[Ivabign]

I have a new RSA Predator and am looking for an audio player to use with it on my iMac - am I correct that iTunes is NOT the way to go?
 
I am in uncharted territory here - but I have some Hi-Res music I would like to play through the computer - through the Predator and into my CIEM/IEM collection - anybody in similar position?
 
I looked up Foobar, but I only see Windows applications...
 
Thanks in advance

 

[dead99]

you could try bitperfect which is a app for 8 euros which enables bit perfect playback (wow, didn't see that one coming) and also plays high-res, dsd, and does upsampling, dither and allot more

 

[brhfl]

iTunes absolutely will do bit perfect playback. As long as the sample rate and bit depth are accurately set in the Audio MIDI Setup utility (Applications/Utilities), as long as the volume in iTunes is at 100%, and as long as nothing else is enabled in iTunes that would alter the signal (equalizers, Sound Check, possibly something I'm not thinking of at the moment...), your output will be bit perfect. You may need to restart iTunes after changing the output in Audio MIDI Setup (I have experienced this when testing out DoP playback... the DAC didn't recognize it as DoP (heard static) until I restarted iTunes, after changing the output in Audio MIDI Setup. Upon restarting iTunes and playing a DoP track, the DAC recognized it and decoded as DSD accordingly). 
 
The BitPerfect app makes all of that a bit simpler (well, a lot simpler, automates the whole thing frankly), but is not necessary for bit perfect playback from iTunes. 

 

[headdict]

For non-critical listening you can as well use iTunes without the hassle or extra apps needed for bit-perfect playback. In this case it will resample according to your Audio MIDI Setup settings. Not necessarily a bad thing IMO.

 

[Makiah S]

  I have a new RSA Predator and am looking for an audio player to use with it on my iMac - am I correct that iTunes is NOT the way to go?
 
I am in uncharted territory here - but I have some Hi-Res music I would like to play through the computer - through the Predator and into my CIEM/IEM collection - anybody in similar position?
 
I looked up Foobar, but I only see Windows applications...
 
Thanks in advance

*cough* *cough* buy a pc maybe
 
no no, just kidding, others have mentioned some nice stuff for it, although I would think [it might work as a some what jerry rigged player] but does Apple not have a some what High End Video or Music editing software, that might double as a rather nice high quality playback software, that won't prompt with any of iTunes usual foolishness 

 

[brhfl]

  no no, just kidding, others have mentioned some nice stuff for it, although I would think [it might work as a some what jerry rigged player] but does Apple not have a some what High End Video or Music editing software, that might double as a rather nice high quality playback software, that won't prompt with any of iTunes usual foolishness 

Not really… As a long time FCP editor and hobbyist with Logic, both are suited for what they actually do, and would be really rather unpleasant to jury-rig into media players. At that point you're better off going for Decibel, or Audirvana, or Fidelia, or jRiver, or… There are plenty of alternative solutions to go around, but it is perfectly doable without leaving iTunes, if one wishes. 

For non-critical listening you can as well use iTunes without the hassle or extra apps needed for bit-perfect playback. In this case it will resample according to your Audio MIDI Setup settings. Not necessarily a bad thing IMO.

This is very true, and brings up one other notable point… While using a mismatched sample rate (be it higher or lower) will always result in resampling, one can safely leave the output at 24 bits regardless of the original depth… it (essentially) just gets padded with nothingness.