Music from hard drive better than CD?

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

Hey Ghunter - I have a question for you about the i-Tunes settings: Can you explain further the "Use Error Correction" setting. I've had it checked, but always wondered just exactly what it was doing. I was under the impression that it only kicked in if there was an error in reading the CD being ripped, and not so much in the frequency for instance. Once the music is ripped to the drive, checking the error correction would have no bearing on playback, correct? I'm learning this stuff too, so your clarifications are much appreciated.

Nickway - you'll use up that 80mb drive pretty fast for uncompressed music, especially if it is holding your OS as well. I'd guess 80mb would only hold about 140 music CD's if there were nothing else on it. Once you figure out what's going on with your set up, I'd encourage you to do a comparison between your uncompressed .WAV or AIFF file and a compressed Apple Lossless file which takes up half the space. I'm not claiming golden ears, but I certainly could not tell the difference. I've read reviews (I think one may have been by Gordon Rankin either on AA or the Wavelength site), which confirm Apple's claim of a bit-for-bit reproduction of an audio file using Apple Lossless. I noticed Empirical Audio ranked them differently. I'd give it a try yourself and see what difference it may or may not make to your ears. Let us know too!

Marco

Hey Jax,

The 80 gig drive is just for music. My system and files are on another drive.

My power mac is not hooked up to my stereo. I just use it for listening when I am on the computer and for loading up my ipod. My computer speakers are Monsoon Audio's, which were made under license from Eminent Technology. I also use my Grado 225 headphones.

I tried using listening for differences between Apple lossless and AIFF with my ipod and my Grado's and I could not tell a difference. I could also not tell the difference between them on my computer speakers.

I can tell the difference between AAC and AIFF. I find that if I must use compression AAC at 256kbps is much better than MP3 of the same bit rate.

On my main stereo I might be able to hear the difference between AIFF and Apple lossless. I will have to give it a try.

Also the 80 gigs just hold my favorite music for loading up my ipod. I have about 400 CD's (and growing) so there is not room for all of them.

Also my Parasound (CEC) 2000 belt drive transport came in this morning. I was using it over lunch and initial impressions are really good. It's very smooth and has plenty of dynamics. I did find that an after-market cord made a big difference. I can't wait for tonight so I can listen more.

Cheers,
Nick