First post....
A year or two ago I set about to set up a computer that would play DVDs, Blu-rays and music. The DVD/Blu-ray part did not work out very well so I decided to just keep it as a music machine. I was using Itunes but was not quite happy with the resolution I was getting. Also I was getting a sort of lisp or sibilance on some tunes, more-so on downloaded MP3s and songs I had ripped from some DVDs. I was using apple lossless in Itunes. When I ripped from DVDs I was feeding the outboard DVD player into the line in and 'recording" them using Audacity and then convert them into MP3s
The sibilance bugged me more and more so I did some reading and decide to go with FLAC under Songbird. I have since been reading about Foobar so I downloaded that and when I am done re-ripping my 300 CDs I will install that for playback. I also decide the line output from my Gigabyte mbrd might not be the best of choices for playback so I ordered a M-Audio 2496 card.
I am a big fan of vinyl and would like to get as close to that wonderful sound as possible.
Here's what I have and the method I have been using.
LG Blu-ray/HD/DVD/CD rom
rip CDs into XP (os) hard drive (with FLAC/Songbird now)
Playback using line out (the green plug) on the Gigabyte mbrd (this will soon be changed to the M-Audio 2496 card) into the CD IN on my NAD 1700 preamp then on to the MC275 power amp and into some Klipsch speakers.
If anyone can suggest tweaks or see something I am doing wrong please let me know.
Always looking to improve
Thanks
