I've ripped most of my CDs to my PC's hard drive, using EAC and
storing as WAV (uncompressed) files. Sound quality, via the optical
out and into my Rotel 1066 processor into my Dynaudio speakers or Stax
phones is fabulous. However, experimenting with different players eg
Itunes, Winamp shows that the replay level on iTunes is substantially
lower than that of Winamp, and unless I'm mistaken, the quality
appears to be not so good. This leads me to think that the software is
doing something more than letting me just select tracks and is in some
way interfering with the actual signal. Am I right? If so, what's the
best replay software to use that bypasses any processing?

And while I have your attention, what's the best player to use to
"manage" a WAV library. Most seem to be built around MP3s. The only
one I've found that lets you "tag" WAV files (ie add album name,
artist, genre etc) is iTunes - but as stated I now have reservations
about the sound quality this produces.

Keiron wrote:
I've ripped most of my CDs to my PC's hard drive, using EAC and
storing as WAV (uncompressed) files. Sound quality, via the optical
out and into my Rotel 1066 processor into my Dynaudio speakers or Stax
phones is fabulous. However, experimenting with different players eg
Itunes, Winamp shows that the replay level on iTunes is substantially
lower than that of Winamp, and unless I'm mistaken, the quality
appears to be not so good. This leads me to think that the software is
doing something more than letting me just select tracks and is in some
way interfering with the actual signal. Am I right? If so, what's the
best replay software to use that bypasses any processing?

And while I have your attention, what's the best player to use to
"manage" a WAV library. Most seem to be built around MP3s. The only
one I've found that lets you "tag" WAV files (ie add album name,
artist, genre etc) is iTunes - but as stated I now have reservations
about the sound quality this produces.

iTunes seems to be by far the best 'manager' but does insist on accurate MP3
tags. Once these are correct it's a very powerful tool

As far as sound quality goes, I turn off the 'Sound Enhancer' and 'Sound
Check' options and get more than acceptable sound quality out of it using
320kbps MP3s.

Keiron wrote:
I've ripped most of my CDs to my PC's hard drive, using EAC and
storing as WAV (uncompressed) files.

Either you don't have many CDs or you've got a seriously big hard drive...!

; - )

Mark (UK) wrote:
Keiron wrote:
I've ripped most of my CDs to my PC's hard drive, using EAC and
storing as WAV (uncompressed) files.

Either you don't have many CDs or you've got a seriously big hard
drive...!

I was thinking the same! I started off using uncompressed WAVs but after a
while decided to look beyond the blind prejuduce and started experimenting
with MP3's. I decided *I* couldn't tell the difference between a 320kbps
MP3 and a WAV. YMMV

"Stimpy" wrote in message

Mark (UK) wrote:
Keiron wrote:
I've ripped most of my CDs to my PC's hard drive, using EAC and
storing as WAV (uncompressed) files.

Either you don't have many CDs or you've got a seriously big hard
drive...!

I was thinking the same! I started off using uncompressed WAVs but
after a while decided to look beyond the blind prejuduce and started
experimenting with MP3's. I decided *I* couldn't tell the difference
between a 320kbps MP3 and a WAV. YMMV


AAC (advanced audio coding) is better than MP3 (it was designed to
overcome some of MP3's limitations). If you've got Exact Audio Copy you
can set it up to compress to the PsyTEL AAC encoder:

http://pessoal.onda.com.br/rjamorim/aacenc_v215.zip

and you can get a Winamp plug-in for AAC he

http://www.rarewares.org/files/aac/in_mp4.zip

and other AAC utilities he

http://rarewares.org/aac.html

I get Whata Hi-Fi (I know, it's a comic, but...) and they don't seem to
even know that AAC is a miles better codec than MP3.

AAC is also available in Nero 6 and free in iTunes.


--
Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info

DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband
internet and FM

Keiron wrote:

I've ripped most of my CDs to my PC's hard drive, using EAC and
storing as WAV (uncompressed) files. Sound quality, via the optical
out and into my Rotel 1066 processor into my Dynaudio speakers or Stax
phones is fabulous. However, experimenting with different players eg
Itunes, Winamp shows that the replay level on iTunes is substantially
lower than that of Winamp, and unless I'm mistaken, the quality
appears to be not so good. This leads me to think that the software is
doing something more than letting me just select tracks and is in some
way interfering with the actual signal. Am I right? If so, what's the
best replay software to use that bypasses any processing?

And while I have your attention, what's the best player to use to
"manage" a WAV library. Most seem to be built around MP3s. The only
one I've found that lets you "tag" WAV files (ie add album name,
artist, genre etc) is iTunes - but as stated I now have reservations
about the sound quality this produces.

I'd suggest looking at software aimed at broadcasters - there are
broadcast extensions to the .wav format which allow all kinds of
information to be added to a file.

Cheers.

James.

(Keiron) wrote in message . com...
I've ripped most of my CDs to my PC's hard drive, using EAC and
storing as WAV (uncompressed) files. Sound quality, via the optical
out and into my Rotel 1066 processor into my Dynaudio speakers or Stax
phones is fabulous. (...)
If so, what's the
best replay software to use that bypasses any processing?

I use Media Jukebox (http://www.musicex.com/mediajukebox/), and I like
it.


And while I have your attention, what's the best player to use to
"manage" a WAV library. Most seem to be built around MP3s. The only
one I've found that lets you "tag" WAV files (ie add album name,
artist, genre etc) is iTunes - but as stated I now have reservations
about the sound quality this produces.

You'll be wanting to losslessly compress your WAVs with Monkey's Audio
(http://www.monkeysaudio.com/) - it supports tagging (and works
seamlessly with Media Jukebox). Plus, you'll be saving ~50% of your
disc space if you drop the uncompressed WAVs.

I think that the WMA file format also supports lossless compression,
but I don't know if it supports tagging. Regardless, I see no reason
to swap from Monkey's Audio.

Steve.