no room for cds!

[admin_exported]

Can anyone help,i have a fairly small house so i think i am going to need to download music,but i want the best quality,anyone know of any sites.

i currently use itunes to store music on my mac,is it worth me buying a dac.

Any options would be great,i was looking at the Brennan to store music as well,anyone know if this is any good?

Thanks one and all

 

[idc]

I was in the same position as you and went with itunes as I am happy with the sound quality and ease of use. If you have a mac, itunes is literally built for it. When you import any CDs do so with Apple Lossless to get the best results. Therafter what you do depends on whether you can tell the difference between lossless and lower bit rate files.

It is odd that the Womad store sells downloads at Apple Lossless, but itunes is still limited to 256kbps AAC files. I am quitehappy with itunes AAC downloads, but if I really pay attention, with some music I can tell lossless files are better. There is a greater clarity and depth to the music.

I would certainly look to using your mac as the source rather than getting a Brennan. The Brennan is rated well, but it limits you to certain files and file sizes more than the mac does. With a mac you can also access online music services and radio. Mac connected to a DAC to an amp to speakers or headphones will give you access to a massive and wonderful world music, potentially without a CD in site. That is how I have done it. I am presently listening to Peter Gabriel and The Fun Lovin' Criminal's new albums online, for free. My CDs live in the loft.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all the info.

Well been using itunes for a while now,every time i buy a cd it goes straight onto the mac.

I do still think that cd is a better quality product,i just feel as though i get more from a cd player.

I thought if i could connect a dac to the mac then i would get the sound i wanted.Plus i am also worried that if the mac crashes i would lose my collection.I hear cambridge do one called dacmagic?

I have also registered with 7digital so going to give that a go as well.

Will let you know how i get on.

 

[Andrew Everard]

If you're amassing any kind of music collection on a computer, buy a portable hard drive (or two), and make backups. Every day at least. Apple's Time Machine makes it simple, or you can just drag and drop your music from the computer drive to the external hard drive.

I do both: music is run on a NAS to the network, Time Machine backs up all our computers to another of the NAS drives, and I also manually back up onto a 500GB Toshiba portable hard drive.

Perhaps it's something to do with having a total hard disc failure on a six week old MacBookPro not so long ago...

 

[idc]

The general feeling from the forum is that a PC/mac to a DAC such as the DACmagic is as good as a CDP in the high hundreds into a thousand pounds in terms of sound quality. Poular DACs are the DACmagic, Beresford, Musical Fidelity V-DAC and Firestone all of which are in the £150 to £250 range.

You should back up your music to an external hard drive in case of crashes. That is a must for computer based music.

 

[staggerlee]

As a source product how good is the MAC ?. I have been brought up on the Naim mantra of source first,hence the question

 

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I do feel for you. About 10 years ago I was in the same predicament; I purchased two large office cabinets to store my CD collection in. When I moved I halved my collection by selling the discs or taking them to my local charity shop.

About six years ago I decided to put all on my music on a NAS box, keep the media but ditch the Jewel cases. To that end I bought ten aluminium flight CD cases and went on the arduous task of shelling the disks, inserting them into plastic sleeves (complete with inserts). Then gave away the Jewel cases or binned them - that hurt as I like to be environmentally friendly.

The process of taking the CD's and converting them to the NAS was very painful and occupied a great deal of time but I enjoy my collection now and still buy CD's updating my library with one or two discs at a time. The physical aspect of CD's is what I appreciate and I still find it convenient to carry a CD around with me (how many cars DON'T have a CD player ?).

Good luck !

 

[Anonymous]

Andrews advice is good too. BACK IT UP !

I'm running two Netgear ReadyNAS Duo's with their X-RAID (RAID 1 with hotswop) technology. Basically both the NAS boxes contain the same information, one is a copy of the other (you'd have to be unlucky for 4 discs to go down at the same time wouldn't you ?).

The NAS boxes are small and out of sight so not audible. The music is streaming to a ROKU and media PC using a set of Devolo 200mbps homeplugs

 

[Anonymous]

exactly yes!

For me there is no comparison in the audio quality cd v download,CD wins everytime even on the cheapest of cd players.

plus i have quad 21l speakers,they deserve the quality of cd.Plus like you i like the physical feel of a cd.

I have looked on Naim website and also Band W website but they dont alsways have what you want.

i have found the best all rounder is 7DIGITAL.

I will download some albums that i have on vinyl via the web just to compare the quality.

I just need a dedicated hi fi room i think ! Ha ha ,if only!

Any more advice would be welcome.

 

[vinod_david]

Hi:

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