RE: Lossless audio conversion / DIY Kivor?

["Mark Harrison" <Mark.Harrison@xxxxxxx>]

1: Which conversion standard is the closest reproduction.

FLAC, however it's also the one with the least compression. It's a losless
compression algorithm, like ZIP. 

http://flac.sourceforge.net

I'm afraid I don't know about iPaq drivers for it yet.

2: Hardware

It was pointed out to me a while back the the conversion from MP3 (say) to
44.1Khz, 16-bit stereo PCM is fully deterministic. (ENCODING of MP3 isn't!)
Hence as long as a sound card has a proper SP/DIF out, decent drivers, and
relatively low jitter, then the best bet is an outboard DAC. I'm told by my
middling-serious hi-fi friends that the latest Soundblaster stuff isn't bad
at all.

If your DAC will drive higher than 44.1Khz, then you could look at a
soundcard that could upsample and interpolate to, say, 192/24. I don't know
enough about this market, but you'd want a card which had drivers to do
something more than a naive linear interpolation. I'm _guessing_ (from my
sound recording days) that a cubic spline interpolation would be best, but
I think that this is fairly rarified stuff. Digitools is probably a good
place to start, and see what they recommend.

Regards,

Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: Keyvan Rahimian [mailto:keyvan@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 1 October 2002 17:33
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] Lossless audio conversion / DIY Kivor?


Hi all

Having seen the latest post about the Linn Kivor etc. got me thinking about
taking another look at an idea I had way back. I run a couple of Sony 400
disc cd changers hooked up to an HA pc via Slink-e. 
Apart from a couple of minor gripes about the CDJ software, this works OK
for me. I keep around 5Gb of MP3 / WMA files (ripped cd's around the 160 /
192 Kbps) - my most popular tracks etc- for portable use. I use the trusty
IPAQ 3900 with a recently acquired 1Gb IBM CF micro drive (an actual HDU
the size of a 50p piece - amazing!!!) which came with my purchase of a
Canon camera. The IPAQ lets me get both high quality music and audible.com
books on the move. I may u/g to an apple iPOD if I find I need to take more
music with me on th move.
Anyway for a while now I have been toying with the idea of putting all my
music on disk and the way the s/w PC-to-home integration products are going
(Windows XP multimedia etc.) I will probably stick to Microsoft for the
sake of an easy life ... (I know this may provoke some comments!!).
My issue if loss of quality and fidelity from source material. I am not a
purist like some HiFi buffs with valve amps and direct connect kit - I do
however value good sound quality but also value convenience and ease of
use. I don't mind paying for good amps and speakers (bi-amp or tri-amp
setups) and generally high quality gear, but I want ease of use and full HA
type manageability.
My question(s) :
1. What conversion standard produces the closest reproduction to the
original CD material? Note latest beta version of Media Player...
2. Any ideas on hardware (i.e sound cards may be better than the Sound
Blaster or Turtle Beach offering) obviously for digital output to
external  DA converters (optical or coax)

If anyone in this group can help with ideas or input.. I would be grateful.
Has anyone tried this or similar?

Thanks

Keyvan R