Just to expand on Drubin's point. Mac's don't use soundcards - effectively the soundcard function is built in. There are five ways to get sound out of your Mac.
#1 - use the audio out, which is a 3.5mm mini plug to stereo cable that you plug into your preamp or speakers if they are self powered.
#2 - Toslink out - this is a glass fiber that carries SPDIF from the Mac to a DAC. The DAC makes the bits back into notes and you plug the DAC into your pre, or direct into your amp or your speakers - you can use the Mac volume control bar
#3 - USB out to a USB DAC and then the same as above
#4 - You can use Airport Express which allows you to send analog music wirelessly to a receiver. You then plug the reciever into your preamp etc
#5 - You can use either the Ethernet out or wireless (802.11) to send music from your Mac to a Logitech Squeezebox or I believe a Sonos.
Each approach has its advantages. There are different offerings at different price points in most categories. The hot set-up is probably the USB DAC, followed by the Squeezebox.
No matter which of these you select (and you can also mix and match) do what Drubin suggests which is to rip all of your CDs in Apple Lossless with Error Correction on, and all other checkboxes off. You will find all this under Preferences, the import is selected under Advanced/Import.
Lots to read about all this stuff here and on audioasylum's PC Forum.
Have fun |
Rbstehno -
Impressive and thorough approach.
Could you please tell us how many unique CD titles you have, and in how many formats. Would be helpful to give people some perspective on how you ended up with this much data.
Also could you explain where the Mini and RAID 5 rig is located in your home, how much space it takes and if its Firewire or SATA.
It's important that newbies (especially the many who are trying computer playback for the first time) are not scared off by the kind of complexity you are wrestling with, so any context you could provide would be invaluable. |
Tom -
Do Apple Lossless. First of all, as you do more listening, you will end up there anyhow. That is 100% a universally held opinion and a basic tenet to getting the most out of your system.
More to the point, since you are using this professionally, an Apple Lossless file can be converted to an AIFF, WAV or other format that you may want or have to use in the future. An AAC cannot since the data has been lost. |
best to have everything off except for "error correction on" on the Advanced/Importing page |
Dbphd - it's universal. The sound card functionality is built-in to each and every Mac regardless of form factor except the servers.
Lossless takes up considerably more space then AAC, but nowhere near as much as WAV or AIFF.
I have about 15,000 songs Apple Lossless songs which is about 1,500 CDs (including extended classical and jazz pieces) on a 400Gb hard drive. It takes up about 335Gb, and I maintain a complete back up on a separate drive. Keep in mind that you never get the full amount of the drive.
Hard to say on pictures since I don't know what size images you shoot, whether you have RAW files, or they are all 800dpi JPGs or what. (It's that whole compression thing again.)
Sounds as though a 350Gb drive will do for a good long while. If you haven't bought one yet, get a 400. Storage is unbelievably inexpensive. A good source is newegg. |
If you are using a Mac (which you are) the best quality and the most flexible format is Apple Lossless. Apple Lossless offers an additional advantage, it deals with metadata very well - the various bits of information about each song.
I think your notes must be a bit scrambled because WAV and AIFF are uncompressed audio - they are as good as Lossless but take more space and do not handle metadata as well. AIFF is the file type you pull off a CD...
Here is the way that most people here do the math. Depending exactly on what you get, a very large drive is under $150. A backup is another $150. Here is an example
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136025
Now let's calculate the value of a 1,000 CDs and add to that the time it is going to take you to rip them. Suddenly the cost of the hard drive is not a significant part of the equation - which makes the difference between Apple Lossless and AAC moot. |
Hi RB -
I figured you must have more going on then just the CDs - I have 1,500+ in Apple Lossless on one 400Gb and one back-up.
Do you have your LPs ripped as well? How big is a file? I am not a vinyl guy (have to practice self control somewhere) so I have not had the chance to play with that.
FWIW I have been much, much happier since I left Firewire for SATA. Beyond it being faster - which is nice when cloning or backing up (obviously not a playback issue) it is so much more robust. Doesn't care how its shut down or started up etc. The new 32Mb cache drives rock. I cloned my whole music drive (375Gbs) in less then 2 hours.
Still I am with you, a NAS would be great - especially to get the noise out of the room. |
Yep -
All those are, are external drives. If you are using a tower, I strongly recommend you add a PCI SATA card, especially if you are going with that kind of storage. Simply much faster and more robust then Firewire or USB.
Good question about the AES/EBU output - I personally haven't come across that. I am sure it is doable using an add in card from Lynx, Apogee or the like. Remember that Mac is the computer of choice in recording studios...
Apple Lossless is equivalent to AIFF and WAV just more compact. Also - and this comes in handy - Apple Lossless does a much better job handling metadata (additional kinds of information about each song) then either WAV or AIFF
The key thing I try and get across to people is the overall superiority of iTunes. It provides an integrated approach to all the functions you need for computer based music - ripping, metadata, list management, archiving in a world class package. There are some very good apps for PCs but they are not integrated and the support is nowhere near at the same level - how can freeware be... It's great if you are very savvy and like to fiddle but if you want to just play music this is much more straightforward. |
Gonna be better with a Mac - no doubt about it. You will be up and running in minutes - search this site and Audio Asylum's PC Forum.
Regardless of which platform you choose, you will have better sound quality (less jitter and distortion) then all but the very best CD transports - agaikn check the forums. The beauty of this approach is you can do so much more with so much less money - what's not to like? |
Hi - glad to be of help.
Not sure what John is doing, didn't see anything obvious on the Exemplar website.
Just to be clear, AES/EBU is a pro (balanced using XLRs) signal format like SPDIF. It is a long established high end way to go - but requires an appropriate sound card, DAC and dollars.
USB is an alternative way of getting data out of a computer after it is retrieved from the drive.
Basically wherever the drive is, the data has to come back to the computer so that it can go out via a comm(unication) port - ie USB, Ethernet, Firewire, AES, serial, parallel etc Depending on the computer some of this may be built in, some of it may require a specialized card (ie AES/EBU)
But there is a much bigger issue that has to be dealt with.
I do not know of any drives (not that I have ever made a study) that can output a specific file via USB directly to a DAC. The USB ports on external drives by LaCie, Maxtor etc are all controlled by the computer and as far as I know are solely used to transfer data between drives. (They have simply chosen USB instead of SCSI (old school), Firewire or these days SATA.
The only way I know to use a remote drive is to use what is called a NAS - network area storage device. Basically a NAS is a stack of drives with an intelligent controller hanging on an ethernet network. This works well with a device like a Squeezebox which is also Ethernet based and has the ability to access the drive and retrieve specific files. Since it is an ethernet network the pieces do not need to be co-located. Depending on your situation this could be pretty cost effective since a terrabyte NAS rig is now under a grand.(Buffalo seems to be the low end leader)
Short of a NAS, the solution is to leave the drive by your computer and co-locate either a network/wifi device like the Squeezebox with the DAC - and go from the SB into the DAC; or Airport Express (also wifi) - and go Toslink into the DAC.
There are a couple of very good threads running concurrently with this one that are worth reviewing.
Sorry if this is a bit confusing - its really plug and play, more a case of identifying the square pegs and round holes. |
TBG - wish I could find what you are looking at - send me a link if you like. This is obviously an add in card that he makes or mods.
Keep in mind that Mac is and has been the computer of choice in recording studios for many, many years. There is a ton of pro and semi-pro stuff out there, including a wide range of I/O (input output) cards some of which no doubt utilize AES/EBU. Others are used for mixing, for effects processing, for managing time code (used to sync double system audio and video) Whether or not there is one to meet your needs (besides Johns) I couldn't say.
If you want to poke around a bit, Apogee and Lynx are two mfgrs you might look at.
Before you go too far down this particular rat hole, keep in mind that the only tricky thing you are talking about is going from the drive to the DAC without coming back to the computer.
At the end of the day it might be easier to put the computer at that end too, then control it with Front Row, a Sailing Clicker etc. Take a look at the current thread "Music Server vs. PC vs. Transport vs. ?" - in particular the comments of Rbstehno for some good ideas. |
