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Compressed mp3's - what to do with them?

Say you converted your music at 192kps or somewhere north of 100. Recapturing in lossless isn't going to happen in the near future (two kids, small business owner, etc).

I've got them on an external drive attached to my iMac G4 and an iTV at my stereo/TV locale. I can wirelessly grab those tunes from my iTunes, and put them directly into my integrated amp (Blue Circle CS), or would be open to a lower priced DAC like the USB thingee from BC also.

I know that putting makeup on a pig... but will the sound IMPROVEMENT be worth it from changing the iTV analog out to an iTV digital out to an inexpensive DAC?

Or do I need to find a college student who needs some money to recapture my 1000 CD collection?
thanks
peter
peterzana
5 responses Add your response
solman989
44 posts
 
Every time I've made an improvement or upgrade in my system, the sound improved across the board - including mp3 files each time. The mp3s still sounded like mp3s relative to FLAC, but they sounded better than they did before just as FLAC sounded better than they did before.

If you are only willing to do one or the other, I'm guessing that the improvement gained from using a decent DAC will be greater than the improvement gained from switching to FLAC. Whether or not the improvement is worth it will depend on the DAC and your ears.
rlwainwright
1,904 posts
 
Yep, pay the college student and rip 'em to FLAC - you'll be very glad you did.

-RW-
shazam
205 posts
 
meant to add that I also listen to Rhapsody with my Fubar 3 - which streams at 192k and 128K - and it does a good job of providing life to the music.

But you would still be better off in the long run re-ripping everything in FLAC and making the sky the limit.
shazam
205 posts
 
If you are committed to the existing files, don't spend too much money else you will start to cringe at the defects in the .mp3 files that a good piece of equipment will reveal. try a Fubar 2 USB dac for $137 and see if that doesn't float your boat. I have a Fubar 3 (includes a headphone amp) that I use at my computer with FLAC and 320k mp3 files and it does a great job.

As an alternative, you can always pay a ripping service to redo all your CDs ($.25-.75 per disk, depending on service). At that point, you can use any digital solution you want and never worry about quality. It's well worth it in the long run.
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