You wrote that you had an RCA connection between your computer and your receiver. I am assuming that this is an analog connection, not SPDIF. Most computer sound cards are pretty poor quality. Why not make a connection to your receiver from your USB port. You can either buy an external DAC or you could get a USB to SPDIF convertor (coax or Toslink, either is dirt cheap compared to a good DAC).
I would buy the convertor first and see how you like it. And create some lossless files to do an A/B comparison with your MP3 files. I don't know what, if any, losseless files Winamp supports, though I have read that there is a FLAC plug in for it. For the time being try downloading www.monkeyaudio.com. It is free. I just started using it and am pretty much impressed so far. Much easier than the other favorite here, Foobar2000. Be sure to rerip your CD for the lossless files. Converting MP3 to lossless is pointless, though I am sure you already know that. I am using USB connection to a MP-Audio Transit ($80 on EBay), which converts it to Toslink, feeding that into my pure digital equalizer then into my receiver where it it converted to analog. I am pretty darn happy with this. If you are still not happy with this setup buy a DAC with a USB input. There are lots of audiophile versions available from about $500 on up. Just do a search in this forum on the subject. Though there are people who participate in this forum who feel USB is awful there are high end DAC designers who think USB from a computer with lossless files is the best possible way of playing digital music, better than any CD player. There are also people who think Toslink is horrible, yet I can't find a single test to confirm this. These people may very well be happy listening to their SB or Transporter through WiFi. If they were familiar with the circuitry involved with electrical to RF and RF to electrical conversion, and the compromises needed I think they would be amazed. Electrical to optical and O to E is such much simpler and less compromised. Anyway, my feeling is don't let all our opinions color your listening experience. Decide for yourself. One other thing. I would recommend against the Transporter. I am sure is very good electronics. But, ater living with the Squeezebox for over a year I have abondoned it and Slimserver because of the overhead. When they work they work very well. But I have found Slimserver to not be a robust program. It seemed everytime I tinkered with my computer I would lose Slimserver and have to play around till I got it back up. Some people like doing this, some of us are tired of always working on their computers just so we can use them. I read a definition of technology recently that went something like: technology is an idea that doesn't work well yet. -- regalma1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ regalma1's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=6658 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33197 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
