jaw5

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to give some advice. I had not considered room acoustics or speaker placements nearly enough. It's easy to get caught up in the marketing onslaught for accessories (e.g. cables, power cords, etc.), when in reality some good old fashion tweaking is needed. I unfortunately don't have a dedicated room, so I've got some constraints, but there are many things I can try. It's funny - when I was in school, I had time and no money, so I would tweak the hell out of a system like this. Now, I have some money but no time, and it's tempting just to buy a cable and get on with the music! I'm not quite ready to give up on the Squeezebox Touch yet, given the many positive reviews and bit-perfect playback, but I will keep the Mac idea in mind for a future upgrade. I'll also get a budget DAC and decent cables to go with the Touch. Thanks again for the help. This is a great forum and site in general. I'll report back on what works. Joel

Hello, I recently setup a computer-based audio system, with GoldenEar Triton II speakers, Primaluna Dialaogue One integrated tube amp, and Squeezebox Touch as source (lossless AIFF files from CD). Cables and interconnects are cheap Monster variety, and power conditioner is Furman PST-8D. The system sounds great with regard to bass and midrange - vocals are smooth and realistic, and classical sounds so good that I've rediscovered it as a genre. However, the very high treble is a bit bright, edgy, and fatigueing when listening to rock music. Specifically, cymbals are over-pronounced and harsh. At the dealer, I did not hear much of this behavior with the Triton II's and Primaluna amp, so I've concluded it's because of the different source components, lack of external DAC, cheap cables, or the room itself. Any ideas on where this high-treble brightness is coming from? Considering the above issue, how should I allocate a $3k budget to source and cables? Mostly on a DAC, or half and half? Here's what I was thinking of trying. Thoughts on these or other models with regard to the treble issue? DACs: Musical Fidelity V-DAC II; Music Hall DAC25.3; Peachtree DACit; Moon 100D; Speaker Cables: Kimber Kable 8TC; Others? Analog Interconnects: Kimber Kable Hero; Cardas Microtwin Digital Coax: StraightWire Infolink Digital; Black Cat Veloce Thanks, Joel

Thanks for all the comments. Audioengr, what is the reason you don't recommend iTunes as a ripper? Is it simply the lack of accurate-rip assurance? Or are there other subtle differences? I'm pretty convinced after doing 10 CD's in dBPowerAmp that I would go through my entire collection and have less than a handful of rips that did not come back perfectly "secure". This is satisfactory to me, considering the time savings. But if there are other subtle differences which would affect sound quality even on typical rips of clean CD's, then I'm concerned. Any thoughts on this in particular? I agree regarding playback in iTunes on a Windows machine. It doesn't seem like they give enough user options and controls to set things up carefully. Thanks, Joel

Thanks to both of you for your comments. I tested 10 CD's in dBPowerAmp out of curiosity and all were ripped accurately with verified checksums. I see why there would be a benefit to getting a report if the CD is scratched, etc. But I'll proceed with re-ripping to AIFF in iTunes with error correction enabled. Regarding Squeezebox, thanks for the clarification. I think that was the question I was really asking, just didn't know it. jw

Hello, thank you for a great site. I have an ambitious plan to re-rip all CD's to lossless, then build an audiophile-quality 2-channel system in another room, linked by Squeezebox to the digital music. But most importantly, I want to get the first step right - burn the CD's to lossless with the best possible quality and future-readiness (yes, I've read the ripping strategy guide by Chris, which helped a lot). My CD's are already ripped to AAC, and I have spent a huge amount of time tagging them with custom metadata in the "comment" and rating field to make "smart playlists" in iTunes. If anyone hasn't tried this, consider it: I use a comma separated list of codes to denote the "type" of music, as genre is not enough to create great playlists. For example, B means it's the type of song you would want to hear at a BBQ, D is for driving, P is preparty of the college-inspired variety, R is relaxing music, etc. Takes some work, but once you've finished, iTunes becomes a superb playlist creator. I have found that when I re-rip directly with iTunes (Windows PC), it replaces the AAC file with the lossless, but also attaches all of the tags from the AAC to the new lossless file. I confirmed using dBPowerAmp that the metadata is embedded in the new file, not just associated with the iTunes database, making this a great way to upgrade to lossless without losing metadata. Ok, now the questions: 1. Is iTunes an acceptable ripping software for the aspiring audiophile? My cd's are all scratch-free, clean, and I have a good computer (Vista). Ripping in another program would instantly wipe out an outrageous amount of metadata work, but I suppose I could do it... (Can you tell which answer I'm hoping to get?) 2. If the answer to (1) is yes, then should I enable the error correction feature in iTunes? This slows the rip speed from 40x to 5x, but this is perfectly fine with me if it improves anything. 3. If I do rip with iTunes, the format choices are WAV, AIFF, and AppleLossless. I was sold on AIFF upon reading Chris's original article on the subject (good metadata support, future-proof, etc.). Then I was subsequently UN-sold on AIFF after Chris says in a later article that support on a Windows computer is poor outside of iTunes. 4. It sounds like iTunes with Windows just cannot be bit-perfect. Has this changed with the latest versions? If not, would using Sonos/Squeezebox or an iPod fix the issue allow me to go bit-perfect if setup correctly? I could switch to J River, but I'm a fan of iTunes unfortunately, and also the metadata won't all come along (star ratings, etc.). Thank you for your opinions on this! jaw5