I Hate to Admit It


If I live to be 100, I expect to still be cleaning vinyl records in 2064. Or perhaps tinkering with my turn of the century Sony SCD-1 and the quaint discs that were sold with it.

But it seems that computer based audio would be useful for archiving things and enable me to throw away hundreds of CDs that I rarely, if ever, want to listen to and basically just clutter up my cabinets.

I am sure there are some threads on this subject, but I don't even know where to search:

My only experience is using a Rio MP3 player and the supplied software. The MP3 sound is pretty bad and recordings often skip.

Could someone therefore explain the quickest, easiest way to get good sounding (uncompressed?) music on a hard drive? I can buy a new computer if necessary.

Is there a consensus in the audiophile community on software/hardware to use or not to use? Is there a program with an amazing interface for a computer based jukebox?

Also, for burning CDs, is it true that high fidelity compilations can be easily made? Again, do I need any special hardware or software?

(At the moment, I have a Sony VAIO laptop about 2 years old and a CD burner that I purchased at about the same time.)

Thank you.
cwlondon

Showing 2 responses by edesilva

I had similar bad experiences with MP3s, but now am a quasi-convert. I use them in my iPod, and its OK for commuting purposes. Since I had the MP3s on my computer, I also hooked the computer to my stereo (Quicksilver monos/ProAc RS2s) in my study, and the jukebox software is OK for that kind of thing--its easy and gives good b/ground music. For serious 2CH, its still upstairs to the real rig.

My frustrations with ripping CDs was driven by the lousy software out there. I used a lot of commercial ripping software (all mentioned above) and never got good results, even for WAVs. Then someone turned me on to Exact Audio Copy. Stunning advance in ripping (tongue in cheek)--it actually reads the blocks more than once and does a compare! You would have thought *someone* might have made that conceptual leap somewhere along the way in the commercial world. Anyway, its $20 from somewhere on the web--just run a search on google. No more skips/nasties on WAVs. Much better than anything else I tried. User interface is kind of awful, but the end product is worth it.

If you ever want to try MP3s again, use a free program called LAME, which can be called by EAC. There are some command line presets that work well--I use "--alt preset extreme" for my iPod, but there is also an "--alt preset insane" for really HQ MP3s.
I think I saw a thread on A'gon a little while ago about external DACs for computers--hmm... try this:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?icomp&1035756620&read&3&4&

I think the Mac and Windows iPods are pretty different. Google iPod and windows conversion or somesuch. There were some sites with info about hacking the Mac version for a windows environment--if you are ultimately going Mac, you might buy a Mac iPod and see if you can temporarily do the Windows mods.

The internals of the iPod aren't bad, given that its a tiny box. I (temporarily) used a pair of etymotics earbuds and was rather impressed by the sound quality, but had to abandon them (in-ear 'phones were giving me motion sickness on the metro).

If you are trying to squeeze better sound out of the iPod, check into Headroom--they make external amps/processors for the iPod that are well reviewed.