Computer-Based Audio Primer

I had a few requests to elaborate on some of my suggestions for PC-based audio. Hopefully this will help:

Ripping your music:
Use Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to rip your music. It is the undisputed leader in perfect ripping. Set up the correct way, it uses error correction and reads the CD multiple times until it gets a perfect copy. You can download it for free here: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

You will need to configure EAC, which can seem daunting. Do some google searching to find a good guide for how to do so. A couple are here:
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=101833
http://www.music-reviewed.com/guides.php

Encoding your music:
I recommend you do it losslessly. This is done for sound quality as well as ease of use (once it's lossless, you can convert it to any other format without re-ripping). Popular lossless formats include WAV, FLAC, and Apple Lossless (ALAC).

Personally, I use iTunes, so ALAC was the best format for me. I use iTunes because I have 2 iPods and I love iTunes’ interface. If you don’t need/want iTunes, Foobar2000 is the best way to go, as it has the most output options and sounds the best. I used EAC to rip my CD’s to a single file (using EAC’s “Copy Image and Create Cue Sheet” command), then mounted that file with Daemon Tools so it shows up on my system just like a CD. From there, I ripped the virtual CD with iTunes with Apple Lossless. I did it this way to get the perfect ripping provided by EAC, while iTunes still can go look up all the track names in the CDDB.

To play back your music, you need:
1. Software player
2. Source (Something to convert the lossless file into a digital stream)
3. DAC (digital stream to analog signal)

Software players:
The most used are iTunes, Foobar2000, and SlimServer (for use of Squeezebox, which is explained below). If you have a Mac, iTunes is the way to go. Interface is awesome, and the output is bit perfect. On a Windows PC, Foobar2000 sounds the best (and supports high quality output formats such as ASIO and kernel streaming), although iTunes apparently sounds good too. If you want to use iTunes as your front end, but get the better audio quality of Foobar, you can do so with the multi-plugin…see this post:
http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=143270&highlight=foobar+itunes

One problem is Foobar’s ALAC decoder is currently buggy, so going Apple Lossless from iTunes into Foobar may be buggy. All of this should be solved in time. I hope so, since this is the approach I will take.

Sources:
A good primer is here:
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue22/nugent.htm

A source can be as simple as your PC’s audio card. If you want good sound quality, look at sources that live outside your computer, which is notorious for noisy electronics.

If your stereo can be close to your PC, look into Red Wine Audio’s USB transit or Empirical Audio’s USB Freeway. Both are modifications of the M-Audio transit. Personally I have a USB transit on the way, as the price was right and it runs on battery power (lowest jitter). Read about these products here:
http://www.redwineaudio.com/USB_Select.html
http://www.empiricalaudio.com/ (click on “Computer Audio”)
Do beware of other “USB sources”. It’s all in the implementation…just because it takes in USB and outputs S/PDIF doesn’t mean it’s going to sound good.

If you need to have your computer far away from your stereo, probably the best way today is to use a Slim Devices Squeezebox (http://www.slimdevices.com/) . This thing pipes music wirelessly from your PC, also does internet radio, and gets great reviews. Red wine audio also can modify it to make it even more audiophile quality (http://www.redwineaudio.com/SB2_SB3_Mods.html) . I read a post where a guy said the modified version sounded as good as the output from an ack Dack 2.0 sourced from a CD transport). Squeezebox must be run from SlimServer, but SlimServer integrates with iTunes and I believe Foobar as well.

iTunes users can also use an Airport Express, which is wireless and has a Toslink digital out. Toslink isn’t as good as coax (SP/DIF) as it adds additional conversion (from SP/DIF to Toslink and back, which can add jitter) to the signal path, but if you have a good Toslink DAC, this may be a good option, as the Airport Express does get bit perfect output out of iTunes on Windows (only way to do so, I think).

DAC:
You can either use the DAC from whatever source you use (if it has one), or buy a separate one. There’s nothing new here, same DAC considerations as with CD playback. If you have bucks and want the absolute latest and greatest, you may want to consider getting Empirical Audio’s I2S USB source and a Perpetual Tech DAC that has I2S input (details on Empirical Audio’s site) . I2S is the native communication of a DAC, and apparently feeding it exactly what it wants provides unparalleled sound.

My personal opinion is that the best price to performance is going to come from battery powered DAC. The DAC creates the lowest powered signal, therefore any noise in this signal gets amplified a LOT. Battery power removes AC noise from this low power signal, resulting in a very black background and clean, analog sound. Another new development in DAC’s is the filterless DAC. The ack Dack has both battery power and filterless, and I have heard how good it sounds (I have one on the way). You can read about filterless DAC’s on ack’s site: http://www.ack-industries.com/dAck!.html.

I hope this serves as a place to start for those of you looking into PC-based audio.