[ginsey]

Hi, Newbie question. I am looking at getting a new rig that would be portable and can be used at home.
Is it possible to run an IPod into the Dac side of the predator, I think it only uses the Dac side when the USB is used??
Also I keep my music files on an external hard drive, how can I use the predator DAC through my PC not sure if iTunes will work or Foobar?
Any help would be great.
Shane

 

[nc8000]

To my knowledge there only exist 2 soloutions that can produce a digital signal from an iPod and both are very stationary. They are the Wadia and the Krell docks. I don't know how they work technically but I'm guessing that they actually just use the iPod as a disk and extract the music themself. The standard dock port on an iPod does not offer the digital signal from before the dac.

There exist some dap's (amongst others some iRivers) that have digital out and can be connected to some dac's but I have never tried any.

On a pc the dac plugs into a usb port and works as an external soundcard where you can direct the output from your player software. There are lots of technical info about all this in the computer as source forum and I'm no expert on these matters, have only briefly tried it with my D1 fed from iTunes on my pc.

 

[Oya?]

As nc said, for portable purposes the iPod cannot send out a digital signal, only analog, in this case you want to use the iPod dock line out and plug it to the analog input mini-jack on the Predator.

For PC use, I'm assuming the Predator will work just like any other USB portable amp/DAC (I've only used the 2Move); when you plug them in via USB to your PC they show up as 'USB speakers' and override your normal soundcard. Very simple plug-and-play.

 

[labrat]

Deleted.

 

[nc8000]

In iTunes you can just import from your external drive and tell iTunes to leave the files where they are. In that way iTunes will know where the files are and play them but will not make copies or rearrange your file structures. Only problem would be if your external drive doesn't get assigned the same drive letter each time you connect it.

 

[pirate6955]

i just use the ipod as the external drive on my macbook. then i connect the dac via optical to the macbook. the macbook running itunes becomes a super expensive optical out adapter for the ipod i guess you could say. but the whole thing runs of the grid so there is inherent beauty in that.

i dont have any music on the computer. at home the music is on external drive. mobile the drive is the ipod. portable the ipod is line out to the amp or just directly into IEM's