neovibe

After further testing, MP3 Trimmer does not perfectly cut CBR mp3's, VBR's are even less perfect and when transfered to ipod they are not seekable (skips to next track). There's a .JAR command line tool that works much better, PCUT MP3, seems like it should run in OSX but I haven't tried yet...

Sorry for bringing this up again but I still can't understand what are the drawbacks of having an iTunes library on an airdisk. Just got my mac mini and I'm considering pluging the USB library HD to an airport extreme to get it out of the listening room. I know there's the automount thing to beware of (chris wrote an article on this) but that is it I guess. Am I missing something? Thanks

iPad that is it! I was going to buy a macbook pro to use as a home laptop (mostly for entertainment, work is with the company pc laptop) and as audio transport/music storage, but waited for the ipad presentation and then it was clear to me, the perfect solution (for my case) is definitely ipad+mini. for simple tasks, within it's capabilities, the ipad is better at all it does than the macbook, and for music server, a minimalist desktop is perfect, much better than a laptop you carry, plug and unplug from the DAC. if the ipad runs the remote app (and hopefully with more browsing capabilities) then it's going to be great. But not all is simple, and the perfect solution would be to have screen sharing with the mini... i'm sure someone will develop it and then you will be carrying only the ipad (in reality is a screen, keyboard and mouse) and leave the cpu and harddrives anywhere else. I'm really looking forward to this. cheers

ok, seems like this is not an issue for anyone around. anyway, for the record, found a possible solution, mp3trimmer - deepniner.net/mp3trimmer/ cheers

OK, there is more to bit perfect than the data sequence, but what I meant is that for those systems where such an expensive card makes no sense (IMHO it only makes sense for system beyond a certain cost), the airport express provides an easy and cheap solution. From your point I have 2 questions (forgive me if I'm going offtopic): - how does the digital out of macbook/itunes compare? would you call it bit perfect or is it full of jitter too? (so many people using it here) - what else besides getting the right sequence of bits matters? Is it just the clocking part? thank you all for your time, this thread has been very informative.

Hi everyone, OK, so bit-perfect from itunes in any PC is always hard if not impossible to acheive (not discussing who's right), but for 90$ there's very simple way: Apple's Airport Express! It's a Wifi audio streamer (works via ethernet too) with an optical out that has been declared by stereophile as bit-perfect. Just select the device as your output in itunes and that's it. I have never heard this not to be true in PC. Maybe you guys care to test it? Now the sad part for me is that I tried it and the digital out did not work properly: with itunes9 (and you do need 9 for any sync with ipod) there was an incompatibility with my DAC so I gave up. But that is my case, the device works OK for many others. Just get it in a place where they take returns. Hope this helps someone...

Assuming there are people around with huge libraries consisting of 1 mp3 per album plus a cuesheet running mac, what softare do you recommend for lossless split of those in tracks? I'm looking for a MAC tool that: - does not recompress audio at splitting; - correctly splits the files so that gapless playback in itunes is guaranteed; - puts the artist/song info from the cue into the tags; Your suggestions?? (no, MAX does not do this, it recompresses) thanks in advance

So a couple of conclusions:<br /> - bit-perfect is a requirement but not sufficient<br /> - "Mac isn't the only game in town it's just the easier one." (Chris)<br /> <br /> It still feels strange to me that 2 bit-perfect signals can sound different. In the end it does not matter, each one should listen and if there's no difference pick the cheapest solution, if there is a difference go for the best you can/want to pay. Problem is from a when you need to make choices without much chance of listening to the several options... then this sort of discussion is indeed helpful (no matter how pointless it may seem to some people).<br /> <br /> But as Chris pointed, Mac is always the easier option... how many threads are there discussing bit-perfect in apple platforms? It's guaranteed out-of-the-box (ok, so then there's the Amarra question...) but it's always more expensive in hardware and much less flexible than PC... time to make a decision....<br /> <br /> thank you all for your clarifications

I think it is very unlikely (IMHO) that it will work by uploading your gigantic libraries filled with music apple does not know if you paid for. For me, this is only about music being sold through the itunes store (it's already on their servers!) that you will be able to play anywhere you have a browser... And yes, for 'normal' people for who 192k mp3 is as good as it gets, as long as there is cheap acess to a lot of bandwith, what's the point of 'carrying' your library? It's all in the cloud

ok, I do understand... some things are so complex than unless we have a low level detailed understanding of it all, then, in general it becomes more of a random phenomenon, a black art... or audiophile <br /> <br /> more to the point now, m-audio usb soundcard (with windows 7 drivers) bit-true or not? what's your opinion?

Important question (or is it a dumb one??)... using WASAPI exclusive, is ANY digital out of a PC necessarily bit-perfect??<br /> <br /> For XP I had an M-Audio Audiophile USB via ASIO. Now on Windows 7 via WASAPI exclusive, will this be bit-perfect too??<br /> <br /> And how about the SPDIF out of ANY mainboard out there?<br /> <br /> Can we conclude that getting a bit-perfect out of a PC has just got significantly cheaper? Or in another way, exclusively for digital audio out, why would anyone pay extra for a 'good' soundcard in a Windows 7 platform?<br /> <br /> Am I missing something? thanks.

I have considered a laptop but for that it would be a macbook pro... bit perfect out of the box, the move to itunes would be complicated but achievable and would simplify the sync with ipod/iphone. However, the PC upgrade is less than a third of a 13" macbook pro (let alone the 15" I was looking at) because I only need CPU, memory, mainboard and a regular internal harddrive. Also, no library conversion effort on my part I am looking forward to try WASAPI and compare to ASIO. Hope WASAPI works OK with an M-Audio USB card... So, any recomendations on hardware? Currently looking at Intel Core i3 entry level, 4gb memory, Asus H55 mainboard (integrated graphic on the CPU, Full HD out from the mainboard)

Dear all, Now that my PC as died I need to set up a new one and I confess I am pretty lost in terms of how many cores I want and wether I need DDR3 blablabla.... you get the point, so I really need some guidance to spec the machine. Gone are the days when I knew the cpu offerings back and forth Currently I have an M-Audio USB Audiophile and use JR Media Center 12 for playback via ASIO. My objective is to get bit-perfect out from windows 7 and JR Media Center 14 and the M-Audio Audiophile USB, using a very silent, modestly specced HTPC I have read about win7 & JRMC14 but not about a usb card with these... any idea on whether this will work bit-perfect? I plan on using it mostly via an iphone as a remote for JRMC14 so this HTPC will be used for music playback, library organizing and some websurfing and downloads, nothing else, not even video, so the processing requirements are pretty low. Another requirement is silence: fanless mainboard, fanless graphics card (integrated or not, you tell me) and fanless CPU (that's right, just a good heatsink) - no high performance cpu required. Case is an Antec Solo, suspended hard-drives, 120mm fan and very, very good airflow (trust me). So I'm looking for CPU, mainboard, RAM, graphics card (?) recommendations. Thanks in advance, I'm quite lost on this...

"So long as the NAS talks a network protocol the computer can understand (SMB or AFP for Apple); the internal filing system doesn't matter" but which NAS talk which protocol and do both PC and MAC understand both protocols? an external HD (HFS or NTFS as it doesn't matter) connected to a standard router will use which protocol? will that protocol be understood by both PC and MAC? thanks again

hi there, I need to set up a home NAS for my music collection, that needs to be acessed from both a PC and a MAC laptop via the home wifi network. There area many ways to do this but my main problem is... what about drive formats? I know NTFS and apple's filesystem are incompatible (in the sense that plugging an NTFS-formated USB hard-drive to a MAC won't work as far as I could work out), but what about in a NAS, is the file system important? My 2 options at the moment are: -western digital mybook world edition connected via ethernet cable to the wifi router -a linksys router with USB input for connecting a standard external hard-drive in any of these cases, does the drive file system format matter? FYI, if it matters, it would be acceptable for me that the PC laptop could only READ the files (not change) I'm kind of lost here, so I'd really appreciate your help.