Is there a Rosetta Stone for digital speak?

Lewinskih01: Why Audiirvana+ vs. using Fidelia (or Fidelia Advanced)? Just curious. Not the first time I've heard this recommendation for Audirvana but none for Fidelia (that I can remember)...

Based on some prodding to learn more about this digital audio stuff, I started some googling and found this article:

http://www.headfonia.com/os-x-audio-players-amarra-audirvana-pure-music-fidelia-decibel-and-bitperfect/

Has a nice writeup on osx audio players. I'm playing with the 15 day trial of Fidelia right now. My cpu is smoking hot up converting all my iTunes songs to a better format so I can see if my old ears can tell a difference. Is Audiirvana a better choice?

I don't have the budget for a high end DAC or music server, so I'm just going to use a (large) good USB flash drive with my Oppo 95 for now and let the Sabre's do their magic.

Good stuff here from you guys!

Admranger,

The suggestion for Audionirvana+ is simply my repeating of what I've seen Mac people recommend. But I haven't tried it, so no more value than that.

The Oppo USB should be fine for your indended use. I believe the user interfase is not the most user-friendly, but if it floats your boat, then great!

Hi admranger. You wrote: "my cpu is smoking hot up converting all my iTunes songs to a better format so I can see if my old ears can tell a difference." Just a heads-up that if your "iTunes songs" were originally imported as mp3 files, you will not gain any sonic benefits from upconverting. Good luck.

-Jon

Most of my music was imported from my CDs into apple lossless files. I understand that it would be hard to get too much upside to converting 256k files... That's a lot of missing info.

Thank you for all of the excellent suggestions.