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March 13, 2005
audiophile quality digital music
Tim Bray recently blogged about moving his music collection from CD to hard disk. yeah, most of us have been talking about this for a while. i myself have ripped my entire 800+ cd collection twice already and, having lost both of the previous disks (one failed without backup and the other is still in Australia), am doing it again.
what's interesting about Tim's discussion is that, unlike most of us, he considers himself an audiophile. he presumably spends lots of money on expensive home stereo equipment to enjoy his hobby, and he doesn't want the playback technology cutting into the quality of sound. apparently the most worrisome part of the process is the digital-to-analog conversion, and he's done some research into the options at a range of prices, narrowing them down to the following three: 1) Mac Mini USB to external digital-analog converter (DAC) attached to stereo; 2) Airport Express to external DAC; 3) Squeezebox (which has a built-in DAC or can talk to an external one).
now, i've used both Squeezebox and Airport Express (AE in my living room, Squeezebox in my kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom), but i've never used a DAC. and hey, let's face it, i rip my cds at 192 kbps, so i'm not exactly going for audiophile quality. but if i felt like it i could pay Slim Devices $1k to rip them losslessly, and it's satisfying to know that i could reuse the same gear, potentially only having to add a high quality DAC, in order to get really great sound out of my expensive stereo and speakers. not that i'm going to. but i could if i wanted to. is my point. i guess.
Posted by bcm at March 13, 2005 03:35 PM
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