modjibe

Hi ! My M-Audio Firewire is broken... I was never satisfied with it, so i'm quite happy; The firewire specs wasn't followed by this soundcard. It has broken the firewire port of my macbook one day... So now I need a new dac around 250$. I thought buying the beresford 7520 (caiman is sold out...) but i don't want to lose sound quality to my prior dac. What do you think ? I also think about the dacmagic. JB

You also have the choice to create a new one, then copy the music files (oups ! i've almost said mp3...) in the created library and let itunes consolidate. Or re import all the files with a new library files. I give you this useful link : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1589

Or just press "Apple" when you start iTunes... "Apple" or an another taste. Just google it, I did it when I move my library to an another harddrive.

Would be very interesting to extend such testings. For example I wonder how it is between firewire and optical.

I wonder how the usb cable can affect the sound quality as far as the data sent are digital. I mean 1.3 is still 1 and 0.2 is still 0. Maybe in the case of a solar storm could it be worse. So, let explain it to me.

For me, Songbird is a definitive Play killer because i wonder how you can manage a big library with Play... And if you like smart sound you probably want a smart app too. By the way i also like last.fm, nova (the damned good french radio), the hype machine... so Songbird is the right connected software. by the way, Play, iTunes, Songbird... manage the sound level a little bit different. But it's just the sound level ! For the timbre, i don't know if smooth is the right adjective. You know a flute can be pretty smooth but a bugle...

I wonder which of the two is actually better. The M-Audio cost 2,5x the Beresford, which is acclaimed from the critics. For 120£, i'm ready to change.

Hi ! My favorite streaming plateform decided to upgrade the quality of the music streamed to 320kbps in comparison to the 160kbps (the user has the ability to choose the quality). It is encoded in ogg. The catalog is gradually converted. I think this is pretty cool. I like hd tracks, but I like the way i can discover new bands trough "lofi" media. Oh, and to get the 320 kbps you got to be a premium member. Why not ? I think deezer is limited to 128kbps. This is a constraint from the music labels. Jb

And iTunes have a big problem : it has no native flac files support. THe existing solutions are not good enough. Songbird rocks and play perfectly high-res. audio files.

http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/topics/songbird_still_cant_play_high_resolution_audio Here i found a discussion about the high res support in Songbird. It seems that the development team is aware to make the software compatible with hifi flac files. This is great, isn't it ?

I used to hear my flac files on my Macbook with Play (sbooth.org). VLC can't play flac files properly. I have tested Songbird 1.0 and I have been surprised. It is now ok with flacs ! Songbird was first based on VLC but now they use the GStreamer framework. I don't now the specs but it works and by ear, it sounds great ! I first thought Songbird had difficulties with 24bits/96khz files but was just a matter of level ! The coverflow is not as good as with Itunes but it is a lot smarter than the Play's GUI ! Love it ! Think I will now use Songbird instead of Itunes and Play.

yeah i'll think i will keep it for a while...

Well, to convert my 24/96 flac files to alac won't be easy. I would like something on the go... I don't want to do flac --> wac --> alac true itunes. Db power amp can't help. Gonk to. Has anyone a suggestion ?

Hi I tried to convert flac to alac with dbpoweramp and the soft say that it only supports 16 bits resolution. After a quick search i read that alac might support 16bit/48khz max. Well i'll keep my flacs file for a while then... JB

For 475$ I would like to here it before ! I have to find a shop in Paris which propose some dacs. JB