Gr33tz! 8-)

Rip all your music in Apple Lossless format, which will put about 180 CDs onto a 60gig Ipod, pair it with a good battery powered headphone amp (Grado RA-1 for example) and some nice headphones and it will sound awesome.

The iPod didn't kill SACD and DVD-Audio, the RIAA or whomever thought up that god awful format with tons of restrictions did.

It's a shame, but it's the truth. I've had an iPod since 2002 when the first 20GB model came out. I love high quality audio but you're not going to get that sitting in a MD-80 or 757 across the United States without dropping some serious money and then having to worry about it getting dropped, damaged, swiped, or needing a backpack twice the size of your laptop just to carry all the components to make it reproduce said audio quality.

And contrary to the ragging here the iPod doesn't make you rip music and compress the heck out of it. If you're one of those types who thinks they can tell a difference between a semi-compressed file and a raw file then don't buy it.

But for the rest of us that have apparently damaged beyond all hope ears and like the fact that we could listen to our flavor of music instead of the drone of jet engines for a few hours, or listen to music instead of the drone of a subway, or hook it into our car and listen to podcasts or music without having to listen to some 'morning show' or something else equally idiotic it doesn't mean that you can point and call us stupid.

And I can't wait for my new 990/7125 combo to show up because on my Sony 9000ES playing iTunes through my Airport Express into that on my Klipsch Reference speakers it sounded great, and in a 'test on the wife' of playing both the CD and the iTunes sources she couldn't tell the difference. Not having to have two 400 disc CD changers to listen to my music library replaced by something as big as a deck of cards has a lot going for it. Hard drives will only get bigger over time and eventually you'll be able to rip your entire library onto it with and hopefully by then you'll quit-yer-bitchin

As a owner of a SACD (Sony 999ES), a 40 Gig Ipod, and a Roku photo bridge w/ digital output to my Outlaw 990, I can say that each have their purpose.

The Ipod (or MP3 device) is a tremendous development! It does not control where there you burn at 56K or 320K. That is your choice, but results in a huge audible difference. It simply plays back “the music” the way you choose to listen. Overtime, capacities will increase, compression will reduce, and quality will improve. Today . . . Great for portability, to hook to car system, and bedroom use.

The Roku, feed by a network attached storage device (in my basement), allows me to stream 320K MP3 to be digitally decoded by the 990. It is really hard tell the difference from the original CD. Very convenient to browse/access. Perfect for everyday listening when you do not commit the brain power to detect the differences. Eventually hard drives will increase in capacity and I will be able to simply copy my entire CD collection uncompressed to the HD. In the meantime my 160 GB hard drive will cover me for a long while (5 or so years).

The SACD is the best quality! However, few have systems that can resolve the details to appreciate the improvements. Consequently this format is nothing more than a niche market to the fanatics like us. I do have an excellent system, but only when my kids are a sleep (10PM) is the background noise and distractions low enough to enjoy the improvements. In addition, the format adds a large sacrifice in flexibility. I can only use on my home system SACD. Compressing requires making an analog copy to transfer. Ultimately this "wonderful" technology has already failed due to the restrictions imposed at a marginal improvement in quality to well decoded CD.

The point is music is for enjoyment. To many people 56K compressed MP3 is as good as it gets. For most 120K to 192K MP3 sounds identical to CD. To some SACD is not good enough. The human mind is more that capable to fill in the gaps if you do not look for them!

Bottom line is that the Ipod serves the needs of the vast majority of the masses and is a reflection of the masses tastes and listening preferences! I suspect that those who own an Ipod only enjoy "the music" much much more than those of us who "critically" listen!!!

I have ripped around 200 CDs uncompressed in .wav format and put them on an external 160GB drive. I still have about 60GB of space left. I figure disk space is so cheap (less than $50 per 100GB) that I may as well go uncompressed. Is there some other reason to compress the files other than speed of file transfer and lack of space?

I got an iPod Nano as an early christmas present. It's a very slick little unit, and with earbuds it sounds quite nice, but personally I still prefer the origial CD (or an uncompressed or lossless version of it) to MP3 when I have the choice. The iPod is nice for sitting at my desk at work or for road trips (such as the meeting I have this afternoon that's 100 miles from here), but my CD library in the den isn't going anywhere for the time being.

Avlis,

You raise a good question. The simple truth is that I was a MP3 hating individual one year ago. My brother inlaw was sent to Iraq last year and I started compressing portions of my music library which he used + shared with others.

As I experimented I found the 192K to not be offensive, and 320K to sound reasonably good (close to CD). I eventually picked up a Ipod for its convience and the sound was OK.

Due to a love in photography, I searched out the Roku which was bought because it sends a HD signal to my 65inch wide screen to view pictures. As a bonous it sends MP3, and as you just stated uncompressed (original source) wave files.

My currrent limitation is space. I have used up 90GB on the 160GB hard drive. 70GB music (compressed at 320K) and I still have about 20% left archive. The balance of the 20GB's stores photographs.

I have just today tried streaming a uncomressed wave file. . . sounds just like the CD! This is the way of the future!! I'll need a bigger hard drive before I begin the exercise . . . . thanks for the suggestion.

Adrian,

Some things to consider:

My first 160GB drive failed 2 weeks after ripping all my CDs to it. Luckily, I had it partitioned into three slices. I was able to move one of the partitions to a new drive and a friend was able to recover 90% of the bad one using some utility. I suggest partitioning that new drive into smaller chunks incase one of the partitions develops a problem.

The drive failure forced me to buy a 2nd hard drive that I could use as a backup while the bad drive was sent back. I think it cost $40 after rebates (120GB). Even though the original CDs are technically a backup in themselves, I don't like the idea of spending two weekends re-ripping them when the hard drive crashes.

My setup is a USB external drive -> laptop w/MusicMatch -> Xitel HiFi Link -> optical cable -> Outlaw 950. I've played song tracks simultaneously from my laptop and the original CD using the 950 to switch back and forth. If there is any difference in SQ, it is too small for me to notice during casual listening.

Then there's this one:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1338702&CatId=207

Hey Ziggy,

I was eyeing that one last night. I suspect my wife would kill me if it crashed . . . $869!


Avils,

Thanks for the call out. I am already backing up 100% on all tunes. I use the PC hard drive that I originally burned the music on, plus the NAS drive on the house network. For photogrphs I have added a 3rd copy as I am paranoid (stopped using film 2 years ago). To go to uncompressed music, I'll need to add a 300GB+ drive to the existing PC (relatively cheap).

As for streaming, I prefer to accress from a network drive as it is low power consumption and needs to be on all of the time. It probably is cheaper to designte a PC to be a 100% server.
I can also add a USB hard drive to the NAS drive, but trails so far are extreamely slow in file transfer??.

BTW, the Roku sends a PCM signal to the 990 so theoretically nothing gets lost in the streaming . . . Thanks for the insight!