Help with music players

Hi Joseph, welcome to the forum.

 

There are better informed people than me on here but I'll try and answer some of your questions.

 

1.Yes, pretty much all portable music player are rechargeble and can be used while plugged in to AC power if desired.

 

2. (I might be wrong but Im sure someone will soon correct me) They will have their own integrated amp/dac but some players have a pre-amp line out function which will output a cleaner analogue signal from the units DAC prior to the Amp. The Ipod Classics and the Sony X-1060 32Gb springs to mind and I can vouch for the X having an excellent line out when an LOD adapter is used. If you dont want the onboard DAC to be used It sounds like you just want a 'transport' ? A pc soundcard will often have an optical out a will provide a pure digital signal via toslink to an external DAC/Amp, Digital coaxial may also be another option with some soundcards... or you can also connect some DAC's directly via USB. (USB DAC)

 

3. Yes you can... rip your cd's using ripping software and saving in Wav format on your PC... although there are compressed 'lossless' file types that some players use that can save you a lot of space without degrading quality and would be what I,d use.  This should help-  http://www.zeropaid.com/news/6243/getting_to_know_your_audio_files/

 

And this thread might also interest you-  http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?t=18599

 

Would you be connecting it to your home hifi?  

Edited by Ari33 - 2/2/13 at 6:49pm

Hi Joseph69. About transferring your music. You can compress files which degrades their quality depending on how much you compress them. This is fine for IEMs/earbuds but with a good setup with full size headphones you need at least 256kbps preferably 320kbps. With excellent media players/amps then it is even possible to notice the difference between 320kbps and WAV or lossless compression. If you wish to play through your hi-fi then you don't want any compression. Lossless is like a zip file. You don't lose any data but the file is a bit smaller than the WAV file. I have a similar sized music collection to you and have converted most of it to flac. Each album takes 200-250MB. I've still got my collection at 320kbps for IEM listening outside. The software I used for converting to flac was a program called Exact Audio Copy (EAC). It is rather strict and some of my old CDs couldn't be converted. A QLS QA660 is an SD card player that sends a high grade digital signal that you could run through a DAC into your hi-fi. Alternatively their QA350 is a portable WAV player utilising the rather good Wolfson WM8740 DAC. The difficulty you come accross with hi-fi players is capacity. Many only have 8-32GB which means only part of a lossless collection can be stored. My collection was 20GB at 192kpbs mp3, 30GB at 320kbps and I estimate will be 60-70GB at flac. Many mainstream products with high capacity HDD will be difficult to plug into your hi-fi although good for outdoor use. You could stream music from a PC/laptop into a Cambridge Audio Stream Magic rack. Cambridge Audio did have a HDD player the 640H which compressed your CDs while you played them onto a 160GB HDD, this is quite an old player. I don't know whether they have a model which plays lossless or perhaps uses flash memory.

double post

Edited by Sefelt103 - 2/3/13 at 2:37am

 

If its the Meridian 203, it has both optical and digital co-axial in doesn't it?, so no issues there. You may be a bit limited in potential compared to modern DAC's as I cant imagine it will be able to deal with the higher resolution tracks ie; 196/24 recordings that can be downloaded these days.

 

If you rip a cd it will contain ALL the information that is on the CD and store it in a Wav file format, so no loss in quality at all. It just makes more sense to find a player that can play FLAC or another lossless file type... just to save you HD or SD card space.

 

I play wavs using my Sony X-1060 personal player as the source. I use an LOD cable for a clean pre amp (anologue) out signal which goes into my Creative X-Dock which does something very unusual and creates a DTS 5.1 digital audio signal sent via Toslink to be decoded by my Onkyo 5.1 surround sound Amp.  It may sound a bit strange to be converting an analogue signal back into a digital 5.1 DTS signal but it doesn't affect the sound quality negatively, sounds incredible....  the soundstage, the detail, the clarity... wow!

I ripped the audio from my Roger Waters 'Remember that Night' DVD and play it this way... totally mind blowing hair on the back of your neck standing on end stuff I just cant imagine another set-up sounding any better.

 

Sefelt103  has covered it really well. I hadn't seen that QLS model before and was hesitant to recomend the smaller ones due to their screen size limitations. I'd also suggest going down the non portable route as a home seperates type transport wont have any design/component/layout compromises that a personal player might due to their compact size.. 

 

I'd ask what the best digital transport would be for your budget in the 'dedicated Source Components' section providing all the info you mentioned above... you should get good advice there.

I didn't catch what your budget is, Joseph, but one solution if you are techie minded could be an Android tablet. Some of the newest tablets that use the 4.1 Jelly Bean version of Android support USB out. So you can put your music on the tablet, and then use the tablet's music player and output to a DAC. Since most of the Android tablets have a micro SD card, you should be able to add 60gb of storage with a card.

The one main disadvantage of this solution is that you have to charge the device through the same plug for the USB out. So can't charge while it's running. Also support is varied. For instance, some DACs draw to much power for some devices--apparently the FiiO E17 is one that's problematic. Here's a list of devices to look into, both phones and tablets: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1393599/enable-usb-audio-on-any-android-4-0-smartphone-tablet/60#post_22410396

Strangely enough, the Nexus 7 doesn't support it without having root the tablet and jump through some technical hoops to get it working. Here's the process on the Nexus 7: http://www.head-fi.org/t/627459/use-a-standard-usb-dac-with-a-nexus-7-step-by-step-guide

Anyway, if you are interested in it, definitely worth checking out. Nice big display on a tablet for managing your music collection.

 

Yes, absolutely. No more cd's cluttering up your lounge. It will take a while to convert your existing CD collection, It's definately the way forward. You'll probably never buy another CD again and just download your favourite individual tracks. You might find this Wiki article on Ripping helpfull- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping

 

My home system is not an expensive one at all, just carefully considered. If you ever consider replacing your Stereo Amp be sure to have a listen to a decent seperates 5.1 audio system for a more 3D audio surround demonstration before making a decision, its a more natural listening experience Imo,

Edited by Ari33 - 2/4/13 at 2:21am

I think there are few options to choose like you can buy multimedia hardrive with dock to give digital out or buy Archos 500GB 5 series multimedia mp3 player with dock to connect with external DAC or buy cd/dvd player with hardrive to rip cds and store on it.

As far as I know iTunes does not sell ALAC files, they are compressed to 256kbps which is fine for headphones but not hi-fi speakers. ALAC and FLAC should be identical to the CD they were converted from. As you probably know ALAC only works on Apple products (unless a player supports m4a). Other players use FLAC. There are apps. for mobile devices to play FLAC files on some Apple players. Whether there is software for a laptop to do so I don't know. There are also converters from FLAC to ALAC and vice versa. If you like Apple then convert your CDs to ALAC using iTunes. If you want compatability with a wider range of devices then go for FLAC. Certain sites sell music converted to FLAC.