Music from hard drive better than CD?

First, you're falling for the marketing that Digidesign wants you to. True, their high-end gear is used in pro studios around the world. Does this mean that their low-end gear sounds as good? (nope) The mbox is NOT used in pro studios around the world, as it's a prosumer device at best.

Second, the mbox has a horrible reputation amongst Mac musicians for driver issues (and being overpriced).

Third, every audio interface worth more than a hundred dollars has a driver configuration process. Nick, looks like it's time for you to RTFM :) If you want to use toys that come from the studio world, you should learn how to use them before knocking them.

Hello Ghunter

I have read the manual and I am not knocking it. Please don't get me wrong, I think its great for the price. I should also point out that while it is expensive it does come with a full version of Pro Tools which is worth quite a few hundred in itself.

I don't think it's as good as their more expensive equipment. You of course get what you pay for. But it's a great tool as part of a home studio on the cheap.
I know many pro sound techs that take them on tour. They use them for making a personal 2 ch mix of concert in order to help them get better sound the next time around.

So I am not sure where you got the idea that I am knocking it or I don't know how to use it.

All I am saying is, I am not convinced about using a PC based audio system.
If you re-read my above post, I have come to the conclusion thats the Mbox is not the weak link. I think its a problem with computer HD itself.

Everyones milage with very, just for me with the equipment I had it was not working.
Great sound, but no music (lack of PRaT). I would really like to hear your system because like I said, I want this to work.

On a side note: My wadia does not upsample past 44.1 or 48 but it is 18 bit.

Just out of curiosity, what other equipment are you using?

Cheers,
Nick

At first it sounded to me like a jitter problem. Your DAC isn't correcting for it, so that's going to be the only difference between a cdp out and your mbox out, all other things equal.

Now, when you say that there is a difference through the mbox between music from the hard drive and a cd in the tray of the same computer then that points to a setting in itunes that somehow doesn't affect direct playback (which I didn't think existed). In the audio tab in iTunes Preferences do you have "Sound Enhancer" or "Sound Check" turned on? In the importing tab are you selecting "Use error correction"? Beyond that, the most important settings are going to be for the mbox.

Perhaps you should run Norton Utilities on your hard drive to see if there are any physical problems? I've done this test with a number of computers, several audio interfaces, multiple DAC's, and in studio and living room scenarios. They've always sounded equal to my ears (and barring any physical defects in your equipment) they should be. Technically, there are well-defined validity checks built in to hard drives so that things like this don't happen.

By the way, if a studio "pro" goes on the road to mix (quite a rare occurence as live and studio mixing are quite different animals) then they mostly take a part of their ProTools rig with them on the road and capture multitrack. These people are obsessive about sound, so stereo wouldn't be enough to capture what they'd be after. If it's just a matter of two channel, they'd just ask a roadie to pop in a DAT to capture the FOH mix and focus on the job at hand.

If they are doing it themselves on the cheap and don't want to move away from ProTools, they'd also more than likely use a rackmount interface like the Digi001 or Digi002 Rack instead of the mbox. Being on the road is a rough place and being tucked away in a rack means it will survive a tour while being on the desk means it is going to get destroyed.

Nick, I just want to make sure that you're not fooling yourself into thinking the mbox is any different than any of the other sub-$1000 interfaces out there.

Thanks G,

I am going to try it again tonight. As far as the itunes setting goes, I had them exactly how people recommend. I am a nut about proper ripping.
I have a 80 drive in my Powermac just for uncompress music.

Cheers,
Nick