Chipper

Faster than half of the U.S. with this result, and this isn't even super fast compared to college networks, or what they get over in South Korea. $55 per month for Road Runner...I have no tv service with them, nor a phone bill, so this is pretty much the flat rate. Time Warner basically has a monopoly on the area.

If it isn't easy to operate, I don't frankly care how good it may sound. If I can't get it to work, then I don't plan on using it. Therefore I need a balance.

For those wondering: I own these - SP-BS21-LR - Bookshelf Loudspeakers. | Pioneer Electronics USA and power them with a 2.0 amp. I hook 'em up to a 10 year old DVD player to play CDs. I can hear you all squirming now at such a lowly setup, but wait...they're all plugged into a $10 power strip. Agony! Seriously, its one of the best things I invested audibly into next to my Sony Walkman and Thinksound IEMs. Apartment life doesn't allow me to blast music through floorstanders, and I'm still paying grad school loans five years after graduating. Needless to say I'll never have what probably 90% of the people on this forum possess. Back on topic, I did go and play around with some trials of paid-for programs, and I'm hearing no differences. If there are any, its not obvious or at a stage where I think I need to pay $50+ for the ability to go above and beyond the hearing threshold I've already reached. So it seems I've maxed out given equipment and what my ears allow me to hear. Hopefully the topic proves worthwhile for those fence sitters and those with golden ears and unlimited budgets. Hahaha! Wasn't expecting that, though I'm gracious you offered one all the same.

Chris, no bait and tackle here...though I can certainly see why some would think I'm waiting with a line and hook being a hydrogenaudio member. I honestly want to know what the price tag buys if all these players supposedly can do the same thing. Actually I'm hoping this topic could also potentially help other newbies or lurkers that probably want to know the same thing...what does my $50 (or however much) truly get me? Now to answer some specific people. Not after anything fancy, personally. The JRiver program includes a video program which I will never use personally. I'm too in bed with MPC-HC which just flat out works without installing. Got it. That's generally what I figured. I don't have uber quality stuff (M-Audio FastTrack and Thinksound IEMs), so perhaps my stuff isn't revealing to the point that a difference could be there. Plus my hearing caps out at 16.5khz tones, so God didn't give me golden ears either. Audio file --> Player --> DAC --> Audio Out --> Amp/Speakers As I understand it, Windows 7 handles audio much better than XP did, and with the WASAPI control, now you can let the player and DAC run the audio without Windows getting involved. Guess I got to try some stuff then. Off to free demoland I go. I'm not totally clueless. I know different audio players can supposedly make different sounds, but the bigger step to audio nirvana has always been the speakers or headphones--you get what you pay for in those cases. So hence, why I'm trying to see what those extra dollars for a piece of software gets you.

Basically, I'm just here to ask why members are interested in purchasing audio/video programs such as JRiver or Amarra when free alternatives such as foobar2000 or xmplay exist and can do bit-perfect sound on computers. What else is there worth paying for? Isn't bit-perfect reproduction through ASIO or WASAPI what you all are after? Enlighten me.

Yes, ALAC can do this. OP just wanted to know what he should use with itunes and non-audiophile equipment. Didn't expect one mention of Hydrogenaudio (infrequent poster there--like the concept, hate their attitudes sometimes) to cause all that. Unless the OP's system is seriously messed up, there isn't going to be a difference in decoding ALAC and AIFF using itunes. Lossless is lossless.

If you goal is one format to play on itunes, then go with ALAC as I said before. It works perfectly fine in itunes and allows for easy management on mac systems. Some reading on lossless audio and why ALAC is the same as AIFF - Lossless - Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase

ASIO - Audio Stream Input/Output - Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase WASAPI on foobar - Foobar2000:Components 0.9/WASAPI output support (foo out wasapi) - Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase

foobar2000 xmplay winamp Take your pick, these are all free, and all operate differently. It'll be what's comfortable for you. All can support WASAPI playback so playing a FLAC bit-perfectly is not a problem for any of these players.

If you plan to stay in the Apple universe, convert your FLACs to ALACs. You're just going to burn up space using AIFF files, and why would you do that when both are lossless formats? You'll probably want to buy more music over time, so the space savings will be apparent now, and save you the trouble of converting to save space later.

I only get to choose three? This will be hard to do.....but I will select these: Princess Mononoke Symphonic Suite by Joe Hisaishi Dances With Wolves by John Barry The Land Before Time by James Horner I can listen to all three of these straight through and be in musical bliss.

Most people will either leave the grills on or off because of looks, not because it sounds any different. My grills stay on because I don't want to accidentally destroy the cone, not because of sound quality differences (if there really is any).

I agree with the fact that music is often mastered too loudly and clips so it audibly sounds bad. Whether or not "pop music" all sounds the same or is crap is personal opinion. I don't personally like it much, but I'm not the best representative of the music-listening population either.

Bookshelf speakers: Pioneer SP-BS21LR For what I listen to, and how much I can hear, these are more than enough. $100

I simply use the two internal hard-drives in my laptop, and two external usb drives that I update when I put new stuff in. Have never lost a collection with this many mirrors of the collection...if ones goes, I have another (and then buy a new drive to replace the one that fails). One of the externals stays offsite as well. I've never used RAID or any of this specialized stuff. Unless you continually add stuff to your music library daily, you don't need automatic backups by the second. Also cloud storage is a bad idea if your ISP limits your upload speed (only get about 200kbps here)...you'll be there forever getting stuff up "in the cloud". Just some thoughts.