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Confused With Options To Obtain BestQuality iTunes

I have been reading a lot these days and still confused on the plethora of options available in hooking up a computer based digital system and the pros and cons to each and every selection. I am quite new in this so please bear with me.

I have friends who stream wireless music(Itunes) via an Apple Airport Express that supported this idea and do know many folks are using this setup in their homes. Others who are into Logitech stuff advocated the Squeezebox Classic and Touch. However, another group who uses top-flight gears in their systems(upper range MBL and Revels) advised that wireless degrades sound quality, and the best option is to hook it all up with wires.

Suggested options to play Itunes in WAV or AIFF format are as follows.

1) iTunes in 1TB/2TB External Hard Drive => Mac Mini/Macbook => DAC (iPad to control music selection)

2) iTunes in 1TB/2TB External Hard Drive => Logitech Squeezebox Classic/Touch => DAC (iPad to control music selection)

3) iTunes in 1TB/2TB External Hard Drive => PC => Apple Airport Express => wireless => DAC (iPad to control music selection)

4) iTunes in 1TB/2TB External Hard Drives => wireless => Apple TV => DAC

Out of the four options above, is it a general consensus that option 1 will yield the best sound reproduction from iTunes followed by option 2? Will options 3 and 4 come close to options 1 and 2? Are there any other alternatives to do all this?

Basically my priority is to use an iPad to control playback from iTunes stored in 1TB/2TB external hard drives WITHOUT using a Mac/PC. Apple Airport Express and Apple TV were said to degrade sound quality. What other cost-efficient options do I have?

An advice would be most appreciated.
ryder
tobias
1,534 posts
 
iTunes will output hi-res files via FireWire to my Apogee Duet, up to a max of 24/96. The resolution switching has to be done manually using Audio MIDI Setup.

Same for my Apogee Mini-DAC but the resolution goes up to 24/192.

However if you use Pure Music for $129, you get not only resolution switching on-the-fly but also much cleaner sound. iTunes alone seems to add nasties. Pure Music latches on to your iTunes Library and playlists so you don't have to do any configuring.

Free AyrePlay software from sbooth.org will also bypass iTunes' "contribution" and switch on-the-fly but unlike Pure Music, it needs OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. (I'm stuck at 10.5.)
tpy's avatar
tpy
68 posts
 
Thanks Tobias. To my surprise I've got Snow Leopard 10.6.5. Is there any advantage of Pure Music over AyrePlay? I'm not very savvy about setting these things up. Is it just a matter of downloading and installing and the program does all else?

Any thoughts about why I'm having music drop out on hig rez (but not other) files (I'm using wireless)?

This thing is pretty amazing but I'm anxious to see what it will sound like in high rez/
jax2
3,031 posts
 
Sorry for the confusion (my own) on the iTunes interface. It was auto-switching of the sample rate that it does not support. As has been pointed out you need to go into the Audio Midi setup and switch the sampling rate manually, which personally I feel is a PITA, especially when there are options to do it on the fly automatically.

I was not suggesting that iTunes handles FLAC files - it certainly does not (one of the reasons I prefer not to use it). I specified to use Squeezeserver to handle your library which will automatically adjust sample rate on the fly. If you really like iTunes you can still use it to organize your music and just point squeezeserver to it and it will still deliver, but I personally would not recommend using iTunes because of these two drawbacks:

1. No auto-switching of sampling rates.
2. Poor error-correction on ripping CD's (compared to software like MAXX using Full Paranoia, or EAC. I have heard audible differences in files ripped via iTunes vs EAC so prefer to go with better ripping software.

Squeezeserver can use iTunes, and one other music folder to create a library from, so you could conceivably store your FLAC files in a separate folder and all others you want to catalogue in iTunes. I have to say I actually do like the iTunes interface - Apple has user-friendly down!

FLAC is a universal, full resolution format that makes storing and converting files very easy. It is cross platform and very versatile. Software like MAXX can do bulk conversions from FLAC files to several alternate formats in basically two steps. With iTunes such conversions have to be done manually format by format. As said earlier, itunes will not support FLAC at all.
tpy's avatar
tpy
68 posts
 
I appreciate you're patience -- I'm obviously very new at this.

I like using iTunes because it's familiar, and have tried a few others and often have trouble figuring out how to get them to work. So far, I've tried Max without really getting it to work, used XLD to convert flac24 or other flac files, and then get them to play on iTunes, but for some reason they wouldn't get through the squeezebox software to my touch until I converted them to AIFF.

I've just downloaded Air from sbooth.org, which I've heard is very good and does format switching automatically. My questions are:

1. I have squeezebox set up to read my iTunes files. But it won't read them unless I first convert from hi rez flac to wav and then to AIFF. Weird. Is there a simpler way?

2. I've loaded my iTunes library onto Play and Squeezebox. Is there a way to get my Squeezebox unit to take in both the Apple and the Play sets of music files so I can just choose between the 2? How would I do that.

Again, many thanks for your patience and my newbieness
jax2
3,031 posts
 
One further detail that I think I need clarification on myself is the limitations of bandwidth / sampling rates on the USB interface. I know the older 1.0 interface was pretty limited and cannot stream high-rez. 1.1 improved a bit (high-rez capable?), and 2.0 is fully capable of streaming high-rez files as is the newly introduced 3.0. Can someone educate me further on this?

One other note on USB - beware of plugging your USB DAC into a hub or a keyboard, or in tandem with any slower USB devices as that will slow down the performance of the shared USB port as I understand it.
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