spdif vs toslink

I once read a story where a mastering engineer claimed he could tell whether it was a Maxtor or a Western Digital HD attached to his DAW. He was probably making a joke. The key factors with drives is the interface and platter rotation speed. Any recent vintage HD with ATA, IDE, Firewire, USB 2 or SCSI and 7200 rpm platters will have no problems with the playback of two channel audio.

As far as optical vs. non-optical, my experience is that balanced AES/EBU is definitely superior to optical.

Did you have Apple replace the dead iPod?

Ntscdan, they'll probably give you a refurbished iPod.

I've had very good experiences with RME audio cards. Their 96 Series offers AES/EBU balanced outputs and goes for about $400. I think it's the best way to go, but might want to try the glass optical cable first.

I totally agree that iTunes is a very slick piece of software. I use it as the centerpiece of my digtial audio setup (Apple G5 with 650 Gb of storage - about 16,000 songs).

Here's a link to a thread about my music collection. CLICK HERE. It's a little eclectic, but nothing really out of the ordinary.

As far as 60s soul goes one of my favorites is Major Lance. Not much recorded output, but a lot of great songs by Curtis Mayfield and equally great production from Johnny Pate.