The Sound Environment Serving the Plains States from Omaha and Lincoln NE

Getting the Best Music Performance from your computer and iPod

Many people now store music on their computers. CDs or LPs can be transferred to files on your computer. Music can be down loaded from many sites. Some of these sites offer higher resolution (24/96) than CDs.

How can you the get best music performance with your PC?

Getting music into your computer

When you download music, always use the highest data rate available. Do not use MP3 or other compressed formats. Compressed versions just don’t sound as good. Hard disc storage is relatively inexpensive and can easily be expanded with external drives. There are no special concerns in transferring a CD to your computer, just stay in the digital mode or do it from the CD-ROM drive in your computer.

NAD has just introduced an inexpensive ($199) phono preamp that will allow you to convert the signal from your turntable to a digital signal in order to transfer LPs to your computer. It can also be used as a regular phono preamp. Other higher performance options are possible.

Getting Music out of your computer

Not so easy! The sound card in your computer is usually not very good. To use an outboard DAC (digital to analog converter) with a computer the DAC should have a USB connection. This allows the digital data to be streamed directly to the outboard DAC. USB to SP-DIF digital adaptors are available but the USB approach is best.

Cambridge is offering a new DAC with a USB input for only $399. PS Audio also has a new DAC with USB input for $999.

At the very high end Esoteric offers a USB input kit for their DO-3 DAC ($14,000). dCS is also offering a very high performance solution.

The T+A CD player has the ability to access music stored on your computer via your LAN.

Getting music out of your iPod

First make sure you transfer to your iPod uncompressed.

Wadia has a new iPod “dock”. The Wadia 170i ($379) is the first component specifically designed to transform your iPod into a high-resolution audio/video media server. It allows the digital signal stored on your iPod to be transferred to a DAC or any CD player with a standard digital input.

We hope this isn’t confusing. The bottom line is many of you are storing music on your computer and we can help you make the most of it, just give us a call or come in.