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Andrew
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TV: Panasonic VIERA TC-P55ST30 55-Inch 1080p 3D Plasma
Receiver: Onkyo TX-SR706, Emotiva XPA-5 Gen 2, Blu Ray: Sony BDP-N460
Fronts/Center/Surrounds: Sierra Towers Nrt, Sierra-1, HTM-200
Sub: HSU VTF-3 MK-4
I may very well be wrong, but I believe .mp4's have the option of being lossless.
Sierra 2 Front LR PA-1 DC-1
Sierra Luna Surround LR Multichannel via UMC-1 Stereo amp via VSX-D912 AVR
DC-1 Ext 2 Ch DAC LR XLR to Mono Amps LR RCA to UMC-1 Opt
T2531 31 Band Stereo Graphic EQ XLR RCA
PA-1 LR XLR Mono Block 140Watt @ 8 Ohms Class D Amps
UMC-1 Line Stage Sub X-over @ 40Hz
L12 12" Subwoofer RCA
P3 Power Plant A/C Regenerator - Can dramatically improve sound quality realism after 350 hours or 2 weeks of cumulative burn in
40" HDR 4K TV Opt
Windows 11 Gaming HTPC HDMI
D2R
Dave, I think the suggestions above for ripping to FLAC are well supported. Playback then becomes the issue. If you were using a Mac and itunes there's a few software programs that will playback FLAC w/ itunes.....but if you're using itunes for windows it's different. If you used one of the suggestions above to rip to FLAC, maybe you would be better off switching to a different program for playback, possibly something like this.....http://www.jriver.com/index.html
I'm use a Mac for playback, so I don't have this, BUT it offers a free trial......
If you're not totally committed to FLAC, Apple lossless should be just fine. On Windows, it is limited to CD quality, but that is all you need for ripping CDs. If you still want to stick with FLAC, then you need something other than ITunes. JRiver is supposed to be the best, but it costs money. Media Monkey is supposed to be pretty good, and it is free. I imagine there are others as well.
I may misunderstand the issue as I don't use MAC or iOS (iTunes), but VLC both rips and plays the media on Windows, MAC and iOS. It is also free.
Last edited by JustaSheep; 07-15-2012 at 10:46 AM. Reason: Just reworded
Last year I ripped several crates of CDs from my brother using dBpoweramp Reference. I think it was more than 500 discs total. I ripped to FLAC, and then later used the converter component of the suite to create ALAC versions for my brother since he uses iTunes exclusively. Everything worked without a hitch! He had a large number of classical discs, and the ability to import ALL the detailed meta-data from various online databases was absolutely priceless. dBpoweramp is very mature and powerful and I have no regrets about the nominal fee.
For local playback I use Foobar2000 (lean open-source player) and I also keep the files on my WHS server and stream them to my networked receiver.
BK
I'm way late to this party but in case anyone else is looking, there's the free CUETools/CUERipper, http://www.cuetools.net/wiki/CUERipper, in addition to the others mentioned. It supports AccurateRip, etc.
I use JRiver (www.jriver.com). It's $50 for the software, but it's a full blown media server software. So no only do I rip all my CD's to FLAC, I've started purchasing 192/24 and 96/24 audio from HDtracks. JRiver also supports high quality audio devices via ASIO. I have an Echo AudioFire 12 and attach it to my media PC via Firewire and send the audio via ASIO. So not only to I get lossless rips, and even higher quality audio when available, it get's processed via a high quality DA device vs. the limited on board sound chip.
I also use it for watching and recording live TV with dual HD HomeRun Duel's and I purchased AnyDVD HD so now I can watch all the Blu-ray moves on my media center.
With this setup I went from 4 audio IO devices to just using the media PC with an improvement in sound quality and an improvement in video quality over Windows MC (Win 7).
Thanks,
Media PC: Intel i7-4770K, Asus Maximus VI Hero, 16GB RAM, 250G Samsung 840 EVO, XFX HD7870 GPU
Software: JRiver MC 20.0.79, AnyDVD HD 7.5.8.0
Audio Processor: Lynx AES16e (FW: 13.1) w/ Aurora 16-VT (FW: 28)
Amp: Emotiva MPS-2
Speakers: Ascend Acoustics Sierra Towers w/RAAL, Horizon w/RAAL and Sierra-2's as SL/SR
Sub: Elemental Designs A7s-650
TV tuner: HD HomeRun DUEL (2)