[[email protected]]

Just wanted to share this experience I've had building my itunes music
server.
My goal was to make it as hifi as possible, within budget contraints,
of course. The music server had to be based on itunes because:
1. My library consists of Apple Lossless files.
2. iTunes is a great music management application. I love it
flexibility with playlists. The itunes interface is hard to beat.
Knowing that the audio quality's there in my lossless files, I just
have to find a way to get it out to my stereo . . .with minimal
digital destruction Since my DAW is a windows XP box, I started my
pursuit there. I ran itunes, connect my echo Mia analog outputs to my
stereo. FYI, iTunes plays all its music through quicktime on Windows
systems.
The music sounded adequete. I kept using my Panasonic S-35 DVD player
as my reference. The Pansonic easily beat that setup. Next, I explored
the idea of using the SPDIF connection and transferring the music
digitally to an SRC converter. I can not afford the Benchmark DAC1, so
I searched around and found the Behringer Ultramatch SRC2496. For $120,
the price definitely made it worth experimenting with.
So my next setup was iTunes on Win XP through my Echo MIA via its
SPDIF connector to the SRC2496 to my stereo. That sound was adequete.
With all that I had read on the net I had thought that SPDIF would
sound much better. Perhaps it was the SRC2496? For some time I almost
gave in to beleive that, but then I started to explore another idea
that the Behringer may be getting garbage in (as in upsampled digital
data somehow), so garbage is coming out. I tried many different
iterations of the MIA soundcard, purewave mode, WDM mode. I even
reluctantly changed the sample rate from the default of 44.1 Khz to 48
Khz in hopes that the SRC in QUicktime might perhpas be a bit better
than Windows, if it was doing any upsampling. Still no dice. The
Panasonic DVD player absolutely killed the windows based itunes music
server. Next up: foobar2000 based itunes server.
I found a plugin on the internet which enables itunes to bypass
quicktime and play its' music via foobar2000. I downloaded foobar, the
mulit-part plugin and configured everything. For the life of me I could
not get iTunes to work. The multiplugin was killing itunes somehow. For
kicks I removed the mulitplugin and just played with the newer version
of iTunes. A biref digression he my DAW had itunes 6 and was running
fine, but the new multiplugin required itunes 7. iTunes 7 runs
signinficanly slower on my lowly Pentium III based music server/DAW.
Even if I could get this new configuration to work, the sluggishness of
iTunes 7 was quite off-putting. Since nothing was working and I
desperately wanted to hear at least what this foobar engine was about,
I launched foobar and played some wav files I had. They definitely
sounded better, but they also sounded strange. Some vinyl that I had
digitised experienced unusually emphasized surface noise when playing
through foobar. Also, when comparing the foobar output to the Panasonic
dvd player, the panasonic still won, but at least fobar was better.
Still, with so many glitches in this configuration that I could not get
working, I gave up on it.

I was fresh out of ideas. Then I thought more about the notion that
Windows systems tend to base their audio sampling rates at 48Khz, yet
my music is at 44.1 Khz. As mentioned earlier, maybe there's some
resampling going on that I do not know about, or have no control over.
I've also seen threads saying that Macintosh systems use the base
sampling rate of 44.1 Khz. Luckily I have a Macintosh G3 Blue & white
minitower that I use for my main "working" PC: browse the web, Word
docs etc. Also lucky for me, the Echo Mia has Macintosh drivers. So,
off to experiment number 3.
I removed the Echo MIA from my windows PC and dropped it into my Mac.
Powered it up and installed the drivers. The I fired up itunes (still
itunes 6, no upgrade needed) and listened. WOW. From the first few
moments I heard it, and I heard it good. The music sounded really good,
like music, not processed digital data that's put together to be a
close proximity of music. I listened for 30 mintues, which went to an
hour, then to 2. It was good. Compared to the Panasonic DVD, the
Panasonic still won, but not by much, not by much at all. The main
difference I could see was a slight frequency imbalance. If the
Panasonic is neutral, then the itunes 6 on Macintosh G3-Echo
MIA-SPDIF-SRC2496-stereo was a bit bright, sibilance was a little
too hot. Also, every once in a while, the music just skips randomly.
It's not the files. When I rewind to the section just skipped over, it
plays fine, always. Other than that, the music sounded very good. AND,
I think I may be able to address the sibilance and skipping issue. My
G3 Macintosh is over-clocked to 400 Mhz. I'm going to take it apart and
reset it back to its factory setting of 350 Mhz. We'll see how that
goes.

With the G3 clocked back to 350 Mhz all skipping is now GONE Also,
the frequency balance is much better as well. The music is more neutral
now. There is a very slight bump in top end, like around 5-8Khz, but
now I think that may be the Behringer analoge side of its D/A
converter. I plan on exploring some modifications of the SRC2496. It
may not be a DAC1, but less than a 3rd of the price with some future
mods, I think it may get quite close.

Food for thought for anyone building a computer based music server.

[Steven Sullivan]

wrote:
I found a plugin on the internet which enables itunes to bypass
quicktime and play its' music via foobar2000. I downloaded foobar, the
mulit-part plugin and configured everything. For the life of me I could
not get iTunes to work. The multiplugin was killing itunes somehow. For
kicks I removed the mulitplugin and just played with the newer version
of iTunes.

dbPoweramp Converter claims to be able to convert ALAC (apple lossless) to
FLAC. I'd do that then simply use foobar2k as your FLAC player. It
supports Kernal streaming if you wish to entirely bypass the Windows
sound kmixer.

I'd be skeptical about all the differences/improvements you thought you
heard, though, unless you could verify them with blind tests or some sort
of measured difference (e.g., the frequency anomalies you claim to hear
should be readily documentable by measurement).

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason

[[email protected]]

Steven Sullivan wrote:
wrote:
I found a plugin on the internet which enables itunes to bypass
quicktime and play its' music via foobar2000. I downloaded foobar, the
mulit-part plugin and configured everything. For the life of me I could
not get iTunes to work. The multiplugin was killing itunes somehow. For
kicks I removed the mulitplugin and just played with the newer version
of iTunes.

dbPoweramp Converter claims to be able to convert ALAC (apple lossless) to
FLAC. I'd do that then simply use foobar2k as your FLAC player. It
supports Kernal streaming if you wish to entirely bypass the Windows
sound kmixer.

I would consider that if foobar was a great music management
application. It's strongest attribute seems to be that, of the many
windows music management applications out there, i foobar's audio
drivers are high quality. I would tend to agree. As to its music
managment? Well . . .iTunes is awesome!
Also, look at your solution: "dbPoweramp Converter claims to be able to
convert ALAC (apple lossless) to FLAC. I'd do that then simply use
foobar2k as your FLAC player." With those complications, I wonder of
you could also use that setup as a front end for NASA when launching
the shuttle, lol. It's the kind of setup a computer geek would love I
just want one program to play my music, play it well and organize it
well. End of story. The music program should take care of all those
technicalities, not the user.

I'd be skeptical about all the differences/improvements you thought you
heard, though, unless you could verify them with blind tests or some sort
of measured difference (e.g., the frequency anomalies you claim to hear
should be readily documentable by measurement).
Completely understandable. I would only be able to do the blind tests
but none of my friends are audiophiles nor do they have the patience to
deal with these tests. I've built them MP3 based music servers and
they're as happy as a clam. The technical measurement I honestly would
probably never be able to do. The reason I shared the experience is to
let others know of what possibilities there are to making a decent high
fi music server. I wanted mine to be iTunes based. After experiencing
iTunes in Windows, many people, including myself, may have been turned
off to the idea of using iTunes. Using an old low end Macintosh with
itunes an old version 6, by the way) is something many people may not
have considered. It's kindof obvious now, especially since itunes and
macs are all Apple products. My observations showed me that Apple
really does do a good job of integrating their hardware with their
software.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason

CD

[Steven Sullivan]

wrote:
Steven Sullivan wrote:
wrote:
I found a plugin on the internet which enables itunes to bypass
quicktime and play its' music via foobar2000. I downloaded foobar, the
mulit-part plugin and configured everything. For the life of me I could
not get iTunes to work. The multiplugin was killing itunes somehow. For
kicks I removed the mulitplugin and just played with the newer version
of iTunes.

dbPoweramp Converter claims to be able to convert ALAC (apple lossless) to
FLAC. I'd do that then simply use foobar2k as your FLAC player. It
supports Kernal streaming if you wish to entirely bypass the Windows
sound kmixer.

I would consider that if foobar was a great music management
application. It's strongest attribute seems to be that, of the many
windows music management applications out there, i foobar's audio
drivers are high quality. I would tend to agree. As to its music
managment? Well . . .iTunes is awesome!

Well, what do you mean by 'music management'? Foobar is not especially user-friendly, but it
is far, far more user-configurable and feature-laden than itunes. In combination with Exact
Audio Copy, I can quickly add entire CDs of music, fully tagged as FLAC files, directly into
the folder that foobar looks in for music (if I used Nero instead of EAC, I could do it all
directly from foobar).

Also, look at your solution: "dbPoweramp Converter claims to be able to
convert ALAC (apple lossless) to FLAC. I'd do that then simply use
foobar2k as your FLAC player." With those complications, I wonder of
you could also use that setup as a front end for NASA when launching
the shuttle, lol.

If you have a directory full of ALAC files, I can't see how telling an
app to batch-convert them to another format constitutes 'rocket science'.
You can play FLAC files with dbPoweramp or WinAmp too, whihc have arguably
more user friendly interfaces than foobar.

(And actually, as noted, there is an ALAC plugin for foobar itself...which suggests even the
conversion is unnecessary.)

It's the kind of setup a computer geek would love

True, foobar is was developed by computer geeks ...for computer geeks. But the few non-CGs
I've demonstrated it to loved it.

I
just want one program to play my music, play it well and organize it
well. End of story. The music program should take care of all those
technicalities, not the user.

Foobar certainly plays music well. It also offers an 'album directory' window (which can
instantly be changed to 'artist' or 'songs' or a half-dozen other possible organization
schemes). And everything's searchable. Seeing (and managing) what you've got is not a
problem.

I've used iTunes with an iPod, and sad to say, in a Windows environment, I immediately ran
into *serious* problems getting it to work as a 'music management' system, much less getting
good sound from it. In the end I had to reformat the iPod, and change the default setting for
iTunes, in order to be able to easily export mp3s to the iPod via iTunes.

By contrast, getting foobar2k to work consisted of installing, pointing it at the right output
device, and loading the directory of FLAC files into a playlist (which also automatically adds
the tracks to the local foobar database). After that it's all tweaking to taste...for those
who like that sort of thing. ;

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason

[[email protected]]

Steven Sullivan wrote:
wrote:
Steven Sullivan wrote:
wrote:
I found a plugin on the internet which enables itunes to bypass
quicktime and play its' music via foobar2000. I downloaded foobar, the
mulit-part plugin and configured everything. For the life of me I could
not get iTunes to work. The multiplugin was killing itunes somehow. For
kicks I removed the mulitplugin and just played with the newer version
of iTunes.

dbPoweramp Converter claims to be able to convert ALAC (apple lossless) to
FLAC. I'd do that then simply use foobar2k as your FLAC player. It
supports Kernal streaming if you wish to entirely bypass the Windows
sound kmixer.

I would consider that if foobar was a great music management
application. It's strongest attribute seems to be that, of the many
windows music management applications out there, i foobar's audio
drivers are high quality. I would tend to agree. As to its music
managment? Well . . .iTunes is awesome!

Well, what do you mean by 'music management'? Foobar is not especially user-friendly, but it
is far, far more user-configurable and feature-laden than itunes. In combination with Exact
Audio Copy, I can quickly add entire CDs of music, fully tagged as FLAC files, directly into
the folder that foobar looks in for music (if I used Nero instead of EAC, I could do it all
directly from foobar).
That's 2 programs iTunes does what I need it to do all by itself. So
foobar has more features. It's not about features, it's about doing
what you wnat to do in the easiest way. So far, iTunes does everything
I need it to do in a simple enough way.


Also, look at your solution: "dbPoweramp Converter claims to be able to
convert ALAC (apple lossless) to FLAC. I'd do that then simply use
foobar2k as your FLAC player." With those complications, I wonder of
you could also use that setup as a front end for NASA when launching
the shuttle, lol.

If you have a directory full of ALAC files, I can't see how telling an
app to batch-convert them to another format constitutes 'rocket science'.

I was simply saying that it seems more complicated than it needs to be.
SInce th program was written by geeks, that's understandable. For them
its all about features, capabilities . . .computing. I just want
something to manage my music and play them back withe the highest audio
quality.

You can play FLAC files with dbPoweramp or WinAmp too, whihc have arguably
more user friendly interfaces than foobar.
I loved Winamp for a while. Winamp version 2 had the best sound
quality. All the newer ones suffered. Iguess configurng Winamp to play
through foobar is a possibilty, but I'm not ready to deal with that if
I can get iTunes to do everything, and playback well.


(And actually, as noted, there is an ALAC plugin for foobar itself...which suggests even the
conversion is unnecessary.)

It's the kind of setup a computer geek would love

True, foobar is was developed by computer geeks ...for computer geeks. But the few non-CGs
I've demonstrated it to loved it.

I
just want one program to play my music, play it well and organize it
well. End of story. The music program should take care of all those
technicalities, not the user.

Foobar certainly plays music well. It also offers an 'album directory' window (which can
instantly be changed to 'artist' or 'songs' or a half-dozen other possible organization
schemes). And everything's searchable. Seeing (and managing) what you've got is not a
problem.

I've used iTunes with an iPod, and sad to say, in a Windows environment, I immediately ran
into *serious* problems getting it to work as a 'music management' system, much less getting
good sound from it. In the end I had to reformat the iPod, and change the default setting for
iTunes, in order to be able to easily export mp3s to the iPod via iTunes.

Sorry you had a bad experience. You can't avoid all software
incompatibilities. I know several people who've had great success with
itunes and iPods on windows. In fact, I have a PC setup for my neices
and nephew with Windows XP, with 7 profiles on it. Of those user
profiles, 3 of the users have different ipods, and each ipod synchs up
to their individual itunes with no problems.

By contrast, getting foobar2k to work consisted of installing, pointing it at the right output
device, and loading the directory of FLAC files into a playlist (which also automatically adds
the tracks to the local foobar database). After that it's all tweaking to taste...for those
who like that sort of thing. ;

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason

CD

[Steven Sullivan]

wrote:
You can play FLAC files with dbPoweramp or WinAmp too, whihc have arguably
more user friendly interfaces than foobar.
I loved Winamp for a while. Winamp version 2 had the best sound
quality. All the newer ones suffered. Iguess configurng Winamp to play
through foobar is a possibilty, but I'm not ready to deal with that if
I can get iTunes to do everything, and playback well.

Winamp and Foobar are both media players; you couldn't configure one to play 'through'
the other.

Winamp offers excellent sound quality, via its DirectSound and wavOut output options.
It also comes with the best MP3 decoder, if you ever listen to those. I don't
know in what way the newer versions could be considered inferior to 2.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason

[Rob Tweed]

I've used iTunes with an iPod, and sad to say, in a Windows environment, I immediately ran
into *serious* problems getting it to work as a 'music management' system, much less getting
good sound from it.

I use iTunes as the management front-end for my all digital, Mac
Mini-based set-up. I don't use compressed files. With disc storage
now so cheap (I recently got a 400Gb drive for 100 UK pounds) I can
afford to rip all my CDs and store them as WAV files (only half full
with 14 days of music so far). In which case I can't see why iTunes
would sound any better or worse than any other software.

The only irritating limitation I've found in iTunes is its inability
to support multiple music libraries. It can be done but it's messy. I
don't know why Apple haven't sorted this out yet. Google searches
show that this seems pretty high on the "wish list" of iTunes users.

---
Rob Tweed
M/Gateway Developments Ltd

The Pursuit of Productivity : http://www.mgateway.com

[machinehead]

What you need to do to get that "WOW" effect in Win XP, is get an ASIO or
kernel streaming plugin for Foobar. You were right, it's likely the Windows
kmixer's insistence on resampling to 48k that was holding you back. Just a
matter of configuring foobar and the MIA to use the plugin (I'm sure the MIA
supports one or the other, if not both). In fact, for SPDIF, you don't even
need anything as good as the MIA to do this - a Chaintech AV-710 with ASIO
can do bit-perfect audio on SPDIF for less than $30.

Ed


wrote in message
...
Just wanted to share this experience I've had building my itunes music
server.
My goal was to make it as hifi as possible, within budget contraints,
of course. The music server had to be based on itunes because:
1. My library consists of Apple Lossless files.
2. iTunes is a great music management application. I love it
flexibility with playlists. The itunes interface is hard to beat.
Knowing that the audio quality's there in my lossless files, I just
have to find a way to get it out to my stereo . . .with minimal
digital destruction Since my DAW is a windows XP box, I started my
pursuit there. I ran itunes, connect my echo Mia analog outputs to my
stereo. FYI, iTunes plays all its music through quicktime on Windows
systems.
The music sounded adequete. I kept using my Panasonic S-35 DVD player
as my reference. The Pansonic easily beat that setup. Next, I explored
the idea of using the SPDIF connection and transferring the music
digitally to an SRC converter. I can not afford the Benchmark DAC1, so
I searched around and found the Behringer Ultramatch SRC2496. For $120,
the price definitely made it worth experimenting with.
So my next setup was iTunes on Win XP through my Echo MIA via its
SPDIF connector to the SRC2496 to my stereo. That sound was adequete.
With all that I had read on the net I had thought that SPDIF would
sound much better. Perhaps it was the SRC2496? For some time I almost
gave in to beleive that, but then I started to explore another idea
that the Behringer may be getting garbage in (as in upsampled digital
data somehow), so garbage is coming out. I tried many different
iterations of the MIA soundcard, purewave mode, WDM mode. I even
reluctantly changed the sample rate from the default of 44.1 Khz to 48
Khz in hopes that the SRC in QUicktime might perhpas be a bit better
than Windows, if it was doing any upsampling. Still no dice. The
Panasonic DVD player absolutely killed the windows based itunes music
server. Next up: foobar2000 based itunes server.
I found a plugin on the internet which enables itunes to bypass
quicktime and play its' music via foobar2000. I downloaded foobar, the
mulit-part plugin and configured everything. For the life of me I could
not get iTunes to work. The multiplugin was killing itunes somehow. For
kicks I removed the mulitplugin and just played with the newer version
of iTunes. A biref digression he my DAW had itunes 6 and was running
fine, but the new multiplugin required itunes 7. iTunes 7 runs
signinficanly slower on my lowly Pentium III based music server/DAW.
Even if I could get this new configuration to work, the sluggishness of
iTunes 7 was quite off-putting. Since nothing was working and I
desperately wanted to hear at least what this foobar engine was about,
I launched foobar and played some wav files I had. They definitely
sounded better, but they also sounded strange. Some vinyl that I had
digitised experienced unusually emphasized surface noise when playing
through foobar. Also, when comparing the foobar output to the Panasonic
dvd player, the panasonic still won, but at least fobar was better.
Still, with so many glitches in this configuration that I could not get
working, I gave up on it.

I was fresh out of ideas. Then I thought more about the notion that
Windows systems tend to base their audio sampling rates at 48Khz, yet
my music is at 44.1 Khz. As mentioned earlier, maybe there's some
resampling going on that I do not know about, or have no control over.
I've also seen threads saying that Macintosh systems use the base
sampling rate of 44.1 Khz. Luckily I have a Macintosh G3 Blue & white
minitower that I use for my main "working" PC: browse the web, Word
docs etc. Also lucky for me, the Echo Mia has Macintosh drivers. So,
off to experiment number 3.
I removed the Echo MIA from my windows PC and dropped it into my Mac.
Powered it up and installed the drivers. The I fired up itunes (still
itunes 6, no upgrade needed) and listened. WOW. From the first few
moments I heard it, and I heard it good. The music sounded really good,
like music, not processed digital data that's put together to be a
close proximity of music. I listened for 30 mintues, which went to an
hour, then to 2. It was good. Compared to the Panasonic DVD, the
Panasonic still won, but not by much, not by much at all. The main
difference I could see was a slight frequency imbalance. If the
Panasonic is neutral, then the itunes 6 on Macintosh G3-Echo
MIA-SPDIF-SRC2496-stereo was a bit bright, sibilance was a little
too hot. Also, every once in a while, the music just skips randomly.
It's not the files. When I rewind to the section just skipped over, it
plays fine, always. Other than that, the music sounded very good. AND,
I think I may be able to address the sibilance and skipping issue. My
G3 Macintosh is over-clocked to 400 Mhz. I'm going to take it apart and
reset it back to its factory setting of 350 Mhz. We'll see how that
goes.

With the G3 clocked back to 350 Mhz all skipping is now GONE Also,
the frequency balance is much better as well. The music is more neutral
now. There is a very slight bump in top end, like around 5-8Khz, but
now I think that may be the Behringer analoge side of its D/A
converter. I plan on exploring some modifications of the SRC2496. It
may not be a DAC1, but less than a 3rd of the price with some future
mods, I think it may get quite close.

Food for thought for anyone building a computer based music server.