suggest laptop for music storage

Based on the criteria you listed a MAC seems like the best candidate for you. I can say from experience they sound better than ANY pre-vista based machines, and it is heavenly not having to configure the ASIO driver. MACs also assert better control over the hardware because their drivers are written very well. Ultimately they sound better in my experiences, and I heard the Vista machines need a patch for the USB as well.

GO MAC, and you will never look back.

Best of luck!

Marco, there is iTunes Plus, which is a high-resolution download (but maybe not quite lossless) that's free of DRM -- but I think costs a little extra. That's the great thing about Magnatune: I can set my own price for the download, even in a lossless format!

Michael

Jeffreybowman2k - this depends entirely on the USB interface. They are not all equal. Some require jumping through alot of hoops to stop pops and ticks and the ASIO plug-ins that bypass kmixer are not that good. Some dont support 24/96.

If you are stuck on iTunes, and want to do USB, then you must use a MAC. PC mucks up the sound with kmixer and iTunes.

Steve N.

Like Jeffreybowman2k & Jax2, I also own a Wavelength DAC, which is non up/over sampling. Just don't lose sight of the fact that over/upsampling is not always synonymous with "better" like most people are led to believe. In fact in alot of implementations it is often quite the sonic opposite, and Gordon's DACs validate this as fact.

My Cosecant is the best and most musical digital I have ever heard and it doesn't over sample a thing. No harshness, no hollowness, not analytical. You will find alot of people that have heard these DACs or own them agree. The buck can stop with non oversampling as well, so just keep this in mind.

The oversampling thing is complicated for sure. There are good ones and bad ones. Generalizations cannot be made IMO.

However, there are a lot of NOS products out there that attack the harshness problem by rolling-off or compressing the highs in order to make CD's sound better. The result is improved imaging and smoothness at the expense of lost highs. This is not the optimum solution either IMO.

The optimum solution IMO, is to get to extremely low levels of jitter. I hear this everyday through a Squeezebox or Sonos driving a Pace-Car reclocker to a SS DAC-1. This is only 16/44.1, but there is no harshness, no hollowness and not analytical.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Manufacturer