I can tell you one thing: I've put a LOT more time and effort into getting my digital file player/streamer running than I ever did with a CD player.
However, it is kind of a miracle that my half a wall of CDs now fit on a single storage device smaller than a deck of cards.
But then again, I have to keep that all backed up on no less than two other hard drives sitting in a drawer, for fear of the entire collection going poof and disappearing in an instant.
But still...
But to be honest, I listened to three albums off my digital player today while working from home. I just open a browser window and there's my entire collection. I could make a playlist on the fly and have music playing all day if that's what I wanted. Pretty cool.
However, it is kind of a miracle that my half a wall of CDs now fit on a single storage device smaller than a deck of cards.
But then again, I have to keep that all backed up on no less than two other hard drives sitting in a drawer, for fear of the entire collection going poof and disappearing in an instant.
But still...
But to be honest, I listened to three albums off my digital player today while working from home. I just open a browser window and there's my entire collection. I could make a playlist on the fly and have music playing all day if that's what I wanted. Pretty cool.
As mentioned earlier, I've gone from 45s to LPs, 8-tracks to cassettes and now CDs. I'm not sure how many album (melon) crates they would have filled but I have about 300 CDs in three storage boxes in my closet.. All those CDs are ripped and stored on a microSD card which is smaller than a postage stamp.
I have the ripped files on my computer and a tablet I can take just about anywhere. And music player apps allow me to effortlessly make playlists with a few clicks, similar to the cassettes of albums and select songs I used to painstakingly record.
So yeah, all of this continues to amaze me....
I have the ripped files on my computer and a tablet I can take just about anywhere. And music player apps allow me to effortlessly make playlists with a few clicks, similar to the cassettes of albums and select songs I used to painstakingly record.
So yeah, all of this continues to amaze me....
Earlier I mentioned converting my ripped WAV files to FLAC, primarily because the information for the Macbook Air states for audio playback "Supported formats include AAC, MP3, Apple Lossless, FLAC, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, and Dolby Atmos". Are these to only formats supported and, if not, how do I determine the audio file formats that are supported? Thank you!
MBA Specs
MBA Specs
For what it's worth, I use Audirvana 3.5 player software on a 10 year old Macbook Air to play FLAC files via USB to RME ADI-2 FC DAC and on to amp and speakers .... Music files stored on local external SSD, don't do steaming!
Spent ages researching the best 'recommended' digital set-up at the time and, for me, Macbook Air with external DAC seemed the way to go. Gone through several DAC's until concluding the ADI-2 FC is the one for me, sounds great! Stuck with this set-up since then because it works for me, and continues to provide excellent service. Not upgraded to Audirvana Origin as i) now subscription only and ii) debatable if Origin sounds any better anyway (or even worse, according to some!). Haven't tried any alternative (JRiver, Foobar, etc.) so can't comment on those.
Have I needed to convert everything (mostly CD's) to FLAC? Probably not really necessary, as has been mentioned here, but that's what I started with and it works, so carried on doing so .... I have some as WAV files and as far as I can tell there's no audible difference compared to FLAC (to my aged ears!).
In a nutshell, every set-up's different, so whatever works best for you ....
Spent ages researching the best 'recommended' digital set-up at the time and, for me, Macbook Air with external DAC seemed the way to go. Gone through several DAC's until concluding the ADI-2 FC is the one for me, sounds great! Stuck with this set-up since then because it works for me, and continues to provide excellent service. Not upgraded to Audirvana Origin as i) now subscription only and ii) debatable if Origin sounds any better anyway (or even worse, according to some!). Haven't tried any alternative (JRiver, Foobar, etc.) so can't comment on those.
Have I needed to convert everything (mostly CD's) to FLAC? Probably not really necessary, as has been mentioned here, but that's what I started with and it works, so carried on doing so .... I have some as WAV files and as far as I can tell there's no audible difference compared to FLAC (to my aged ears!).
In a nutshell, every set-up's different, so whatever works best for you ....
Since it has been a few years since I purchased and ripped a CD I forgot that I had previously converted all the WAV files to FLAC for a device with little storage. I saved the FLAC files to an external SSD so that is what I am going with!
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I just got a Macbook Air M3 15 inch with 16gb unified memory and 512gb storage. I'm getting my Windows laptop in order to migrate information to the Macbook. I look forward to playing around with headphone output compared to USB to a Schiit DAC and headphone amp, trying Apple Music, and other things such as Airplay 2 to a Wiim Mini, etc. If there is anything I find that may be of interest I will probably start a new thread. Thanks again for all the help!