Lossless 2 Channel Audio HELP!

[SolidSqual]

Hey Guys,

I like the idea of putting all my music on a massive hardrive and mixing it all up into an endless playlist of 2 channel glory! The problem is that my laptop sound card sucks and when I purchased a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX, the sound was not at all impressive in stereo (I did notice the soundstage was a not as expansive and the sound seemed more distant. In addition, the multi-channel output of the card would not output to my sub in stereo mode). The DVD-Audio from the card was impressive, but at $250 dollars in the hole already from this purchase, I"m half-way to an amazing DVD-A/SACd player. So DVD-A/SACD aside, I want great 2 channel audio! Does anyone have any solution to my problem, or should Just return everything and pick up a good SACD/DVD-A player. On that note, any recs for a good player?

[RuSsMaN]

Lossless?

Vinyl.

[Zero]

SolidSquel,

First - while I am all for using a desktop as a source... a laptop is incredibly noisey and ill suited for any type of quality stereo playback. As is, you are going to be inherently limited no matter what hardware you associate with that source. The power supplies are incredibly shoddy and the electronic gunk being filtered through all the components creates a mess.

If you are bound and determined to use your laptop, than forget about all those standard off the shelf PC sound-cards. Instead, I would suggest going for a Squeeze Box three;

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article287-page1.html

Affordable. Portable. Plays lossless just fine. Supposed to sound killer for the money.

Otherwise, I cannot think of a reason why not to invest that money into a typical disc spinner.

[Lsi9]

What format are converting the songs to?
I have an apple and to trnsfer music w/out compression of info you compress to a Aiff file. Using this scheme a song is 1411 kps and could be up to 60mb on average song length. I'm not sure what a lossless file on windows is called but I do know it exists, someone?

[Lsi9]

SolidSquel,


Otherwise, I cannot think of a reason why not to invest that money into a typical disc spinner.


I can, getting up to change a cd in a music listening marathon

[surfntomm]

ive heard that they have a somewhat new format for music on pcs now called .flac it stands for something like fully lossless audio content or codec something like that. anyway i use my pc for all my music and im getting an audigy 2 zs for super cheap off newegg so hopefully that helps improve the quality. i still have mp3s though but hopefully i can get a decent amount of albums in this flace format.

[audiobliss]

I've played around with .flac and like it. HOWEVER, I haven't done any real SQ comparisons.

[heiney9]

Flac is an exact copy if you use a program called Exact Audio Copy (EAC) it's free. Again I and others have covered this many times before so the info is out there if you want to find it.

Flac is lossless compression of the standard WAV file. It reduces file size by about 20-25% on average. It's an exact digital copy if done correctly with EAC.