The most important first decision to make is what kind of format you wish to store your digital music. The best quality is "lossless" vs "lossy" (like MP3s). That could be WAV files, ALAC files, or FLAC. ALAC is proprietary to Apple, which would pose problems should you go with another operating system. WAVs purport to have higher quality, but you forgo the metadata that you get with FLAC or ALAC (ie the artist name, track name, album name, etc.).
Computer Audio for Dummies
I would like to get my feet wet in computer audio, but will admit my knowledge is very limited about it.
I have a MacBook Pro laptop. The rest of my system can be seen in my system page.
Here’s what I know I want to do right off the bat;
Build a library that I can pick and choose what to play- mostly for convenience & backround music. But if it is good enough, might become a source for serious listening.
Record music from some/ all of my other sources.
Download music.
I haven’t done anything yet other than purchase a stereo cable that allows me to hook one end to an unused input in my pre amp and the other to my headphone jack on my Mac.
Should I look into a DAC or somethingthing between the two for better sound quality?
Thanks in advance and please, easy on me as I know not too munch in the digital/ computer world.