Computer Audio


Have a CD based system with an Audio Research LS2BMKII pre, Sony 5400ES SACD driving 2 Sumo Andromeda II's which (one each) drive Acoustats 1100's. One channel each side for base, one for the panel. Fully treated dedicated music/office.

Have about 700 CD's on iTunes in the format iTunes records them. The latest Sony with a 1T memory was interesting but I think the way iTunes takes digital is not the way I want to go for files and would need to reload everything, but that new Sony does not have provisions for input. Any ideas? and thanks.
midareff

Showing 1 response by lewinskih01

You are faced with one of the highest switching costs in computer audio: re-ripping CDs. It's a pain in the rear!

Not sure if you are aware iTunes is not very good in audiophile terms both for playback and ripping. I assume the Sony box you mention is the higher end DSD unit that has been much talked about. I understand that box is capable of very good sound, but of course you need to feed it good files.

Think about gradually re-ripping your CDs. The best approach I know of, and pretty future-proof so this doesn't happen again, is described in computeraudiophile.com "Guide to Ripping CDs". It's a great tutorial based on dBpoweramp. I follow it to a t and works great. In one shot, I rip the CDs to wav and flac and aiff, and the software checks online a database to confirm the copy of your CDs digitally matches other same CDs - so you know is a perfect digital copy.

I know re-ripping 700 CDs is a rather daunting task. But it's worth to do this over time and have an uncompressed library. I believe iTunes compresses everything and you don't have a way of verifying how good the copy was, let alone moving to a different software given the proprietary format.

I hope this helps despite not answering directly your question.

Cheers!