Hello,
I bought a new laptop through my friend who builds custom pcs. I have winamp installed.
1. Whats the best media player for music?
2. What settings should I adjust to get optimal sound quality, I have a lot of cds to rip.
3. Is HD tracks a good place to download music? I also have a Wadia 151 dac that I'll be using for playback.
Cory.
Hey Cory. That Wadia upsamples like a beast but does so differently depending on input. USB transport is hindered by a 24bit/96kHz rate whereas the digital transports go up to 192kHz.
I'll venture a guess that your laptop doesn't have digital jacks but worth mentioning. The USB rate is adequate for most everything lossless under the sun.
I second Lee's VLC recommendation but want to add this; download a bunch, try em out and stick with a couple you like. No one app ever seems to be the "best" IMHO. And depending on
what else you plan to use your digital music library for, tools like dBpoweramp and TagTuner are great for conversions & organization. dBpoweramp is a true multi-threaded app engine which means it will use (dedicate) a core/thread stream to process a song file 1:1. The more threads, the higher the multiplier and the quicker the job gets done. In other words, parallel processing of multiple songs at the same time. Trip around on the net, download VLC and others and keep the WinAmp for players. Give them all a whirl and find at least two that seem like they meet your needs - then uninstall what you don't need anymore. dBpoweramp comes with a player too but it's nothing to write home about.
"Settings" is a complicated question. You shouldn't have to jack around with hardware settings. Are you asking about rip/encoding settings? Rip to wave file and do yourself a favor, store them on an external USB 3.0 hard drive with lots of space. Then once you have a media app that converts, and you know what you want for your best (preferred) encoding scheme, convert to files for your library without ditching your wave ones. Converting is quick off wave, even for larger libraries. If your personal preference changes over time (on encoding), you have the raw - unadulterated wave files to fall back on for potential redo's. I encode differently and create multiple versions depending on if the songs are going on a phone (space limited), on a USB stick for the car or being played back in my house (highest fidelity encoding).
HDTracks is awesome, no complaints here and haven't encountered much in the way of other people's complaints either. They are a quality outfit. The only real dig is that it can become expensive on a regular basis.
Like RTP I use Sound Forge but use it for remastering and editing stuff. It's a killer program.
