Boatguy

I'd like to revive this thread. I have about 1,000 CDs ripped to AIFF. I play them from my iMac Pro to airplay capable receivers around the house. In my primary listening room I have an Anthem amp, Paradigm speakers and a pair of JL subs. My band aid solution at the moment is an earlier Apple TV connected via Ethernet to my iMac with an optical connection to the Anthem. I'd like to find a higher quality DAC that is AirPlay compatible via either WiFi or Ethernet. Can someone please direct me to the right forum or product? Thanks!

Several of the posts do point out that the solution for the iOS devices is easy; just use iTunes to sync to those devices and it will downsample the AIFF files. And as someone else points out, it will probably need to be either less than 320Kb, or less than the entire collection; the latter is definitely possible. I use my laptop when traveling, and it's more problematic. I can use dbPoweramp or Fission or some other products to produce a down sampled copy of the library, but I haven't figured out how to sync the playlists between the two libraries. If I could figure out how to have iTunes Match sync only playlists, it could work as it syncs the playlists nicely. Maybe I need to spend more time with that and let the iOS devices and laptop sync with it (very tedious because everything must come through the net, particularly when getting a new iPhone), and just make sure that my main library never downloads from iTunes Match. Thinking about this further, another solution is to forget the laptop all together and just buy an iPod Touch with 128GB for portable music. It makes more sense than loading up my iPhone with storage since I replace it every year and I could probably use the same iPod Touch for at least 3yrs before an update. Wow, what a concept - a portable music player! Deja vu! Thanks everyone!

I agree. What I read was in the Roon knowledgebase, like "Provide a great user experience. This means no stupid 2s delays when touching transport controls (looking at you, AirPlay)"

Thank you.

I'm been considering Roon. I have about 600GB of red book AIFF material which I currently play back through iTunes to six AirPlay devices (NAD, B&W and an Anthem via AppleTV) connected via Ethernet (no Wifi). I see lots of bad mouthing and trash talking of AirPlay in the Roon materials, and then some talk about supporting AirPlay, but nothing that ambiguously says that I can switch to Roon from iTunes without changing my end points. I'm not interested in struggling through a 14 day trial to find out if it works or not. What's the real story? Will Roon fit into this setup, or does it want some other endpoints? Thanks!

I'm sure I'm not the only person trying to do this, but I can't find a thread that covers the subject. About 80% of my collection is stored as red book AIFF, the balance is lower resolution. So what's the problem? I want a second copy of my collection, complete with playlists and metadata, ideally synchronized, with lower resolution for mobile and portable on my laptop and iOS devices. Lower resolution because the other devices don't have 600GB of storage. I can use dbPoweramp to do the initial conversion to a lower resolution, that's easy enough. But how do I keep them in sync? Let's assume I'm not wedded to any particular server / player, it's just a collection of music, though I currently have only Macs and don't particularly like working with Windows. What's the best solution, if there is one? Thanks!

Bravo! I was looking on the Music page, not the Summary page. Go it! Thank you very much! Happy New Year.

Yes, that would be Plan B, but I'm trying to avoid maintaining two libraries.

That's what I recall as well but I'm not seeing it in iTunes 12. Attached is a screen grab of what I'm seeing for options. Apple Support told me that it would use the Import options, but I tried that and one CD bumped the storage on my iPhone by 500MB (the size of the AIFF files) so I don't think that is correct either.

I'm building a Redbook + resolution iTunes library, but I'd like to avoid having to create and maintain a second library just for mobile devices. Playlists are particularly problematic with two libraries. I thought that at one point iTunes had a setting to downsample when syncing to an iPhone, iPad, etc. But I can't find the setting. Does anyone know if there is a setting somewhere so that I can have just one library, but end up with lower resolution stored to my mobile devices? Thanks!

Another basic question. The CA Academy article is now six years old. I've read lots of articles about being sure that the renderer has control of the USB clock and this seems to be pretty common these days. But when I read specs, the optical connection can usually handle higher bit rates. Odd since the bit rates of any music are so far below the actual transfer rate possible with USB 2.0. In any case, given the choice of a USB or optical port from my iMac, is one clearly better than the other? Just for context, consider that I could be feeding either an integrated amp with it's own DAC (NAD, Anthem, etc. etc.) or a discrete DAC like a Chord 2QUTE.

I completely understand your perspective. If I go to my local dealer and get advice or support then I feel an obligation to purchase there even though it's typically 25% more than I would pay elsewhere. However, if I independently decide I want a product I see no reason to pay the 25% premium. Additionally, the combination of a single dealer's ability to carry the multitude of product lines discussed here and the high end mfgs grant of pseudo exclusivity by carving up the geography mean that not everything is available locally.

Any suggestions on online outlets for DACs? Tired of paying inflated prices at my local shop.

I certainly don't know your financial situation, but Backblaze will backup an unlimited amount of data (and music) for $50/yr. Last month I bought a 4TB USB 3.0 disk for $130. In my opinion, storage cost is no longer a barrier. I'm ripping now with DBPoweramp as suggested by many in this thread and had to adjust to the fact that ripping to an uncompressed format (AIFF) takes no CPU effort at all and is very fast.

I'm going to have some basic questions, the first of which is about ripping. The articles in CA academy on ripping are 6yrs old. The "what format" is probably more accurate now than ever given the plunging prices of storage. However, while the overall strategy is probably still relevant, the software references seem very out of date. GD3's software still references Windows XP, Vista or 7, not exactly current and no mention of OSX. I'm on a Mac so obviously I can use iTunes to rip to AIFF. Is there some other software that is a superior solution? Thanks!