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Going over to the Dark Side?

Oh no! So, I finally succumbed to temptation yesterday and got the new 30GB iPod. When I got it, I figured I would store all my songs in .WAV or Apple lossless. Yesterday I spent 6 hours choosing songs from a variety of disks and loading them into iTunes via Apple lossless. Sounded great. But now I'm getting greedy. I think about all the CDs I have (over 1000 easily), and the fact that the iPod would be used for listening while skiing, flying, or in the car, none of which is an excellent listening environment. I already have a reference music system, and at home I'll be listening mainly to vinyl, with the occasional foray into CDs. Now I'm thinking that I could easily triple or quadruple my storage by using the highest AAC setting (320kBS) instead of Apple lossless for my iPod and store a lot more songs.

tonight I ripped a version of a song in Apple lossless and in AAC. I keep listening back and forth through my powered studio monitors. There is a difference, but it seems slight. Then I think of the tiny earbuds, the listening environment, and I hear the siren song of the dark side of lossy compression calling. Oh no!! Run away!!!

Has anyone else faced this dilema, and what was your solution?
arafel
arafel OP
32 posts
 
I decided to go with AAC at 320. I plan to keep my CDs, so I don't see the point in ripping in lossless. Although, I guess it could be nice from the point of view of storage. All the racks for my CDs and vinyl and DVDs take up a LOT of space. Of course, before going to that system I'd have to get a nice AD converter. And, having done some work with engineers in pro audio environments, I'm a little skeptical of a computer for playback, as it is such a noisy piece of gear.

Anyway, I'm in the middle of a week long project ripping all the songs I want into the computer. Even at 320 kbps, I'm at almost 20 gigs and still have about 100 more CDs to load. Damn!
edesilva
768 posts
 
For those thinking of external drives, I just ran across this URL--haven't used it, but the theory sounds good and it may quiet down your environment:

http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/smartdrive.html
pitdog75
34 posts
 
>Edsilva i recently purchased a U24 and plugged it into my stereo, right now im using its own little onboard DAC and the music is much qieter than from my cd player. it says in the instruction for the Waveterminal that the analog out is -10dB, any way to go around that? or it is supposed to be that way.

one more thing - if you use a separate DAC, lets say some Theta, than the DACs output level determines the loudness, right?
ckorody
643 posts
 
Anything single ended (RCA) is -10. Always been that way. Works fine over reasonable length cable runs such as you are likely to have in a home rig.

Balanced outputs (XLRs) run at +4 - its the format that the pro's use for all low level work (mics etc) Among other things, it makes it easier to do those 100'+ runs.

Had Waveterminal gone balanced they would not have been able to deliver the size package or the price point. That is what is so interesting about that product - it sounds so good and does so much for so little. It targets the low end/prosumer studio market - that's why it has the 1/4" phono jacks
edesilva
768 posts
 
Ckorody is spot on as far as my understanding goes...

And, to your last point, the bits going over spdif are just bits--the level is going to be determined by your DAC's output, regardless of the input. (Unless, of course, you have something fiddling with gain in the digital domain like kmixer--you don't want that).
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