Also going lossless, help me out guys.

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by analogy, Sep 9, 2014.

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  1. Atmospheric

    Atmospheric Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eugene
    I hesitate to mention this because I am apparently to only one for which this matters, but I personally have found that a ReplayGain tool such as iVolume is indispensable for a great computer-based playback experience.

    Read about it here: http://www.mani.de/en/ivolume/

    It's not an exaggeration to say that after a quality DAC, and great speakers, this app made the biggest positive difference in my listening experience. Getting the digital image properly centered on the analog back end is huge. If the sound file is too soft, it sounds limp, listless and timid, no matter how much you tinker with playback volume. If the sound file is too loud, it sounds obnoxiously over punchy bordering on audible distortion. The delta difference of ReplayGain adjustments in my personal library is a whopping 26.3db (-10.3db to +16db) across ~4,100 files. No playback system can deal with that difference of apparent loudness and do them all justice.

    Because my DAC is a recording interface, I had the advantage of metering to assist me with setting the proper ReplayGain level for my system, and it wasn't 0db. It turned out to be +1.8db. Unfortunately, if your DAC doesn't have meters, you'll have to go about this by trial and error.
     
  2. adamdube

    adamdube Forum Resident

    Location:
    Elyria, OH USA
    I tried that i-volume thing not too long ago. It worked very well, however, I tunes seemed to always want to perform Sound Check every time as well, even when turned off. Kind of a pain in the ****. I Volume did work better than sound check did, even though sound check did end up on some things. It's cheap enough too. I prefer Replay Gain over I volume, but I am a windows guy trying to use an IPOD. At then end of the day I ended up converting my flac's to alac just for IPOD use with DB poweramp and applying normalization to the ALAC itself and not using i volume. It went faster over all because I was able to convert and normalize at the same time. I have a PC dedicated to my itunes library so it did not mess with my flac files in the least. Without having gain set on all the tracks listening in random format is horrible....crank up softer stuff, get blown away when something new comes up next. Either way you choose to do it, gain adjustments are required for the random listerner.
     
  3. Atmospheric

    Atmospheric Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eugene
    You have to enable Soundcheck in order for iVolume to work at all in iTunes - they work together. Soundcheck uses iVolume's calculated offset value instead of the one it calculated. In fact, iVolume overwrites that value in the song file header. So if you don't enable Soundcheck, nothing happens. Also, I didn't think that iVolume even worked on Windows. I thought it was Mac only. Therefore your experience sounds a bit puzzling to me. But I'm a strong advocate for using a ReplayGain tool for digital playback. I'm glad you found one that works for you.
     
  4. adamdube

    adamdube Forum Resident

    Location:
    Elyria, OH USA
    There is a windows version.....I was referring to the automatic sound checking when importing files into I tunes.
     
  5. Atmospheric

    Atmospheric Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eugene
    That will happen. If Soundcheck is enabled (and it has to be to use iVolume), then iTunes will check each newly added file. You have to explicitly tell iVolume to analyze those files in order to get better offset values.
     
  6. Vernoona

    Vernoona Well-Known Member

    doesn't work with Lion 10.7.5 :shake:
     
  7. Bart

    Bart Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston
    All of my rips are to flac. I have them on a server, and stream them in my home. If I were going to just have them on a computer that is directly connected to a dac, iTunes (probably with the Audirvana plug-in) would likely be my playback system from a Mac Mini.
     
  8. Pigalle

    Pigalle Forum Resident

    Location:
    United Kingdom
    My only suggestion to what has already been said is to use an external optical drive for two reasons. Firstly, having had optical drives fail in my Mac I know how much Apple will charge you to replace them. Secondly, in my opinion you cannot beat those Plextor drives if you can find one. I use a PX-230a in an external caddy and it is brilliant. Compared to my Mac's drive it is way faster at ripping. For troublesome discs I also have a Plextor PX-712 in an external caddy and a Plextor PX-716UF external drive as alternatives and while being slower than the PX-230a they are good for ripping discs. Between them there isn't much they haven't been able to rip accurately (probably two discs in a thousand) and oddly my MacBook's more modern drive has ripped those discs.
     
  9. DragonQ

    DragonQ Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Moon
    I use ReplayGain in its default configuration but I add a -3 dB digital preamp because I do have a couple of tracks that would end up with clipping otherwise. It does mean I have to have my amp set 3 dB higher but there's plenty of headroom so whatever.

    The main issue with ReplayGain for me is surround tracks. It just doesn't handle them well and their volume can be all over the place. My general rule is that each ReplayGain value has to be increased by 3 dB manually after automatic scans of 5.1 tracks, but it's not perfect.
     
  10. analogy

    analogy Active Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Holland
    Note to self: streaming ALACs to your iPhone using Synology DS Audio results in VERY HIGH cellular data usage. D'oh.
    Other than that I am happily ripping away, dbPA works like a charm and I will most def be buying a Sonos after seeing one in action at co-worker's home. Was very impressed, now I want one. Possibly with a external DAC but I'm still looking into that. Word is when you play lossless, an external DAC isn't adding much to the Sonos SQ.

    I'm very happy to have determined a new 'music workflow', all those experiments with different media and technologies made such a mess of my collection and methods of playback. Now I check out new stuff on Spotify, buy the CD if it's really good, rip it to my NAS and if I want (because I suspect better SQ or just out of 'wanting it') I buy it on vinyl after that. It's not the cheapest route but it gives some kind of structure to collecting music that I desperately need I guess.
     
  11. Rundfunk

    Rundfunk Forum Resident

    Location:
    Stockholm, Sweden
    My suggestion is to ditch Itunes and go Vox. Very simple and intuitive, but with great features such as easy swich between audio devices. Plays everything i've fed it (except DSD streams?). It's free if you don't bother with the radio functions. I don't miss Foobar 2000 that much after switching to mac and i discovered Vox.

    I also second the XLD suggestion.
     
  12. DragonQ

    DragonQ Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Moon
    Foobar plays DSD. :p
     
  13. analogy

    analogy Active Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Holland
    Rundfunk, I now still use iTunes for casual playback on my laptop (using the mp3 folder due to size/performance considerations, iTunes doesn't behave well with very large libraries and my 16GB iPhone only can hold so much ALACs ;) ) but for playing back ALAC's I use Vox, very happy with it indeed!

    I let dbPA rip to a mp3 folder and alac folder so I have both at the same time. I use the mp3 folder as a source for DS Audio as well.
     
  14. acdc7369

    acdc7369 Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    I had about that many CDs that weren't ripped at lossless, and I started the move to lossless about 4 years ago. I decided to power through the rest of them over the summer. It's going to suck but you need to just push through it. You'll thank yourself once you're done.

    Your CD drive should be fine. If you're really concerned about the ripping quality, use the Mac equivalent of EAC to rip all of your discs to FLAC. Then when everything is ripped and tagged, load the FLAC files into iTunes and convert them all to ALAC. Use iTunes to organize all of the files into the proper folders. Then you can ditch iTunes and just access the standalone files. I use Foobar to play them back when I'm not using iTunes.

    You can get away with using the built-in soundcard on your Mac to play back the files on your system, but if you're still concerned about the quality, get a DAC.
     
  15. Rundfunk

    Rundfunk Forum Resident

    Location:
    Stockholm, Sweden
    Foobar is still king of the hill, but vox made my transition to mac that much smoother.

    I also swiched from iphone to Sony z2 and can now expand my phones memory with sd cards wich is pretty nifty when youve got plenty of flacs.
     
  16. sgb

    sgb Senior Member

    Location:
    Baton Rouge

    Nothing wrong with being all Mac, some of the professionals I know use Macs too.
     
  17. analogy

    analogy Active Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Holland
    Hey guys, last post to let you all know which way I have been heading, might be of use to other people struggling.

    I have created three folders in my 'music' share on my Synology:

    1. 'lossless' - I let DBPA rip ALAC files here, sorted in artist\album (year)\track
    2. 'mp3' - where I place mp3's for which I do not have a lossless or physical counterpart, ie. mp3's you get when buying certain vinyl or legal live recordings (Mark Knopfler concert I went to had a service like that)
    3. 'stream' - where DBPA rips mp3's to for use in DS Audio (because streaming ALAC's is a no-go) and iTunes uses this folder for casual listening and syncing to my iDevices

    I also bought, impatient as I am, the Sonos Connect already. Really happy with this little white box! It's user experience is great and flawless. The Sonos uses the 'lossless' and 'mp3' folder as a music source. I also reactivated my Spotify Premium account for checking new stuff out. So the route is now this: check stuff out on Spotify, like it? -> buy the CD and rip that to lossless and enjoy it in physical format or via Sonos. Like it a lot? -> buy the vinyl for those sunday night whisky in hand listening sessions.

    Still ripping my physical cd's right now by the way, some work that is! :D. But I dont mind it, it gets me in touch with CD's I played last years ago, really like that.
     
  18. stereoptic

    stereoptic Anaglyphic GORT Staff

    Location:
    NY
    Looks like a good plan. Forge ahead!
     
  19. analogy

    analogy Active Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Holland
    Oh my. How one can forget.

    Of course I knew I was an avid Doors collector until some 15 years ago (don't know why I stopped though, wife & kids will do that to you ;) ) but I just took the box labeled 'Doors' out of storage and got an enormous kick out of it. Tought you might as well...

    [​IMG]

    It's about 150 CD's of boots, collector's editions and god knows what. Everything is there, the Love Death Travel box, Matrix tapes, and so on. Also saw these guys laying on top:

    [​IMG]

    Such a shame to be put away in storage. Will display my collection prominently from now on!
     
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