[Connectz]

Okay, so I am just sitting here browsing the net listening to some Alicia Keys (The Diary Of Alcia Keys CD). After I get to the last song, I said hey what the hell. I went an got all of my ALAC files from off of my iMac and put them onto my external USB HD (250gb) and then plugged it back into my PC.

So everything is working fine. So I start up iTunes. Since the Alicia Keys CD was still in the drive, iTunes decides to access the CD. So I said hmm, let me see if there is any audible sound difference between the two players. So I start to play the last song that was playing through foobar in iTunes. Maaaaannn the song started and it sounded like it just lost all sorts of fidelity. Then I thought to myself, well thats very subjective and based on opinion. But what couldn't be explained away was all the cracks, pops, and slight hesitations that I was hearing while the same song was playing through iTunes.

I am a Foobar believer now. I wish Foobar would hurry up and get ALAC (mp4) support. I hate using iTunes to play music.


Note: I am using my HD 650's right out of the PC with nothing in between.

 

[Oliver :)]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Connectz But what couldn't be explained away was all the cracks, pops, and slight hesitations that I was hearing while the same song was playing through iTunes.

Maaan, you know these are intentional in some of the songs, right?

 

[granodemostasa]

it certainly shouldn't do that! was the decoding done using error correction? pops and that other stuff you descirbed doenst sound like the difference i hear between foobar and itunes (which has to do with ambient detail)...but i am using KSIO drivers so maybe that's what's making the differnce less?

 

[Elephas]

iTunes can sound different, and sometimes worse, than foobar depending on configuration.

It can also sound as good as foobar ASIO or kernal streaming output.

 

[Oliver :)]

These driver issues seem a lovely thing to have there on your Windows PCs. Connectz, as you have the opportunity, do you have a setup that allows for a fair comparison of iTunes on Mac vs. Win?

 

[Mikenet]

Quote:

I wish Foobar would hurry up and get ALAC (mp4) support. I hate using iTunes to play music.

It's your lucky day:

For 0.9:
http://www.foobar2000.org/components/index.html

For 0.83:
http://www.saunalahti.fi/~cse/foobar2000/

The 0.9 version has a stability warning...try it out and see. There's even a completely open source ALAC encoder floating around, so an open source ALAC decoder for foobar should appear...as soon as someone gets around to it.

 

[parrot5]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mikenet It's your lucky day: For 0.9: http://www.foobar2000.org/components/index.html

This becomes my lucky day too. I was just looking for this. Thanks

Update:
Alas... It can't playback my m4a file.. "Decoding failure at 0:00.000 (Unsupported format or corrupted file)"