I am likely to be playing my 3000+ CDs for a long time, till the piolycarbonate starts breaking down....