Computer-Based Audio: An Industry Insiders Guided Tour – an Analog Audio event
To Serve & Groove author Oliver Masciarotte was the featured speaker for this last Saturday’s Analog Audio of Minnesota informational seminar. This was real timely event for me because I have been trying to figure out how to deal with my digital music collection (both on CD and on files). I don’t have it figured out after this seminar, but I do feel better educated and prepared to do further research – prior to this seminar I was completely clueless.
Quick aside: Analog Audio of Minnesota, a dealer of high-end audio, does a great service to the Minnesota audiophile community with events like this. AAM’s Paul loves good music and he loves good equipment – he wants to sell it, but he has time for anyone who loves good music – to him they you may not be a customer today, but someday maybe. So even though I will not be buying a $40,000 pair of speakers anytime soon, I will go to AAM’s Vivid Audio Giya G3 event and I will feel completely welcome.
Oliver was a compelling speaker – he was knowledgeable, opinionated, entertaining and most of all understandable. I like good stereo equipment and I like good music, but I am not technical and when most audiophile geeks start explaining stuff to me I am quickly lost. Oliver explained jitter in a way I could understand (don’t ask me to explain it back).
This talk was a teaser for me – now I want to read Oliver’s book To Serve & Groove to really dig in on how to create a solid digital music system. I have a lot of vinyl, but I have more digital music (CD, SACD, DVD-A and music files). I have not been satisfied with my current set up:
- 6-year-old MacBook
- 3 TB external hard drive
- iTunes
- $100 DAC
- Pioneer DVD/CD/SACD player
So what did I learn? I need to find a high-end music player (a software to augment or replace iTunes), double my RAM, and upgrade my DAC. Despite being clueless, my recent decision to rip via ALAC (Apple Lossless) vs. 320 MP3 was accidentally brilliant.
My next step is to test drive some music players (software). I will let you know what I discover. Thanks Oliver and Paul!
Axl's Catch Groove 
If you’re thinking about adding a mastering quality DAC to a laptop here’s my 2 cents:
http://www.prismsound.com/music_recording/products_subs/lyra/lyra_home.php
Also, I use an a 4TB RAID array hooked to my router to store my music. It’s redundant (you don’t want to rip your collection more than once) and other computers can stream the library from it.