Salutations and a happy new year to all the forum head-fiers out there. Before I get into the meat of my post let me first get this off my chest. Although I've always been a huge music fan when it comes to mid to higher end audio equipment I'm a complete noob so please be understanding if the following questions I ask sound rather stupid. I've never worried about specs or brand names as far as audio was concerned. Traditionally I just trusted my ears and my gut instinct when an audio product was involved. I guess it was that gut instinct that upon having them recommended by a friend led me to buy the Grado SR 60 headphones. I've been putting mileage on these cans for a good 16 months since I first bought them and I've fallen in love with them. Considering I was traditionally a off the box store shelf (yeah yeah I know crappy sounding headphones) kind of guy the Grado SR 60's completely blew me away. The bad thing about having good entry level headphones is although they sound pretty sweet I can't help but wonder what else is available out there and find myself wanting to upgrade into something along the lines of a Grado RS1i or even a set of GS1000i's. I've even found myself wondering what cans like Sennheiser HD 650, AKG Q701, Ultrsone Edition 8, Beyerdynamic T1, or Audeze LCD-2 must sound like. I guess my Grado cans have turned me into a complete audio geek. So here is where I start the silly questions.
PROBLEM #1
Currently I have all my music ripped onto my laptop and I've been using my laptop as my music source for the last 5 years. I've bought a 2TB external hard drive and the plan is to trash all my MP3's and re rip my CD collection into lossless format. The first question is whats the better format FLAC, or Apple lossless? I've traditionally always used iTunes as my music manager but if FLAC is the way to go I'd dump iTunes which leads me to my next question. If I do have to go the FLAC route can anyone recommend a good music manager/player that supports FLAC?
PROBLEM #2
As everyone may have guessed I want to continue using my laptop as my source. Currently I use a 17' HP laptop with windows XP installed. I know that if I want to properly drive some of the higher end cans I've mentioned above I'm going to need a good DAC and headphone amp. Desk space on my work area is at a premium and I don't have the deepest pockets and if I could get away with it I would rather go with a one piece setup rather then two. I also would like a setup that would allow me room to grow as I start to slowly expand on my headgear. After doing a lot of reading (on this site and other audiophile sites) I'm starting to lean towards maybe getting the Bursum HA-160D three in one as a possible answer. Seems like everywhere I go on the net everyone is raving about the HA-160D. Considering the setup I'm looking for is the Bursum HA-160D a good idea or should I maybe look at another avenue? Secondly, I know this is a dumb question so please forgive my noobiness, how would I connect the Bursum HA-160D to my laptop? Another question is will the type of connection I decide on effect my sound quality?
Any help and advice would be appreciated. Please forgive my long winded post but when you're first starting to get into the hobby you always have a lot of silly questions. Many thanks in advance and God bless.
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