Please Help!! looking to get into computer audio.

Hi Whino,

It sounds like your issue is really setting up a media server first.

Your not really starting out with the best combination of sources. iTunes is heavily compressed, and BlueTooth was never an audiophile format, but it's gotten better.

Let's try to improve your sound with a low-cost option. Sign up for a Tidal account, which you can play via the Oppo media app on your phone.  Listen to some of the tunes there and compare the experience. This will get you away from compression and BlueTooth at once. Make sure you don't have Neo:6 enabled, as it will do funky things.

For a media server, asynchronous USB is usually a very good place to start. Do you have a PC or media player that you can hook up that way? Macs sound very hard and brittle to my ears, so I won't immediately recommend them.


Best,

Erik

By the way, I own a W4S Remedy, but I'm going to suggest you save your money as you may end up needing a better media server solution.

They are on sale right now though, direct from the W4S web site, so if you don't mind plunking down the money to experiment, go for it.

Best,

Erik

Also, if possible, connect your media players (TV, BD Disk, etc.) directly to your home network via cables. If you live in an apartment Wifi is always going to be an issue due to the number of competing routers.

Best,

Erik

Consider spending $10 and getting BitPerfect from the Apple App Store as a low cost way to start.  Use BitPerfect in "hog mode" to play an iTunes library.  iTunes music files purchased as MP3s might well be less than "audiophile" quality though not all MP3s are created "equal" (i.e., they're not all equally crappy!).  Alternatively, your iTunes library might consist of ripped CDs.  These might be stored as high quality ALAC or even WAV files.  The former (MP4A) while compressed is much better sound quality than MP3.  The latter is uncompressed but you give up meta data in iTunes. Personally, I did a lot of A/B-ing between ALAC and WAV ripped CDs and couldn't hear a difference, though others report they can.  For me, a relatively low cost option has been External Hard Drive w/ALAC files in iTunes>>MacBook w/BitPefect>>USB out>>Musical Fidelity USB/SPDIF converter>>coax>>Schiit Gungnir DAC>>pre-amp.  You can throw silly money at computer audio but there's no guarantee you will hear a commensurate improvement in SQ...which is not to say the sound I have can't be improved.  For me it's just a satisfactory balance between $-spent and sound realized.  Same applies to Tidal vs Spotify.  I didn't find Tidal SQ 2x better than Spotify...though I realize that's "red meat" to some frequenting this forum.  Good luck with your explorations.  

Actually on a Mac with iTunes, if you want uncompressed music files, AIFF is your choice, not WAV. AIFF can retain all metadata, including album covers if you paste them in.

My 2500-album library is a mix of ALAC mainly, with about 10% as AIFF. And I've tested several albums over the past few years, having each as both ALAC and AIFF...and I don't believe there's any difference.

What helps keep the compressed ALAC and uncompressed AIFF sound the same as been powerful enough music servers which can decompress the ALAC files quickly.