deniall83

I'm looking for a product that I can add digital files to and then use my iPhone to select and play the tracks. I would want at least 1TB of storage and ability to plug directly into a power amp would be great. I don't need to stream from my computer, would prefer to have the files on the actual unit itself. Is there anything that fits my criteria?

Thanks for the reply. I had a play with foobar last night and eventually got it sounding absolutely amazing stright from the headphone jack. I'm actually really surprised how good this sounds without a DAC/Amp.

Hey guys, I just registered today. I have a tiny little 10 inch HP laptop that I bought when I was backpacking and I decided to turn it into a music server since I never use it. I found a great guide on how to optimize your laptop for audio in the Absolute Fidelity newsletter and spent last night doing everything it said. It showed what functions to turn off, what components to add to foobar etc. I have a few questions though which I hope you can answer. I'm still waiting on my USB DAC/Amp so I just used the onboard sound to have a listen through my HD650's. Foobar sounded absolutely horrible. At full volume (foobar and computer both at full) it was really distorted despite not being very loud. I have a look through foobar and noticed that gain was turned on so I turned it off and there was a slight improvement. I then downloaded itunes for the hell of it and followed the itunes setup guide I found online. It sounded much better than foobar running ALAC files (foobar was running FLAC). So my question is, why is this? Surely foobar should sound better than itunes. Where can I find a guide that takes me through foobar setup? A few more questions, do you think my little HP laptop can do a resonable job as a music server? Does connecting an external hard drive containing music via USB alter the sound at all? Anything else I should look at to optimize this laptop? Thanks a lot.