Welcome to the forum! Don't worry about blowing it, Computer Audiophile is a laid back site with members ranging from major audiophile to not-even-close to audiophile (and wouldn't want to be). Post whatever you want, questions or experiences. If you have the question chances are so do many other people. If you write about an experience chances are that someone will read it and save themselves time or money. I've also found that I just like reading about people's experiences related to music or audiophile interests.

Anyway, software is a huge part of music playback. The main thing to make sure is that your software is bit perfect. I have heard great things about WinAmp, but I have heard better things about Foobar 2K. Most "hard core" audiophiles on PCs use EAC Exact Audio Copy to rip their music and then listen via Foobar 2K. You mention ripping to wav files. I too like uncompressed music. Many people don't think there is a difference between a lossless codec and uncompressed music. I guess for them that's cool, but I'll be sticking to AIFF files for myself. No right or wrong here.

Hey Rich - Welcome to Computer Audiophile. I think you'll find a lot of vinyl fans just like yourself here. In the not to distant future music will only be available on vinyl or via download.

I'm not a fan of Windows Media Player and I haven't met many audiophiles that use it. I don't believe you can get bit perfect output from WMP either. Whether you'll notice a difference between WMP and Foobar is tough to say. Some people will notice a huge difference and others may not even notice anything. Of course the source material matters and the playback equipment matters as well. Foobar is free so it wouldn't hurt to try it. I don't like the interface and think much of it is unneeded. In my opinion you just need something with bit perfect output and you'll be just fine. I'm sure others will disagree greatly, but oh well.

WMA lossless is a god choice right now. There are better, but chances are you won't get the same content on a different site or format. For the MusicGiants DRM-FREE files I convert them to AIFF which is my preferred format on my Mac.

I'm not sure what you mean by your Flintstone comment. Downloading to your laptop is the future of music. Maybe I'm not getting your question totally.

Feel free to post many questions. There are some very knowledgeable people around here who are actually nice to talk to. Whenever we can't answer a question we often get a manufacturer or software developer of a specific application to jump in and clear things up.

Again, welcome to Computer Audiophile. We hope to see you around often.

I use J River MC 12 right now, but will switch to the Jukebox (music only) after the trial runs out. Primarily due to the huge learning curve it has and the protracted, forum based support it offers. IMO a paid for version should offer better support than posting a question which may or may not be addressed. For free? Well, OK... I'll do some research on free stuff when I'm in a jam.

so much for my rant on J River. I use it because it sounds excellent. in conjunction with the $70 USB driver I got elsewhere... not from JR. it rivals my main CDP/DAC combo in fact.

I've used Winamp as well. The Camel sounds a bit brighter to me overall, just as does Windows Media Player. The latter's GUI has become intolerable for my needs as well so I never use it.

I am looking for a replacement to the iTunes software which I use to rip CDs with into AAC lossless. meta data has no allure for me, only the file descriptive text are my concerns... and error free ripping of course. I only use the Apple lossless as it embeds data onto the file, unlike WAVE files whose tags can be lost if the proprietary ripping SW is not in place. Been there done that and unless some new WAVE file thingy is about now, I'll stay with AAC LL, or switch over and onwards with FLAC I guess.

so any thoughts here abouts on easy to use ripping software which supports multiple codecs and error free rips???

Thanks much

This is my first post, though I've been reading the comments on your site with interest for a while now, and I really think you folks are at the cutting edge of hi-fi in the home.

On the question of what playback software to use, I can't help but think that results are system-dependent. Certainly, I get the best results on my Sony Vaio laptop by using Sony's own Sonic Stage, though hardly anyone else seems to have a good word to say about it.

I've tried i-tunes, Windows Media Player, J-River and Bang and Olufsen's software and none comes close to Sonic Stage, which, to my ears, out-performs CD (including when listening to WAV files created from CD in the first place, as well to as 24/96 files from the Linn website and others.)

Incidentally, the Vaio has an optical digital output via its docking station, so I'm using this, connected to a Quad CDPII CD player/digital pre-amp and then straight into a Musical Fidelity power amp and B&W 803d speakers. In other words, I'm using a reasonably high-end system, which I would expect to reveal any shortcomings in playback software.

One other thought: as far as I can tell, equalizer plug-ins destroy the sound quality, but, again, this may be system-dependent.

I'm currently on a PC utilizing iTunes, importing files as Apple Lossless files using the iTunes program. Is this less-than-ideal? I have no problem whatsoever moving to a new program if there's sound quality to be gained, or to another import format as well. I just import via iTunes because it's easy and automatically adds the files to my library. Will other programs (like Sonic Stage) recognize Apple Lossless files? Any advice here would be awesome - this is all kind of daunting.