kurtster wrote: 
and best of all....its free! And doesn't take a ton of resources to run. 

It even has an HDCD decoder plugin if you have any of them...

 DaveInVA wrote: 

Cymbals crash and decay now and a Leslie sounds like a Leslie ...

 kurtster wrote: 
Now if only they would port it for the MAC. They have been contacted and asked that many times and it seems they have no interest in doing so.

 DaveInVA wrote: 

   OMFG this is tits !!!!

This is day and night.  This is going to be fun. 

I'm sure I'm going to have some where's this questions down the road, but right now I'm going to be playing some music that sounds brand new, again.

I've got about an hour before I gotta turn it down and respect the neighbors.

 kurtster wrote: 
Foobar is by far the one of the best players for the PC. It allows you to use ASIO to bypass the kmixer which very few players do. Its very configurable also. Its pretty bland out of the box but with s little configuring it can be anything you want.

Edit: Almost forgot - You use the plug in "foo_read_http" to stream RP

 DaveInVA wrote: 
Never heard of Foobar.  I am at the website now.  Looks very comprehensive.  I am all pc here and wav is my primary source material.

Never used I tunes either. Either windows media player or an ancient copy of winmx (oops) winamp (2.81) which uses hardly any resources and is what I use to stream RP with.

Can I get RP to stream through Foobar ? 

I am hoping to hear a difference between media player 11 and Foobar.  I also see that Foobar is DLNA which is excellent as my receiver has that function.

 DaveInVA wrote: 
Yeah, you need to get that Buffalo DAC playing music.

I'll have the DACIT one of these days, but it's currently out for review.  

 DaveInVA wrote: 
I built my library around iTunes for various reasons. I didn't know any better at the time. I had an ipod. I could stream to my express. (before I discovered VLC)  Decibel can tap directly into the iTunes library and existing iTunes playlists. That's a brilliant move, I think. It makes it so easy to move from iTunes to Decibel.

And I still use iTunes, to be honest. It has it's place here.

I have the 32 bit Buffalo DAC and power supply but I need to get off my ass and build the output stage for it and make a cabinet for it. It is meant to work with a separate I/V stage balanced or unbalanced. Instead of using op amps I am using tubes with output transformers.
I was using a E-MU 1212M on the PC music server but its not supported on MAC and no drivers available. For now I am using an external E-MU 0404USB 

 swell_sailor wrote: 
I've never liked  iTunes and never used it much. My library and ripping was originally done with EAC on a PC and playback was played with Foobar which I still feel is the best program. That PC was being used for just a music server as I use Mac for everything else. Then the motherboard croaked so I rebuilt it as a Hackintosh and now use Decibel and MAX for ripping and am pretty happy with it so far.

 DaveInVA wrote: 
It seems pretty cool, has a nice sound, and is super easy. I like how it can tap into the itunes library.

Unfortunately I'm still waiting on my dac for the hi rez stuff. I'm looking forward to 24/96 from the server. That's something I didn't expect to see this soon.  

 swell_sailor wrote: 
I've been playing with that also as its the closest thing I could find as a replacement for Foobar that I used to use on the PC. Its a shame the author of Foobar isn't interested in porting it to the MAC. I have had success running older versions of Foobar on the MAC using WINE though...

 DaveInVA wrote: 
Not quite vinyl ripping related, although I do some vinyl ripping.........

I've been running decibel for a few months now. It can't stream wirelessly, but I'm noticing quite an improvement in sound quality over itunes through usb. It can play flac files, and up to 24/96 files if you have a dac that can handle them.  

 musickat wrote: 
.flac is a compressed format like mp3 except its lossless unlike MP3. It takes up more storage space but keeps all the data. Its also good for when ripping cd's that are .wav format as it takes a lot less space than .wav and preserves all the data. Then you can get the best fidelity when playing through a decent stereo. Of course you can also make MP3 copies of flac files for portable devices.

 DaveInVA wrote: 
What's flac?   Maybe that will be self-explanatory when I get the software.   Thanks.... your input has been most helpful 

 musickat wrote: 
I rip everything to flac and then convert it to mp3 as needed but always keep it as flac for the music server. I have thousands of records (visit the vinyl playlist thread) and will never sell them. Another reason to keep the records is that someday you may get a much higher quality turntable and cartridge and want to redo them as there is a big difference in sound quality especially when you go to a decent moving coil cartridge instead of the moving magnet cartridges that come with the USB tables.
One of my hobbies is restoring vintage reel to reel recording equipment, and mixers etc and record local bands with it. All analog. I even have a record cutting lathe I am restoring as soon as I round up the rest of the parts it needs.
 

 Umberdog wrote: 
I totally agree with that.   It took me some time to adjust to the new digital receivers and music.   You know there are still some musicians that record in analog.  I know some guys in Memphis that have a studio and record mostly blues music in analog.  I heard that George Harrison liked it better.   I'm sure there are many pros that would prefer it.  Digital sounds too sharp to me.  I always turn down the high range.

 DaveInVA wrote: 
That's good to know, thanks.  I have some stuff recorded with a Tascam 4-track Portastudio that I'd wanted to transfer as well.  Not the best sound quality, but I wanted to save it before the tapes degrade.

 Proclivities wrote: 
Not really but it also of course would depend on how big a rip file you are working with in its editor. I've "only" got 4gb ram and have had entire lp sides loaded along with browsers and other stuff running and no noticeable degradations in performance on my quad core 3.45 ghz Hackintosh
It has fairly decent repair tools also and the click/pop tool is ok if not set to aggressively. It can be used to record other stuff also as I also use it for ripping from reel to reel and cassette 

 DaveInVA wrote: 
I was wondering about that Audacity software - does it leave a big footprint or otherwise consume a lot of memory?  It seems like it shouldn't.