Firstly, I have set it to “Import CD and Eject” when I insert a CD. The important settings are near the bottom of this screen. I’ve turned off most of the junk in the top section, as I just use iTunes for music. Firstly, here is the General Settings screen: Let’s go through the iTunes Preferences screens one at a time. You will firstly need to set the options that control how iTunes operates. Avoid making that “something else” include using the same computer that the CD is being ripped on, though. You will find the ripping process to be quite time-consuming, so it’s best set up as a “background task” while doing something else. I’m going to assume that you have a CD collection that you want to import or “rip.” I suggest that you work through this section with perhaps a dozen CDs first, and make sure that everything is to your satisfaction before doing your whole collection. Let’s get some music loaded into your machine. You will also need a DAC that can be interfaced to the computer. Once you understand the ins and outs of computer-based audio playback better, you can decide on whether to get a dedicated machine for music. I think the key thing, though, is to just get started with what you have. I have one of each of those too, and while the Mini is the main music machine in the living room, the others get used for desktop and headphone listening respectively. While a Mac mini is a great choice for a dedicated machine, iMacs and MacBooks can also be used. You don’t need a powerhouse machine – my music computer is the cheapest 2011 Mac mini with 2 GB of RAM – although once you get into more advanced features of some of the alternate players, you may want to invest in more memory. A Mac mini is a great solution, as it is sufficiently powerful, small enough to fit almost anywhere, and can be run “headless” if you wish. The current (2011 onwards) Mac mini doesn’t have a CD drive in it, so you will also need to purchase an external “Superdrive” to go with it. If you decide to set up a permanent music computer, you should be looking towards an Intel CPU running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or OS X 10.7 Lion. ![]() This is a good way to explore computer-based playback cheaply, if you have or can borrow an old computer for this purpose – my first music computer was a first-generation G4 Mac mini. It will need to have a reasonably recent version of the OS X operating system, and the latest version of iTunes. As of the time of writing, iTunes is still supported on OS X 10.5 Leopard and will work on a PowerPC machine. The first thing you’ll need, of course, is a Mac. ![]() This article aims to be a helpful “getting started” guide – not the be all and end all, but to get you started on the path of using a Mac computer as a music “source” or “transport” in a hi-fidelity music playback system. The playback software we’ll be using in this introductory article is iTunes. It’s not really as simple as that, of course… but given the flexibility and convenience, we at HifiZine decided to explore computer-based playback a little more. The advantages of storing everything on a computer are compelling: better ways to organize and search your music collection, access to more advanced “hi-rez” formats, and of course, no need for shelves and shelves of physical CD cases. Benchmark claim that almost no devices they tested are able to properly cope with digital inter sample overs which exist on nearly all pop and rock music! The industry is rather an embarrassment technically.More and more audiophiles are using a computer to purchase, manage, and play back music. It is the blind leading the blind.Įxample, Schiit Audio simply truncated the last bits on their multibit DAC - no dithering was applied! Not to pick on Schiit but this just shows you how very little technical knowledge the industry actually has. ![]() ![]() Software engineers rarely have degrees in audio engineering and time series analysis and methods of signal processing. Rounding errors due too poor choice of precision. In my experience, there are often bugs in audio software. The fact that so many folks report differences with different converters tells you that file conversion is often NOT transparent.Ĭurrently there is a bug with AAC 22.05 KHZ files. I feed ONLY native bit perfect files to my DAC. Bugs in Apple Core audio sample rate converter (no dithering). Essentially everything is turned off.īeen burned so many times by software and software updates.
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