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Ditch the iPod, use laptop, & Foobar2000, USB DAC (M-Audio)

Posted by tonyo123 (A) on February 21, 2008 at 21:47:27

In Reply to: iTouch and iPod dock out for better sound quality... posted by Godzilla. on February 20, 2008 at 13:44:45:

Look, I went through what you are starting. I assume you have a discriminating ear since you are on this forum. I started with the iPod to stereo (terrible), progressed through 4 different idocks (marginally better), & eventually questioned what I was doing and if I was ever going to get anything but poor amplified sound from the iPods through the headphone jack or the ipod port.

I grabbed an obsolete three-year-old laptop (20 GB hd). Cleaned it and reloaded windows. With external wifi card linked it through my router to my music drive on my study PC. Changed the Music folder on the Laptop to the Music drive by networking to it and giving it a drive name (M:). I then loaded itunes and it worked pretty well, much better than using the ipod for home stereo listening.

I quickly moved to adding an inexpensive external DAC M-Audio Audiophile USB ($120 1 year ago) and used it to decode between the laptop (USB) and my stereo (RCA outputs). Much better and it had high sampling play rate capabilities (24/96).

Seeking even better sound, I decided to bypass windows K-Driver (a source of muddled music). I downloaded and installed Foobar2000 (and several add-ons for iTunes like look & feel) on the laptop, again linking to the networked music folder. I loaded the ASIO drivers from the M-audio and set the output of Foobar2000 to ASIO. Works as good or better than the best CDs. As a bonus, I can also record music (from preamp or directly from SACD analog outputs).

On my stereo, I now use the Foobar2000 player on the laptop for audiophile-listening recordings. I use Windows Media player to rip at lossless WMA format. I also rip at MP3 rate for itunes/ipod. On Ripped CDs, the sound on the stereo is as good if not better, not quite at the level of SACD. I also have some 24/96 24/192 recordings that I have downloaded or bought (LINN). They sound fabulous with their low noise floor and high dynamic range.

I am now at the point of starting to question why I would go back to hard disks or continue buying SACDs. Here's why: using any lossless non-copy protected format (WMA, FLAC, WAVE) I can convert to CDs or to clean mp3s or any other format. I use dbpoweramp for that. So, I have portability of music in any format at almost any level of quality (based on original).

So, to summarize, I have great stereo CD-like sound in a laptop server & portability of ipod. Lastly, it's inexpensive (cost me LT $200 extra since i had PC and cables), not to the tune of $2-6K like the writer on NYTimes recommended to its readers today(that was so ridiculous I was going to write but didn't want to get put-down for the seeming complexity of this learned setup). What I was really thinking was that for $4K I would buy the PC, DACS & cables, set it up at the writer's home, load some CDs, & show him how to use it. Maybe he would stop giving bad (expensive) advise to his readers. I could even throw in the iPod and would still be $2000 less than the McIntosh he was raving about (I know, I know, it's a great product if you don't mind spending the $$$- my money is already spent on Nautilus speakers, NAD pre, Anthem power, & Sony SACD). Anyway, I've had a lot of fun and learning with this...and music listening source hardware is getting very inexpensive for me.

I guess that's why I enjoy reading this forum.

P.S. You also get a nice headphone amp with the M-Audio

Edits: 02/21/08 02/21/08 02/21/08

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