Why is this section so dead, when computers are so awesome?

[L.J.]

iTunes won't play FLAC. Not sure about RealPlayer or WMP, but I doubt it.

Use Winamp or foobar2000. If you use Winamp, you'll have to download the FLAC plug-in too, I think.

Is there a major difference between the 2?

[Mike Anderson]

Winamp is user friendly, a lot like iTunes.


Foobar is not as user friendly, but is more powerful.

[L.J.]

Winamp is user friendly, a lot like iTunes.


Foobar is not as user friendly, but is more powerful.

Perhaps I will experiment with both. The Foobar is free?

[Mike Anderson]

Yup.....

[L.J.]

Yup.....

Thanks Mike! You and Nod have been a great help. All this right at my fingertips and I didn't even know. I look foward to having my entire CD collection just a few clicks away

[Mike Anderson]

^^^ No problem - I get a lot of help from others in this forum too, so I'm glad to give some back!

BTW, if you're going to go through the trouble of ripping all your CDs in FLAC, you may want to use Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to do it. You're less likely to end up with errors and imperfections in your rips.

However, it is very user unfriendly...

[bacchanal]

I know people talk about how CDs etc have a finite life span, but I've never actually had one go bad, and I have some I burned years and years ago.

The Taiyo Yuden DVDs are supposed to be archival quality, and once I burn them I don't touch them, I just store them in a cool dry place.

The other thing is that I live in earthquake country. I like to give my DVD backups to a friend to store, on the logic that it's less likely both our houses will be utterly destroyed. Even a RAID setup won't do much good if your house goes down.

Good point. A friends house or a safe deposit box would be a good idea if you're really serious about backing up your library, and DVDs are probably the easiest/most stable way for consumers to use off-site storage. External hard drives would be more fragile than DVDs, and tape backups (while very stable) are expensive for the amount of storage you would need.

[L.J.]

Alright, so I downloaded the Winamp and installed that and Flac. I also ordered the iMic today. All I need now is some time to fill up my 80g HD with my CD collection. Thanks again guys!

[L.J.]

Ok, I'm lost again. How do you rip the CD in Flac format?

[Mike Anderson]

There are several programs you can use. If you're fairly computer savvy, I recommend Exact Audio Copy:

http://www.exactaudiocopy.org/

This is a freeware program that will give you error-free rips, if you use it properly. But it takes a little bit of work to set up.

Somewhere on the web there's a set of step-by-step instructions for doing it right. See if you can find it on Google; if you can't I'll hunt it down for you. Might be in the Hydrogen Audio forums.

[L.J.]

Thanks Mike, I'll search tomorrow. Too lazy tonight. So what does this program do and when does flac come into play?

[L.J.]

There are several programs you can use. If you're fairly computer savvy, I recommend Exact Audio Copy:

http://www.exactaudiocopy.org/

This is a freeware program that will give you error-free rips, if you use it properly. But it takes a little bit of work to set up.

Somewhere on the web there's a set of step-by-step instructions for doing it right. See if you can find it on Google; if you can't I'll hunt it down for you. Might be in the Hydrogen Audio forums.

Hey Mike, are these the instructions you were refering to.

[L.J.]

Hey Nod, I have a question. I got the iMic today, but it didn't come with software. In order for me to record my cassettes onto my HD, compatible software is needed. iMic provides software for Apple users only. Do you have any idea of what type of free recording software I can use for this?

Thanks

[noddin0ff]

So, unfortunately I'm a Mac guy. It's unfortunate Griffin doesn't have freeware for PC recording, but I think any current recording software available for the PC should work. The second of the two help links suggested Sound Recorder and Windows Movie Maker as things that come free with XP that should work. The first link gave some other names.

http://www.griffintechnology.com/sup...IC-PC-014.html
http://www.griffintechnology.com/sup...IC-PC-002.html


I did a quick web search and came up with Audacity as a possibe program
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

I haven't used my iMic to record so I'm afraid I'm not much of a help here. I'll be interested to hear what you find. Someday I'll record my boxes of cassette tapes.

[Karl Chang]

Thanks Nod. You kinda lost me abit with all that format talk, but oh well. I'm currently using WMP and I also have Real player and iTunes. I will give the iTunes a try and see for myself if it sounds better. I have learned alot from this one thread. The airport express and squeeze box seem to be great products. I will have to look into it more when I get a little extra cash. I surely can drop 40 bucks on that iMic for the time being, though. I still have a couple hundred cassette tapes laying around. The hard part is gonna be ripping my 200+ CD's onto my laptop. I couldn't imagine doing over 700 .

Have you tried WinAmp.
I personally prefer it over WMP any day.
My collection of downloaded and ripped songs are mainly in m4a format(also known as
"mp4 aac" or "MPEG-4 advanced audio codec").Apple's AAC is the stripped down and bare bones core of m4a.
You can only use it with iTunes and iPod (proprietary bull****}

My m4a's are from P2P or ripping via Realplayer
Compared to mp3 the sound is closer to cd quuality
unless somebody has bad ripping software (sometimes m4a's downloaded through P2P
programs sound bad because of this).
by the way, WMP can't play m4a's. You'll need Winamp, Realplayer or iTunes.

The downside: does not play in most portable mp3 players except iPod (too bad)
I usually like to burn them onto cd for my cd changer, so it's ok for me.

My computer is hooked up to my my Denon AVR1906 reciever via Creative Labs
Soundblaster and it's headphone output{wish it had a digital optical output}.
Even though analog , the sound is much better than any computer speaker system.

[L.J.]

So, unfortunately I'm a Mac guy. It's unfortunate Griffin doesn't have freeware for PC recording, but I think any current recording software available for the PC should work. The second of the two help links suggested Sound Recorder and Windows Movie Maker as things that come free with XP that should work. The first link gave some other names.

http://www.griffintechnology.com/sup...IC-PC-014.html
http://www.griffintechnology.com/sup...IC-PC-002.html


I did a quick web search and came up with Audacity as a possibe program
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

I haven't used my iMic to record so I'm afraid I'm not much of a help here. I'll be interested to hear what you find. Someday I'll record my boxes of cassette tapes.

Hey Nod, well the audacity works fine. The Win sound recorder works for only one minute and I couldn't get the Win movie maker figured out. Anyways, after recording a couple of songs and playing around with noise filtering and what not, it still just sounds like crap. Perhaps I've become too use to the sounds of SACD and DVD-A. I didn't expect a cassette recorded onto my HD to sound like much anyways. Just too much of a headache and wasted time trying to get the recording to sound just right to my ears. I will do a little more research and play around with it a little more before saying screw it. Thanks for links.

[Kaboom]

The day will come when you can run OSX on a PC and Windows on a Mac.

That day has already come. for those of you interested, this link describes what you need to do to be able to run the latest OSX on a PC.

http://osx86project.org/

Long gone is the era where PCs and Macs were totally different at a hardware level. It started off with networking, then SCSI drives, then PCI ports, USB, firewire, then RAM, AGP, PCI express... up to a couple of months ago, the only difference between PC and mac hardware was the processor, and hence, the chipset. Now intel has ironed that out. At the moment there are no differences between a Mac and a PC at a hardware level. the only reason OSX doesn't run on EVERY PC is because some of the devices are not supported, but all of the PC architecture is... Kinda like when linux was starting out and it wouldn't run on some computers because it lacked hardware support...
I think OSX is a way inferior system in comparison to XP though. i just find it way lacking in user manageability and features. And i've been using an ibook for a while now. (its really, really cute though)
cheers!

[IVB]

I think cheap multi-zone/multi-source distribution & control will be the killer app that gets many people interested in creating HTPCs. A cheap PC combined with the right s/w, a serial-controllable reciever [i have the denon 3805], a $250 wifi tablet P3-400 PC can allow you to use pretty GUI screens to select any song in your selection, start/stop/volume in any zone.

(and yes, i know my choice of backgrounds, fonts, & colors is awful, but i JUST created this and am playing around to see if I can get something that looks better)

[noddin0ff]

cool!

[Modernaire]

My view is that I use 320 MP3 for songs or artists I casually like. I have my mini as a music server of sorts with album covers shown large when playing. Kind of like a digital jukebox I can see from afar. Fairly simple to set up. But I have to add, IVB, that interface, dude whats up with that GUI.

BUT for artists I really enjoy and really love and respect, I get the CD and or the Vinyl (sealed or NM).

I call it geekfree musical enjoyment. Either you go geek or you go gear. But this is just my view. Not into the latest squeeze box wireless media box PCHDMJK geek thing. I just like my stereo setup with each format represented. Something about that. I dont know...a computer company making things for me to enjoy music with...engh. For MP3's its cool and to set one up as your own radio like music server that can play in the background is cool. But again, for that special album, its CD or LP or heck even an MD.

[James Jardine]

cool!

[wayner86]

Most Applications Crash If Not The Operating System Hangs

[IVB]

But I have to add, IVB, that interface, dude whats up with that GUI.

yeah, yeah i know - i'm certainly no artist. I just dislike every single mass-market GUI out there, so i'm trying to build my own.

Here's my latest attempt (caveat: I'm using actual art I got from www.vladstudio.com - i'm not that talented, don't want anyone thinking i'm ripping anybody off)

Main screen:


And, zone control screen: