MP3 players

If you are looking for a card to output a digital signal for your computer I would recommend looking at the ZA2 by Zefiro Acoustics or the Sonicport or Datport models by Opcode. The ZA2 has coaxial, Toslink and AES/EBU balanced inputs AND ouputs. It has a sampling rate convertor built in and can be used as a patch bay all on the fly. In other-words you can input on one format and output on all three at the same time. It also enables you to defeat the SCMS copy code. It runs about $400. The Opcode products are cheaper, between $150 and $250 but do not have as many features, but they are plug and play USB verus the PCI slot that the Zefiro board uses. My computer is a Sony VAIO and it has a sound card from the factory that has a TOSLINK fiber-optic output. I feed this into either my DAT deck or my mini-disc recorders to perform the D-A conversion. I am a big user of Napster and have been using this set-up without any problems for quite a while. Be sure to shut down as much as you can in your start-up menu to keep the proceesor noise in the computer to a minimum. This makes a big improvement in sound quality and background noise. I also recommend downloading the Winamp player and using it for your playback of the MP3 files. It is also better than the internal player built into the Napster software. I have quite a bit of music that I have downloaded that sounds VERY, VERY good. Much better than any tuner could possibly sound. In some cases it is un-distinguishable from the cd. My system is not awesome but is very respectable. I have a NAD 1600 pre-amp/tuner, Parasound HCA-1200 II amp, Toshiba SD-3109 dvd, Sony DTC-670 DAT recorder, Sony MDS JE-500 and MDS JE-510 mini-disc recorders, PSB 500 speakers which are being used for the present because I do not have any room to set up my Carver Amazings. Not ultra high-end, but not crap by any means. When downloading be sure to pick the highest bit rate possible! The difference between 128k and 192 or higher is night and day. This is the key to getting good sounding MP3's. You should not be disappointed if you do this. Please post back or write me if you have any more thoughts or questions.

Carl_eber, I got a neat e-mail today from Bob Ludwig. I wrote him the other day and asked a couple of questions and he got back to me. He says he is doing a lot more digital now, mostly at 88.2/24. He said he owns a 1" 2 track using Tim da Paravinci tube set-up on a Mike Spitz ATR services 1" deck. He has deck #3, and Pink Floyd own machines #1 and #2. Tim created a special curve for 15ips that measures as flat as any machine he has ever seen from 8hz to 28000hz. He calls it his analog-digital machine because it sounds so analog but has bass that goes to DC like digital can. I thought you might find this interesting. He says if he gets a chance he will e-mail me a pic of the machine.

Carl, sorry if I sounded defensive, I didn't mean to be. Most people just don't realize how much music is actually recorded and mixed on computers and optical drives. The price of 96/24 equipment for computer is incredible anymore. You can get a killer home studio for the fraction of the cost of a "real" studio. Obviously most audiophile recordins aren't done this way, but more and more popular music is being done this way all the time. Hell, even most of the big studios do quite a bit of mixing and editing on computers because it is easier and more flexible than tape could ever be. They can pick and choose which take they want and mix it how they want over and over until they have it right without having to time-sync tape machines and swap tracks back and forth between them. I agree that you won't see master quality en masse for a long time, but it could happen sooner than we think. I read an article some time back in Sound and Vision about Joe Gastwirt(mastering genius) and in it he said that almost all of the master tapes were 1/2 inch at eithter 15 or 30ips, not 2" tape.

I agree with Nhorton that mp3 is a lossy scheme, but so is AC-3(dolby 5.1),DTS, and all other forms of mpeg including the dvd format. What I meant by downloading the highest bitrate, was that it should sound better because it uses less compression(higher bitrate) to make the file. As far as my ears can tell, I have heard some pretty damn good audio coming from dvd. Sure mp3 is not on par with SACD or a 96/24 audio dvd, but it isn't supposed to be. A cd has a bitrate of somewhere around 705 kbits per second(44100hz * 16 bits). A mp3 encoded at 320 kbits is just under half that , and 128 kbits would be about one-fifth. If I am not mistaken, DTS and AC-3 can compress audio up to around one- eighth and are usually in the one-fourth to one fifth compression most of the time. So just to say that because it compresses the file is not a valid enough reason to say that it sounds bad. It has to do with the quality of the encoding and decoding process. If someone has a inferior codec in their computer, yes the reult will not be good, but if it is a good encoder(most people use the Fraunhofer(the main member of the mpeg consortium)codec. If that is the case most mp3's should be of fairly high quality as I'm sure Fraunhofer wouldn't the mpeg format to have a bad reputation for quality. Anyways, there is a new player on the market that claims to be better than mp3 so it might not matter for to much longer. The new format is called Vorbis and it creates .ogg files. It can use either variable or fixed bitrates. It is also a lossy scheme, but they say that uses better acoustic models to reduce the damage to the sound. It is also able to support multiple channels and can use bitrates from 8 kbits to 512 kbits. For more info go to www.vorbis.com The only way you will find out if the mp3's you download will sound good or not is to just play around with it and see what your ears tell you. I think that if you download the higher bitrate files you will find that they sound pretty good.

Actually Carl, I am aware of the lawsuits against Napster because I was banned from using it for supposedly having Metallica in my computer. I already own all of their discs including the DCC golds so I had no reason to put in my computer, but I was banned anyway. Thanks to some other users, many web-sites posted ways to get around it, and thats what I did. Actually, you're statemanet about not being able to have "from the master quality" is incorrect. The main reason that peolpe use mp3 format is because it takes up less file space and shortens the download time. You could just as easily transfer .wav files, that are true uncompressed digital files, but it take much longer to download and a lot more file space. A lot of music is actually recorded, mixed, edited, and stored in computers without ever using any tape, digital or analog. Alan Parsons is one of the main persons doing this. His album Try Anything Once was completely recorded using his computer.

Carl, I think you need to re-check your information about 2" tapes. If you would like, go to Gatewaymastering.com. As I am sure you are aware, this is Bob Ludwig's Company. The master of mastering. I will quote word for word what it says on the site. "Reel to reel tape is the most popular format for sending audio to Gateway Mastering Studios. It has a different sound quality than digital formats and is preferred by many engineers. 1/2" and 1/4" sizes are used for mastering. Mastering facilities only use stereo (2 track)machines, NOT multi-track tape(i.e. 24, 16, 8 or 4 track)." I was positive I was right becuase there is no possible way for a tape head to accurately reproduce a signal over such a wide gap(1 inch). Imagine the voltage and bias that would have to be used, they have enough problems with 1/4" gaps. The voltage required would probably blow the magnetic particle right off of the acetate. You might as well try using a MIG welder. When I said "popular music" in my last post I really meant to say "modern music" because obviously more than just the "pop stuff" is being done. I have an incredibly wide taste of music styles, so please don't think that is all that I listen to. I am 29 years old and have been listening to Sheffield Labs and other great dirct to disc stuff since before I can remember. But that's not the only stuff in the world to listen to. Have you ever listened to Dead Can Dance? I guess they could be considered popular music, although they still are a bit underground still. Most of their last recordings involved computers, and Stereophile has had a coulpe of their recordings listed in the R2D4 list. Another good mention would have to be Planet Drum, Mystery Box, and Superlingua, all by Mickey Hart. These are perfect examples of what can be acoomplished.