I am currently using an older Dell Optiplex with a Dynex 5.1 18 bit/48KHz signal processor and digital optical (SPDIF) output. All music was originally converted on another PC at 256kbps, as I originally intended it for use just on an iPod. Now that I see the value and convenience of using iTunes over CD's (my wife has a tendency to put any CD back into ANY jewel case as long as it fits :nono:) I want to re-rip all my music for maximum sound quality and archival purposes. So I have many questions about the "nuts and bolts" of it all:

First, I plan to use Apple lossless for my storage format unless someone can convince me to go .wav or something else. With 1 TB drives going for $99 these days, storage space is not an issue.

2) Clearly all cd players are not created equal. Ten bucks for new CD drive for the PC or over 8 grand for an Esoteric X-03 SACD player. So the question is, should I spend some money for a quality CD player to rip from? After all, this has to be one of the more important aspects of the overall conversion process? I realize that much of the reason for the expense in these pricier units is for the DAC which won't come into play for ripping, what about the other quality factors?
As an aside, I did a little experiment using the same track from the same CD and ripped it into iTunes on 3 different machines using Apple lossless and got 3 different file sizes! Only varied by 1kb for an 11 min song, but still, this makes me wonder even more about the value of a high quality source reader. Has anyone ever ripped from an external home audio drive into iTunes? Seems like it would be a pain.

3) I do have some fairly high-end (for its day) home audio equipment, but I must confess I have been out of it for awhile and have not kept up, so I don't understand all the interactions between the various parts of PC-based audio. Maybe the wrong forum for this but here goes..

I have all the sound settings at max quality within "Sounds and Audio Devices" under control panel, but what about "Speaker setup" where you can choose headphones, laptop speakers etc. - do these even come into play when using the digital out direct from the sound card? And what about the QuickTime audio preferences - Audio Ouput Device Latency @ 33(msec)? And "Sound out" Rate and size, do these need to match the sound card capabilities, or set them at max quality? Should I go with a better sound card then, like a SoundBlaster with 24 bit/96KHz output?

I just want to archive my CD's at the best quality I can get (within a reasonable price) and play it back at its maximum potential without spending say another $1,000 for a Benchmark DAC (at least not yet).

Sorry for the long (first :banana:) post but I spent awhile searching the net without finding what I need, found this forum and figured this was my best hope - seems to be some guru's here!

Thanks in advance

:D:D... With 1 TB drives going for $99 these days, storage space is not an issue.


I can't help you with your questions but I will be watching what others have to offer. I would NOT buy Seagate or Maxtor drives for your project. There is a problem with who knows how many different models that have flaws that cause them to make the data inaccessible. Other than that, no problem. Apparently the problem has been ongoing for more than a year and Seagate has denied they have a problem while leaving them in the distribution chain. :gigglemad There are defective Seagate and Maxtor drives on resellers shelves right now waiting for someone to buy them. :gigglemad :gigglemad See the following thread, Google, and the Seagate site for more information: http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=205311

Oh, and welcome to AK!

I would recommend ripping to .wav. As you say, storage space is not an issue anymore and you can then do what you will with the files later - for example, convert to lossless for transportation, etc. But if you're using Itunes I guess you'd be out of luck with .wav format. Why are you set on using Itunes? There are pleanty of other fancy players out there....ie. Foobar, J River, Winamp, etc.

Use EAC to rip your CDs.

See this thread:

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=196740

Ideally, the player software and soundcard you choose will determine the sound driver you use. Most folks want to bypass the entire Windows media chain of drivers since they muck up the sound (Vista less so than WinXP). If your sound card works with it, ASIO is the solution to this. It's an audio driver that bypasses the Windows audio goop. Some folks use a substitute call ASIO4ALL if their cards don't support ASIO. Worth looking into.

Hydorgenaudio has bunches of info on all this...but stick around, there are plenty of folks here with many good ideas and opinions re: PC audio. It's a journey.

Jeff


BTW: I've never heard of using an external Cd -player to rip CDs to a computer. Is it even possible?

I'd agree with jmathers rip everything to WAV. This is the same data that is on the CD, and perhaps more importantly is universally play-able...any computer program will be able to play WAV files, and if you ever choose to burn them back to disc you should have pretty much the same data as you put in! (well you SHOULD have exactly what you put in, but nothing's perfect right?)

I would think any solid CD-R drive will do you fine. I don't personally believe there's any practical benefit to ripping from an external transport...besides it would take you FOREVER :)

OK, so I agree that ripping from an external home CD drive, no matter what the quality (and if it would even be possible) would be a slow, laborious process. So that's out. However I am surprised that there aren't any PC-based "audiophile" CD or CDRW hardware solutions, given the growing popularity of iTunes/music servers in general.

I am testing EAC right now, if it pans out then I'll use it for ripping as it seems to be a pretty thorough piece of software for the job. A lot of our CD's are not in the best shape. Before I conviced my wife to return them to a jewel case (even if it was the wrong one) they used to just lay around on the floor of her car. :tears:

I think I will rip to wav format, and then compress/reformat from there to suit my needs on other devices.

I have just downloaded ASIO - didn't even know such a thing existed. Makes perfect sense though, just have to see if it will work with my hardware.

jmathers said "There are pleanty of other fancy players out there....ie. Foobar, J River, Winamp, etc." The only reason I am using iTunes is because I started with it, I have it, it works, my wife is familiar with it. Are there any practical or sound quality reasons why I should consider one of the aforementioned products??

ASIO drivers were originally developed for the home studio market. When recording without a board, most soundcards introduce huge amounts of latency and bouncing to ASIO drivers reduced that a bit. They also allow you to assign different interfaces on your soundcard (most anyway) to different tasks (i.e. microphone in is now a second line in, etc...) Most modern cards have that capability built into their native drivers and it really isn't much of an issue anymore. Your optical out will be the same either way.

As far as what you playback with, iTunes will be fine. I usually use a lighter weight player (foobar) but there is absolutely nothing wrong with iTunes for the application you're using it for. As for ripping, I wouldn't bother with going wav first, it's a waste of space with little benefit... Just go straight into Apple Lossless. 50 meg a track adds up quick just to have another lossless format sitting there doing nothing. I prefer FLAC over Apple simply because of it's native support in SO many devices (DVD and CD transports, network media devices such as Tivos, DirecTV Tivo, PS3, XBox, etc) but it's a royal hassle to integrate FLAC into iTunes. You can always re-rip it later should you decide to go another route with a different player.

:D:D

I can't help you with your questions but I will be watching what others have to offer. I would NOT buy Seagate or Maxtor drives for your project. There is a problem with who knows how many different models that have flaws that cause them to make the data inaccessible. Other than that, no problem. Apparently the problem has been ongoing for more than a year and Seagate has denied they have a problem while leaving them in the distribution chain. :gigglemad There are defective Seagate and Maxtor drives on resellers shelves right now waiting for someone to buy them. :gigglemad :gigglemad See the following thread, Google, and the Seagate site for more information: http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=205311

Oh, and welcome to AK!

Although you are correct that there are known problems with some drives, Seagate seems to be responding with firmware updates for the affected units. IMHO, you are over-reacting to the hype around this issue.

No drive is flawless, nor guaranteed to last forever... that is why folks back up valuable data to another device.

Although you are correct that there are known problems with some drives, Seagate seems to be responding with firmware updates for the affected units. IMHO, you are over-reacting to the hype around this issue.

No drive is flawless, nor guaranteed to last forever... that is why folks back up valuable data to another device.

Agree.

Seagate service is top notch and AFAIK the only manufacturer to offer a five year warranty on their drives (could have changed though:scratch2:recently).

Having said that I did just buy a Western Digital drive to check out:sigh: But my bet is that if you have one of the affected Seagate drives they will take care of you. Have faith.

And always make a backup:yes:

Jeff

First off, just because some drives had firmware problems, I wouldn't write off Seagate. Check their web site and flash your drive it it's required.

As to WAV vs ALAC, in addition to being larger, WAV's do not carry meta data or tag information, so all track info would be maintained in Itune's database. Not very portable. ALAC is a bit perfect copy with DATA compression and meta tags and is the way to go for Itunes. EAC is a better ripping tool and will test your PC CD drive. Using error correction will get you perfect copies that can be imported into Itunes very easily and simply.

If your library is not tagged well, you will wish you'd never started when it gets big.


For my money, the best way to get the music out of the computer is digitally to an outboard DAC.

AFAIK Itunes doesn't support kernel streaming or ASIO in XP, though you can stream through Foobar to achieve this, I'd just stay away from it except to sync your ipod (which you CAN do with Winamp) and use Winamp or Foobar as you player.

My thoughts on the whole media server adventure.

Lossy files: Your call here. I'd go with .MP3, encoded in VBR or at no less than 224kbps. .AAC is fine and dandy, but there's much less support from the various home electronics that now play MP3s.

Lossless files: .FLAC and .SHN are the standard-bearers in the tape trading community and .FLAC support is winding up in a lot of home electronics. Unfortunately, .FLAC support with iTunes is spotty and .SHN support doesn't exist. Apple Lossless, like .AAC, is an Apple proprietary format, tying you down to using iTunes and Apple electronics.

Backups: Buy a spare SATA drive and keep it in the closet with all your important data. Unarchived bits and bytes aren't really there - ask anybody who's had a hard drive crash.

Ripping: I seriously wouldn't worry about it. Most CD-ROM drives are fairly high quality transports. Most any of them should give you a bit-perfect result.

Getting it to the stereo: Not surprisingly, a better soundcard will yield large dividends. OR, alternately, you could just get any ol' soundcard with a digital out and buy an external DAC. That's what I'm doing.

In the future, I'd like to go a different route. Since you're already using iTunes, you might be a good candidate as well:

Apple Airport Express/Airport Extreme/AppleTV will each act as a media server, wirelessly interfacing with iTunes on your PC to play music on your stereo. Each one also has a digital output for running into an external DAC, as well. If you pair one of these gizmos with an iPhone or iPod Touch running the Remote app, you can browse your library and control iTunes from the comfort of your easy chair, even if your PC is in another part of the house. It's very, very slick.

Clearly all cd players are not created equal. Ten bucks for new CD drive for the PC or over 8 grand for an Esoteric X-03 SACD player. So the question is, should I spend some money for a quality CD player to rip from? After all, this has to be one of the more important aspects of the overall conversion process? I realize that much of the reason for the expense in these pricier units is for the DAC which won't come into play for ripping, what about the other quality factors?Virtually any brand-name CD ROM made today will make a fine transport. There's no case to pay for, minimal electronics, no aesthetics that cost $$$, no DAC -- in short, they are mostly just transport. Many people use them as such, even in stand-alone players.

http://www.space-tech-lab.com/CD-003.jpg