Confused With Options To Obtain BestQuality iTunes

Thanks Tobias. To my surprise I've got Snow Leopard 10.6.5. Is there any advantage of Pure Music over AyrePlay? I'm not very savvy about setting these things up. Is it just a matter of downloading and installing and the program does all else?

Any thoughts about why I'm having music drop out on hig rez (but not other) files (I'm using wireless)?

This thing is pretty amazing but I'm anxious to see what it will sound like in high rez/

Sorry for the confusion (my own) on the iTunes interface. It was auto-switching of the sample rate that it does not support. As has been pointed out you need to go into the Audio Midi setup and switch the sampling rate manually, which personally I feel is a PITA, especially when there are options to do it on the fly automatically.

I was not suggesting that iTunes handles FLAC files - it certainly does not (one of the reasons I prefer not to use it). I specified to use Squeezeserver to handle your library which will automatically adjust sample rate on the fly. If you really like iTunes you can still use it to organize your music and just point squeezeserver to it and it will still deliver, but I personally would not recommend using iTunes because of these two drawbacks:

1. No auto-switching of sampling rates.
2. Poor error-correction on ripping CD's (compared to software like MAXX using Full Paranoia, or EAC. I have heard audible differences in files ripped via iTunes vs EAC so prefer to go with better ripping software.

Squeezeserver can use iTunes, and one other music folder to create a library from, so you could conceivably store your FLAC files in a separate folder and all others you want to catalogue in iTunes. I have to say I actually do like the iTunes interface - Apple has user-friendly down!

FLAC is a universal, full resolution format that makes storing and converting files very easy. It is cross platform and very versatile. Software like MAXX can do bulk conversions from FLAC files to several alternate formats in basically two steps. With iTunes such conversions have to be done manually format by format. As said earlier, itunes will not support FLAC at all.

I appreciate you're patience -- I'm obviously very new at this.

I like using iTunes because it's familiar, and have tried a few others and often have trouble figuring out how to get them to work. So far, I've tried Max without really getting it to work, used XLD to convert flac24 or other flac files, and then get them to play on iTunes, but for some reason they wouldn't get through the squeezebox software to my touch until I converted them to AIFF.

I've just downloaded Air from sbooth.org, which I've heard is very good and does format switching automatically. My questions are:

1. I have squeezebox set up to read my iTunes files. But it won't read them unless I first convert from hi rez flac to wav and then to AIFF. Weird. Is there a simpler way?

2. I've loaded my iTunes library onto Play and Squeezebox. Is there a way to get my Squeezebox unit to take in both the Apple and the Play sets of music files so I can just choose between the 2? How would I do that.

Again, many thanks for your patience and my newbieness

One further detail that I think I need clarification on myself is the limitations of bandwidth / sampling rates on the USB interface. I know the older 1.0 interface was pretty limited and cannot stream high-rez. 1.1 improved a bit (high-rez capable?), and 2.0 is fully capable of streaming high-rez files as is the newly introduced 3.0. Can someone educate me further on this?

One other note on USB - beware of plugging your USB DAC into a hub or a keyboard, or in tandem with any slower USB devices as that will slow down the performance of the shared USB port as I understand it.

Forgot to mention, I have had not been able to get album art on WAV files in Itunes. That is another reason I use AIFF files. I believe there is a script or some other work around but I have not looked into that much since AIFF is an easier solution.