I am setting up my laptop to conect to 2 external harddrives for my music system. I will be copying all my Cd's to the flac format. This is something I really want to do; I really like the convenience of doing this.

2 questions

First

Is there any laptop soundcard (external) with an optical out that is better than the others?

Second

Is their currently any solution for DVD-A and SACD files. I am not looking for any type of crack or other illegal soloution.

Thanks

If you mean ripping, then as far as i know: nope, except of not buying them.

- Lyx

Stupid copy protection. People should definitely not submit to this garbage. Personally, I like the freedom that technology provides and not the restrictions that it imposes.

BTW Gretchen, I think that under the beautiful DMCA, you would be prevented from discussing the legitimate use of your Super-Audio CDs, DVD-A, etc. in the USA, at least.

Another solution will be to use ALAC rather than FLAC.

You could then use iTunes to stream your music to Apples AirPort Express that has an optical out.

Using iTunes and Airport Express to stream lossless music via digital out

NB! iTunes do NOT support gapless playback!

I don't know if foobar2000 using FLAC is able to support the Airport Express, but that would then be a gapless alternative.

I have all of my music in ALAC format on my Mac and stream it wirelessly to an Airport Express. I have lots of live albums recordings and classical CDs where gapless playback is essential. A solution that works *perfectly* well for me is turning on crossfade playback and setting the slider to 0 seconds. I certainly cannot hear any gaps/clicks/pauses between tracks, I cannot even tell where one track ends and the next begins without looking at the display. So this seems to solve the "gapless playback issue" in iTunes very well... I don't know if this works equally well from a PC though...

Andreas

About the soundcard, I resell M-Audio products, and there are a couple with optical that I've used, although I haven't actually used the optical interface itself:
1. M-Audio Transit USB
This interface has a clean sound, is very small, and uses a USB interface. It's probably a good buy too... not too expensive. I don't find that the bass response is quite as good as the FW410 (below). Maybe it'd be better with an amp. (Which I haven't tried yet).

2. M-Audio Firewire 410
This is an extremely capable audio interface for a production environment, and will do almost anything. It's only really good for two input channels at a time, but has 8 analogue output channels (i.e. 4 stereo channels), a mic preamp, and two headphone monitor outputs. I use this and it sounds fabulous on analogue... I plug my Etymotic ER-4P earphones into one headphone monitor, and my computer speakers into another. Then I can crank up my computer speakers and feel the bass from the sub while I get the exceptional clarity from my earphones. This baby isn't cheap though!


That's what I know. I haven't gotten too much into other brands, but I'm very happy with the M-Audio gear!

Just set the cross-fade to "0"

Even when doing that I get an audible glitch on about half of the transitions.

(I also have Sound Check disabled to avoid the slight volume changes that may occur between the tracks)

Hmm.. no such thing here. Do you rip/encode with iTunes?

I used to rip with EAC to FLAC. Now converted to ALAC.
I now rip with plextor to WAV and then to ALAC.
Do you use iTunes to rip?

there seems to be a slight transition glitch on some mp3's (even a few encoded with old versions of itunes), but not on any of my new iTunes encoded ALAC/AAC's.

Most mp3's seems to be glitch-free however, so it's just a few where there's a problem.

I just re-ripped DSOTM directly to ALAC. Still have the glitches.
Also bought DSOTM from iTMS. Has glitches too.

AACs in iTunes are never gapless, as it does not support gapless encoding or decoding. ALAC is supposed to be gapless, but its possible iTunes adds a gap anyway.

Well, my point is that on most of them there's no audible transition glitch whatsoever if you just set the cross-fade to 0. It's obviously not as bulletproof as real gapless, but when the end result is the same..

ymmv

The only solution is to buy one of these

http://www.dvdupgrades.ch/150019/Modificat...tput_board.html

And a suitable DVD player to fit it in.

Then buy a professional Audio interface for your PC which can capture 6 channels of digital audio simultaneously and play the SACD or DVD into the computer in real time.

The company that makes these modification boards is based in Switzerland. They are not illegal there or in the EU but it's vaguely possible that in the US someone might come up with a DMCA case against them.

In any case the amount of money you are talking to do this is so vast you might as well spend it on going to concerts instead

The other problem is that there isn't a suitable 6 channnel lossles format to encode the resultant audio in.