Im new to the audiophile world. Im doing research constantly to try to get caught up to all the true audiophiles out there. I was attached to itunes, and researched heavily on how to get bit perfect playback. Ive read all the posts here and many on other sights on this issue and though i cant come close to matching your expertise, im going to give my opinion anyway. :-)
given all the testing people are doing it seems only a few programs with vista or win 7 (im not a mac person so i claim no knowledge in this area) give bit perfect output. to me foobar was the easiest choice. it took just a few minutes to configure with the wasapi plugin and the apple lossless codec, I chose a very basic interface so that i could play my music easily, I made sure my windows mixer settings complied with my foobar settings, (44.1 16 bit for me) and off i went. Now i dont mind switching from itunes to foobar at all. when i need to rip a cd i still use itunes alac, and foobar picks it right up. I dont have to think about it anymore, it works, its easy.. onto the music :-)
it seems to me that the people really doing the data comparisons are saying itunes simply wont do bit perfect, though to me, it sounds so close some people may just decide to get over it and listen through itunes anyway. I still lean towards foobar sounding better though.
there also seems to be lively discussion on head phi that leans toward saying 44.1 and 16bit are the best way to listen, and anything upsampling is just nonsense. im not even going to begin to try to tackle that, but its worth taking a look at. there are very knowledgeable people there and many of then do tests rather than using their questionable ears as the judge.
thanks
