Warning the following post may be TL:DR...
Hello Audiophiles,
I'm Edie and I apologize for the rather generic thread title. I have a lot to get through but the bulk of my post is likely to be software related so I have posted it here. I only discovered "Computer Audiophile" yesterday and have yet to determine the median age of users here but I'll hazard a guess and say I'm younger than most of you as I'm still in High School.
I am primarily an Apple Mac user and always have been at both and school. I built a small PC two or three years ago with the help of my brother in order to use dBpoweramp to rip my CDs. I use some other tools on the PC to ensure prefect rips PerfectTUNES etc but other than that my Windows knowledge is limited.
To date I have roughly 14,000 - obviously some albums contain multiple discs, box sets even more - with that many albums to rip I want to make sure I get it right first time. My Father and I have worked that figure out and we a certain it's pretty accurate give or take.
As a Mac user I have always used iTunes and I an quite found of it although I am aware of it's limitations. I am in the process of trying out software that from what I have seen is popular on this site Amarra, Audirvana, and Pure Music. Obviously I am not running them all at once I will try one at a time uninstall and try another.
I would be prepared to abandon iTunes if the sound benefits were worth it. However I really like how easy things are to find in iTunes so some sort of organisation is essential beyond a search bar.
My Current Hardware:
Current - 15" Retina MacBook Pro (2.8GHz Quad-core i7 TB @ 4.0 GHz) with 16GB RAM & 1TB PCIe Storage.
2010 - Mac Mini (2.66GHz Core 2 Duo) with 16GB RAM & 256GB SSD.
PC - Barebones (3.5GHz Core i5) with 16GB of RAM & 500GB SSD (self-build)
Disc Drive - LaCie Blu-ray XL external drive
Current - 128GB iPad Mini 3 (Wi-Fi/Cellular)
Mobile Player - iPod Classic 160GB still going strong!
Headphones:
Sennheiser HD 598s
Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless (Bluetooth)
External Headphone Amp:
Music Fidelity Y90-HPA
STORAGE 24TB TOTAL = 12TB MUSIC STORAGE / 12TB REDUNDANCY
Although I am well looked after my family and I live quite comfortably everything bar the MacBook was purchased with my own money. The Mac Mini was bought second hand "broken: spares and repairs" I was able to fix it in about 40 minutes and I plan on using it for my music playback.
I will be using the Mac Mini and either set of headphones one with the amp one without to playback lossless tracks using the iPad as a remote if available. Please bare this in mind if and when you answer the following questions thank you.
Here come the questions:
Software: Mac only what software in your opinion delivers the best possible sound? I don't care if it's a standalone player, add-on to iTunes and app whatever or a combination; All opinions welcome.
Format: I had begun to re-rip my music to lossless as AIFF. but I read on here this was a terrible idea so it's a toss up between ALAC or FLAC? I know this has likely be been done 1000 times but please for my benefit which would you choose? If the answer is FLAC and your familiar with dBpoweramp would you leave the compression setting at 5 or change it?
The Future: Looking to the future how would you improve my setup? I do have money set a side for such a purchase £1200 left over from work and Christmas etc so your advice would be greatly appreciated.
Sorry for the long post...
Edie x
ps.
Oh and not that I think it will make much of a difference but I like Classical music exclusively with the expection of some avant-grade artists. It just occurred to me it might be important in settings, equalisers you know.