OSX

Sample rate conversion

OSX plays all the audio at the sample rate as set in the AudioMIDI settings
If you have audio with different sample rates e.g. 44.1 and 96, you have to change the settings manually is you want to play both at its native sample rate.

 

Setting the sample rate is important.

Benchmark Media provides an example of the impact of sample rate conversion in OSX 10.4.6

 

The distortion seen in this graph is solely caused by sample-rate converting from 48kHz to 44.1kHz. As seen in the graph, the signal-to-noise ratio went from 130dB to less then 80dB!

Apples own K-mixer.

 

This information is from 2006, lets hope 10.6 Snow Leopard does a better job.

 

Setup guides for OSX

Benchmark Media

Wavelength Audio

Amarra Audio

Ripping

Check error correction for best results.

It might slow down the ripping but you better rip once then twice.

Artwork

You won’t get any art work until you open an iTunes Store account and are logged in.
A nice marketing trick to lure people into shopping

Gracenote

iTunes uses Gracenote as its database.

The usual shit in case of classical music, Artist=Franz Schubert, Composer=Unknown.

The performer? Anybody's guess.

Same as FreeDB.

Well, not exactly, FreeDB in this case lacks the composer too but the artist is right and the description of the parts is better. At least you can see which parts belong to the same sonata

 

Well, a bit to harsh in retrospect. Ripping my sisters CD’s in iTunes on a Mac, most of the time the composer is displayed properly.

Audio midi

Not much to configure here.
The bit depth is set to 24 as this is what my DAC expects.
The sample rate is used for all audio.
If you play a higher sample rate, it will be down sampled.
If you set this to e.g. 96 kHz, everything will be resampled to this rate.

If you want your audio to be played at its native sample rate, Amarra ( $995 )is an option.

There is also a mini version ($295)

Pure Music ($99) is the playback engine of Pure Vinyl. It supports automatic sample rate switching. The guys at Pure Music couldn't resist the temptation to compare their product with certain player 'A' costing $995.