[bsommerhalder]

Hey guys,
 
Brand new user. I'm just starting to get into paying proper attention to sound, so I'll be asking a lot of questions in the future as I go from know-nothing to (hopefully) a quality student of sound preservation.
 
Anyway, before I get into the fun stuff, I have to get my house in order.
 
I have an iPhone, so I'm using iTunes so that I can sync music easily with my phone, and do backups and the like. I am running Windows.
 
- Can I get quality sound using iTunes? If so, is there a particular way I can go about achieving this? If no, what should I use, and how do folks get around the syncing headaches with their iPhones?
 
- Related to the previous question, can I truly achieve quality sound using a Windows machine?
 
I'll be looking forward into getting into discussions about home and portable amplifiers, head phones, speakers and the like. But, first thing's first.
 
Cheers in advance,
Brenden

 

[e6600]

yes, itunes is fine and many people here prefer it over other players.  i prefer foobar, but there isnt really a wrong choice in a player.  
i use foobar to convert and sync my lossless to lame -v0, then open itunes to sync again so they show up on my iphone 4.
 
yeah, windows is fine.  others will say linux is much better, but i never tried it so i cant say

 

[ProtegeManiac]

If you can work iTunes with your portable devices and don't have an existing library of other (lossless) formats it can't play, no problem with it.

 

[bsommerhalder]

Ah, I should have mentioned: I am planning on replacing all of my files with lossless versions.

 

[bsommerhalder]

Excellent, thank you!

 

[please22]

If you plan on using the iPhone as your primary listening device you might have to stick with iTunes.  There are other players that will sync with iTunes but they might make less sense since you're on the phone and iTunes services some other features.
 
Sounds like you'd be converting to Apple Lossless format.  Now there are apps you can download to the iPhone that will let you play flac for example though.  Apps like FLAC Player, and Golden Ear.  They both have their methods for putting the files on your phone but they'll play lossless if you prefer to flac open source.