tahoch;185806 Wrote: > Can I still accomplish this by using iTunes to rip and manage my music. > I am unclear as to the uncompressed formats that iTunes supports and > those that my Rotel SS Processor will recognize.
iTunes can losslessly encode into AIFF and Apple Lossless (ALAC). AIFF is totally uncompressed, it will be the bits off the CD packaged in a data container. ALAC is the same bits but compressed -losslessly- like a zip file. It's the same bits but it takes up less space and less bandwidth when it's transmitted to the SB3. ALAC fully supports tags that SlimServer can read. AIFF can have tags added to it by iTunes, but someone more knowledgeable than me would have to tell you if SlimServer reads them properly since only iTunes does this - there's no standard for other programs to follow. If iTunes changes how it does this with each version (as it often does) then you're chasing a moving target. In terms of how it plays it back, AIFF can be decoded natively by the Squeezebox. This means no extra process and you can FF and REW within the file. ALAC cannot be decoded natively, SlimServer has to transcode it to something else (WAV or FLAC to still keep it lossless). This transcoding process is transparent and usually works well, but: - you will have an extra process or two running on your server. Although it's not usually CPU intensive, it's one more thing that can go wrong. - no FF/REW within tracks It's up to you how important these things are. As for FF/REW, I never use it on native formats anyway. If you weren't committed to iTunes you could use FLAC, a lossless compressed format like ALAC but it can be played back natively. With regards to what your processor sees, as DCtoDaylight mentions, it doesn't matter. It will all be PCM which your Rotel knows how to decode. -- Mark Lanctot "It's like, you know, a New Age religion, but with better treble response." - Jon Heal ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mark Lanctot's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2071 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33336 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
