how to install computer in place of CD player

My Philosophy "you don't know how far you can go until you've gone too far" Dosen't apply to sky diving

 

It sounds like you are on the right track, USB to an asynchronous DAC and RCA into your preamp. If you are not going to do hi res itunes should work fine, or it does for me, but you may need to seek alternatives if hi res is in the cards.

Assuming you stay mac, I wanted to point out when you get set up make sure you focus on getting bit perfect output. Just relying on plug and play, or having certain itunes settings, or not having your itunes or midi volumes set to maximum, could cause upsampling or digital volume adjustments that may or may not cause problems. Here is a reference guide on the topic from a DAC manufacturer when you are ready to fine tune things.

 

This may sound lame but can anyone send me a screen capture of how they are assembling playlist or how they are asembling music using iTunes or PureM20 or aurdvnpls202?

 

You are not loading things onto a mobile device right? What kind of playlist are you thinking about using? Certain artists, the songs you rate more, certain genres. If you are just playing from the desktop itunes you can just get going by picking an album or artist, but if you want to accomplish something else let us know and we can help. I share mine with my wife so certain smart playlists drive what goes on her phone vs. mine based on comments; I have playlists for certain artists, genres, certain star rated songs, some lists are just dragging certain songs to a list and ordering the way I want; but mostly when at the desktop I just choose an album and hit play.

I tend to use the song view more than anything else.

 

OK sorry I mean I'm going to have my external HD hooked up to my MacBook then since my internal MacBook HD will be minimal will I just load into iTunes alias of what's on the external HD and iTunes will be smart enough to search them out from the external HD?

 

Ok I see what you mean. I could make a hack attempt at this but I think others can help out much better as I am pretty set it and forget it. If nobody helps soon I will take a stab.

 

There's a menu option to add a folder to your iTunes library. You can then navigate to the external HD and choose the folder where the tracks are stored. With the size of collection you mentioned, I wonder if you wouldn't want to keep the primary files on the internal drive and then run periodic backups to the external drive.

 

Thanks for the idea but I don't have an answer for that. Do I need to format mu external HD to be bootable and load Yosemite on it. I don't want to keep my libraray's on internal because ai may use it in my graphic design small business if I have to metope with a client and show them something in The giant Photoshop.

 

You don't have to store your music files on a bootable drive or a drive with software on it. You can just add the external folders to your iTunes library.

 

Are you embarrassed with your music collection that a client would see it? Just kidding. I probably would worry about an external only when needed-- other than backup of course, please back it up somewhere-- which as an aside you will then have to figure out how to backup an external drive using another one I suppose; but to the point, if you are worried about your music collection growing, or your are going to have a lot of big graphic design files taking up your laptop, maybe it is best to just start with the external as the place to keep your music. If your drive is going to be recognized by mac plug and play you are not going to have to mess with it being formatted; and I agree with Bob_in_OKC it will not need to be bootable or certainly not having Yosemite on it I have to think.

I think the key will be to figure out if the whole default laptop iTunes/itunes music folder structure, which includes the iTunes library file, should go on the external, or you try to have the library on the laptop and the files themselves on the external. I guess I am asking a question for the experts here as I seem to find people doing it both ways.

The thing to avoid is to have the iTunes on your laptop pull in and copy the external files onto the laptop defeating the purpose of freeing up laptop space. Can someone provide some guidance?

As a jumping off point, from this thread, here is a picture of what your folder structure as a default would look like I have to guess, we just have to figure out the best way for you, including then pointing iTunes to the right folders and telling where newly loaded music should be placed.

 

True, but...

The OP needs to tell us ALL the uses for his laptop, before an informed recommendation can be made about external drives.

If dealing with professional photos, he SHOULD have a bootable backup, in case the laptop takes a dump. If he hasn't bought the laptop yet, I'd now recommend getting the biggest internal HDD possible (spend the extra money and get the 1TB internal). And make AT LEAST one bootable backup routinely. Two is better. If necessary get yet another larger ext HDD (or two) for archiving.

Keep the music on the internal, to be included with routine backups. Change the collection to ALAC (lossless) to save space. For the umpteenth time, 200 CDs in AIFF will never exceed 200GB. In ALAC, closer to 130GB.

This is the easiest way to handle everything; don't have to think about assigning anything anywhere. External storage is cheap, and a write-off anyway for a professional photographer.

 

Won't

 

So then I should Patrician about 2TB's of the 4TB's. I have a lot of music I haven't burned to disk (CD) but are in aid which I converted from flac. So they will need some Calaborating?

 

Choice of external Hard Drives I have 2 external HD's both WD one is or was for my Photographs Firewire 800 USB 2.0 2TB
The other I was going to use for music but I think it's over kill it's WD 4TB USB 3 & 2
Which should I use for Music?

 

I don't understand the question. How many hard drives do you have, how big? You can partition, but if the HDD or its enclosure fails, you lose the whole thing.

What you really need to do is take a minute to figure out how much material you have to store.

One AIFF CD album is roughly 800MB (you could round it off to 1G). (I've had the impression you have no more than 150 albums.) Then figure in your photos.

If it fits, for ultimate ease of use I'd recommend a 1TB internal SSD, and a pair of separate 1TB external HDDs for routine backup; include your music and working photo projects therein.

If you have a bigger archive of photos, get yet another HDD, which would NOT be part of routine backups. I suppose you could keep the 4TB for that purpose, and create a partition there for a third backup. Doesn't sound like you need 4TB for anything, however.

Do yourself a favor and convert all your music to ALAC. Easily, quickly done in iTunes. Lossless, same quality as AIFF. Any CDs you haven't ripped yet can be set up for ALAC in iTunes Preferences.

Make it easy on yourself.

 

Just to say, all media players are bit perfect and therefore there's no difference in sound quality between one or another, assuming they're playing at the same resolution and no effects have been added by the user.

 

But my real question is one HD is usb 2& 3 the other is firewire 800 and usb2

 

Buy hard drives that accommodate whatever laptop you have. Newer hardware has newer connections. FireWire is on its way out. USB 3 is faster than USB 2. USB 2 cables can be plugged into USB 3 ports. Thunderbolt is expensive.

Go here for Mac stuff: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/

 

Where I'm stuck. I don't need a fast HD to store RAW images which on average are 23MB but I could use the space. So for my music should I choose the firewire 800 which is only 2TB but I doubt I'll fill it. My Photographic library is already 282GB.

 

You've got 10,000 photos?

Your files sizes, for now, are manageable.

I don't know what you have, other than one 4TB ext HDD.

Forget FireWire; it's nearly obsolete, and the only thing it's faster than is USB 2. If you're buying a new MacBook, it won't have FW. If you're buying new, take advantage of the newer faster ports (USB 3), if only for backups.

You're not saving any money by getting a "faster" or "slower" HDD. Get the most current gear you can afford.

If you have an old laptop that has FW 800, use that I guess. You can put your music in a separate HDD (that isn't part of the backup) if you want, and assign iTunes to save rips there. But that all sounds like a lot of complexity you don't need.

Assess how much storage you're using now, project how much will be needed in a couple years, then buy equipment to accommodate.

For now you can keep everything on a new laptop. Make simple backups, on two 1TB drives. Convenient.

Lose the 4TB, get two 1TB for backup, and two 2TB for archiving.

You can refigure where music should go 2-3-4 years from now.

You won't fill those up in any hurry, and you should replace HDDs every 5 yrs or so anyway.

 

I can't loose the 4TB I just bought it. My Photography I shoot everything as Large as I can and thats RAW files which I said are anywhere from 18 t0 20 MB So should I take the 4TB WD back to Best Buy and get what? So the 4 TB WD is faster at USB 2 and 3

 

Why would you get rid of the 4 TB? They're fast, reliable, and since when is too much storage too much storage?

I don't understand this reasoning. If you're using large pics, just stick with the 4 TB at that price. You can always use the extra space for more music or files, even if they're just extra copies in the same or different formats.

 

I suspect that gd0 was recommending two or more smaller drives to fit in with the budget, while also allowing for multiple copies of the data (redundancy in case a drive fails). That's a very good thing.

 

Position amp/pre-amp next to computer. Run interconnect from computer sound card headphone/LR jack to an input on amp/pre-amp. That's it.