Software

The current selection of high resolution downloads is growing weekly, but is still inadequate for most music aficionados. The most frequently voiced displeasure relates to the lack of "popular" music available at resolutions equal to or greater than rebook CD (16 bit / 44.1 kHz). Most audiophiles don't realize a great source of "popular" high resolution material is already sitting on their shelves, and can still be purchased new/used and be ripped to their music server. Although seasoned computer audiophiles have been ripping DVDs for years most audiophiles making the move to a computer based system have no idea these discs can be ripped and certainly have no idea how it's done. That's 100% normal and not a slight on newbies here on Computer Audiophile. Nobody is born with this knowledge. Readers must learn at some point how to rip this great music to their music servers. What follows is a step by step guide to ripping DVD-Audio discs, ripping the audio from DVD-Video concerts, and ripping HDAD discs.

Computer audiophiles using Windows 7 based music servers have a plethora of configuration and application choices for music management and playback. A quick look at Wikipedia's list of applications, Windows, OS X and otherwise, can overwhelm anyone. Over the years I've tried more operating systems and applications than I can remember. Many of these have show stopping flaws that rule them out as contenders immediately. Applications that can't play certain file formats or all required sample rates don't receive much attention from me. That was the case over one year ago with J river Media Center 13. I tried to play some of the Reference Recordings HRx 24/176.4 material and had nothing but problems. No doubt the problems could have been worked out, but with so many options available elsewhere I didn't see any reason to spend time with the application. Since this initial underwhelming experience J River has released Media Center version 14. In addition many colleagues in the industry have encouraged me to give it another serious look. One colleague even backed up his suggestion with measurements showing JRMC's playback bit transparency. I started to see the light at CES this year and realized it was finally time take another look at J River Media Center as well as time to get serious about Windows 7.

The Computer Audiophile CD ripping strategy and methodology article has been one of the most popular writings on the site to date. Some readers have implemented the methodology exactly how it was written while others have put their own spin on it by changing file formats and the number of file copies. Other readers are still searching for a less time consuming way to rip their music collections. Over the last few weeks I've been using a CD ripping approach that's likely to satisfy those who want to get the job done but don't have a couple months of free time to rip 3000 CDs. The approach consists of an automated ripping robot in combination with Get Digital Data's Encode Center and GD3 Tagger software and its GD3 database. The experience was actually enjoyable from beginning to end. I'm willing to bet few if any readers have ever enjoyed ripping CDs.