Edie

No worries I'll just wait until the morning and I'll check dBpoweramp it can scan and test the drive and calibrate the offset. Edie x

+ 2

Ha I see Kuma thank rather disappointing I was hoping for Zen experience here but oh well. Could I possibly ask a favour of you? I'm looking for my drive offset I can't remember what it is and don't want to wake everyone up going down stairs for the PC... It's branded as a LaCie "9000282 d2" but I'm sure it's a Pioneer inside any idea how I would find out? Offsets Yours, Edie x Edit: Forgot to thank you for telling me XLD used AccurateRip so thank you I wasn't being rude I typed it and got signed out and had to retype. Edie x

Hi Tran, thank you for your comment. Well I feel better now about using AIFF *happy face* so thanks again to you and to Kuma. I will play around with the two use suggested I'm using Amarra as we speak. I will have to do some reading as much as I like my music I am not an audiophile (yet anyway) I can't say for certain what a noisefloor although if I was to guess I would say it's lowering the chances of interference from unwanted noise but I could have just made a complete fool out of myself ha! I am indeed using the USB as I don't think the 2010 Mini as room for a toslink sadly I have no idea what the others things you mentioned are my apologises. Thanks once more for your time and the warm welcome. Kind Regards, Edie x

Hi Kumakuma, thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my thread. I read a few users I didn't bother to note their usernames but I think the jist of their argument was that there is very little to no audio quality loss when you convert CD > FLAC/ALAC in comparison to the size of the files compared to the uncompressed FLAC or AIFF files it's not worth it? I am no audiophile and I realise that there will be a lot of opinion in matters like this but I was hoping for some consensus. Currently I use dBpoweramp on a PC although as of late it has entered public Beta for the OS X. The devs would welcome anyone who wishes to give it a try. I rip to the same drive that my Macs are contacted to so there isn't any time lost or unnecessary copying of files. Does XLD use "AccurateRip"? Kind Regards, Edie x

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.