![]() In fact, to my ears, the SQ is marvelous and close to that coming from the PerfectWave Transport Memory player. This last bit is certainly not unique amongst the available programs, in fact I don’t know if any of this is unique, but here’s what I do know: it seems to be the least intrusive to the user experience than any of the other programs I tried (and I tried most of the big names) without any compromise in sound quality. ![]() Moreover, it makes sure the sample rate and bit depth remain exactly true to the source material without any intervention from the user. There it fills up the memory until enough has been added, and sends it on its way out the USB port in bit perfect fashion (hence the name). The program hides in the background as if it didn’t exist and yet is extremely powerful: grabbing the audio from iTunes and forwarding it in perfect form to the computer’s memory. Let me say upfront that none of the available choices for software are perfect, so we have to choose whatever we think is closest to our goals of simplicity without sacrificing the sound quality.įor this task I have chosen Bit Perfect. A tall order actually, but it is achievable. I want all the features and fun of using iTunes for my music, but I don’t want any hassle or downside to playing it. I am going to tell you about the one I’ve chosen and why.įrom the beginning of this project I’ve mentioned my goal was simplicity, no need for keyboards, mice and video screens, high-end performance and ease of use. There are a few excellent software programs out there that do exactly what we want. We do, however, want to keep iTunes for our music management tool. Both Apple and Microsoft want to fool with your audio in ways that don’t serve the music and we’re not going to let them do that. What we want in our choice of software is a means for the audio stored on our hard drive to get out of the computer without being altered or molested in any way. All in, we’re looking at about $1,000, which was the goal from the start of this project. You can download Max for free which will do bit perfect batch conversion of FLAC and pretty much every other popular audio format into Apple lossless format.In yesterday’s postI described the balance of what we will need to make our music server: a Mac Mini, a Mac Super Drive, an iPad Mini for the user interface, and software that makes it all sound good. Or you could do what I do and use iTunes with BitPerfect or something similar to automatically switch the Midi preferences to match the track that's playing. Or check the preferences for Vox and see if it provides an option to change the output settings automatically. In the above example it just sees a 24 bit / 44.1kHz track coming down the USB cable.Ĭhanging your Midi preferences to 16 bit / 44.1kHz should leave the majority of CD quality lossless files unmolested. The extra processing means that some of the original bits might be lost, to be replaced by interpolated bits.Īpart from with the bit perfect test files, where the DAC knows what to expect to find in the track, there's no way for the DAC to tell whether a track started out as 16 bit / 44.1kHz, 24 bit / 352.8kHz or something in between. That will definitely cause a bit perfect test to fail and might even be audible when playing back music. ![]() But they're probably enough to cause a bit perfect test to fail.Ĭhanging the sample rate is a different matter. These extra bits probably won't have any audible impact on sound quality, they're just padding and all of the original bits should be retained. I'm pretty sure that UK Macs default to 24 bit / 44.1kHz which means that the Mac is actually inserting a whole bunch of zeros to a typical 16 bit / 44.1kHz CD quality lossless track before sending it on to the DAC. I don't think there's a way to program around this, at least not with recent versions of OS X. The trouble is that Macs always resample to the bit depth and sample rate set in the Midi preferences pane. If the signal from the computer doesn't match up then it fails the test. The DAC knows what bits to expect from Naim's test files. ![]() Bit perfect (as distinct from BitPerfect the product) just means that the DAC receives all of the bits in the original track unmolested.
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