Baby steps in a discless world
Posted by: Foot tapper on 26 December 2010
With house, cars & kids full of ipods, iphones, PCs, Macbooks, PS3s and Wiis, I am peering over the edge of the precipice into the strange new world of discless music.... and I find it baffling.
The main music system in the living room is staying.
However, I have a "spare" 32.5/hicap2/140 & the Proac standmounters sitting around, waiting to inject real music into the dining room & kitchen.
Meanwhile, we have 1 desktop PC with 500 albums of MP3/MP4a compressed stuff for the kids' ipods and a second desktop PC with 140 albums of apple lossless files for the ipod which goes in my car. If needs must, I can abandon this and start again, as we have all the original source CDs as well.
Now, it would be nice to jettison the current Cyrus system in the dining room and replace it with the 32.5/hicap/140, but I need a source and quite fancy dipping a toe in the world of discless music.
Ideally, I would be able to rip CDs just once but to a quality that will allow music to be played through the main living room system at a future date. For now, it will only be played in the dining room system. If I can pick up radio stations too, then so much the better. Finally, if the system stays half width, then the boss will be delighted.
So, what should I buy? An HDX is probably overkill and too wide, while a Uniti is also too wide, has an amplifier that I don't need and is a CD player too. A UnitiQute doesn't rip discs and has an amp that is not required.
A Unitiserve seems to be almost right, but needs a DAC.... or would I be better with a Unitiserve SSD + an external mediaserver which would presumably be connected over some sort of wireless network?
Advice for this beginner would be much appreciated.
p.s. If the moderators think that this should be in a different part of the forum, then by all means move it.
Many thanks from a confuddled Foot tapper
The main music system in the living room is staying.
However, I have a "spare" 32.5/hicap2/140 & the Proac standmounters sitting around, waiting to inject real music into the dining room & kitchen.
Meanwhile, we have 1 desktop PC with 500 albums of MP3/MP4a compressed stuff for the kids' ipods and a second desktop PC with 140 albums of apple lossless files for the ipod which goes in my car. If needs must, I can abandon this and start again, as we have all the original source CDs as well.
Now, it would be nice to jettison the current Cyrus system in the dining room and replace it with the 32.5/hicap/140, but I need a source and quite fancy dipping a toe in the world of discless music.
Ideally, I would be able to rip CDs just once but to a quality that will allow music to be played through the main living room system at a future date. For now, it will only be played in the dining room system. If I can pick up radio stations too, then so much the better. Finally, if the system stays half width, then the boss will be delighted.
So, what should I buy? An HDX is probably overkill and too wide, while a Uniti is also too wide, has an amplifier that I don't need and is a CD player too. A UnitiQute doesn't rip discs and has an amp that is not required.
A Unitiserve seems to be almost right, but needs a DAC.... or would I be better with a Unitiserve SSD + an external mediaserver which would presumably be connected over some sort of wireless network?
Advice for this beginner would be much appreciated.
p.s. If the moderators think that this should be in a different part of the forum, then by all means move it.
Many thanks from a confuddled Foot tapper