MAC vs PC with Keces USB DAC

audiocr381ve

Asus PC + Keces = Mediocre, Thin, Weird Sound
New iMac + Keces = Dynamic, Clean, & Full Sound

I'm playing a CD from iTunes in both instances. Any thoughts?

AsSiMiLaTeD

iTunes on the PC is going to sound like crap. Brock will chime in I'm sure, but you gotta use a certain program or do something special in Windows to use a special driver, need to bypass the kmixer crap in Windows with an ASIO driver. I don't recall how it's done, but that's what you gotta do.

On the Mac, iTunes is fine but you'll need a program to handle sample rate conversion. Download BitPerfect from the app store, it's 5 bucks and works beautifully and sounds better than stock iTunes.

I'll expound a little. I've tried Amarra and Pure Music both on the Mac and I get as good sound using BitPerfect, and it's MUCH cheaper. I did use Foobar2000 back in my PC days and it always sounded very good, I believe you can do what you need with that program if it's still around.

jmwest1970

It looks like BitPerfect went up to $10 with the current release. That's still a great price though considering the alternatives. I tried Amarra as well and found it still lacking in quality with iTunes. I really think iTunes is the weak link in audio on the Mac. I've gone to using XBMC for the Mac and playing flac files instead of Apple lossless. The sound is much cleaner and crisper.

AsSiMiLaTeD

I found playback through iTunes and BitPerfect to be identical to XBMC playing the same file on the Mac. I prefer to use iTunes because of the integration with everything else and the fact that I can use the Remote app. The setup also allows me to control what sound comes out of which output, so I have it setup so that my music plays through my headphones and everything else (system sounds, games, a Netflix movie, etc) play through my computer speakers, or in my case the Swanns I have hooked up to that output.

My setup in the office has a papasan chair in the corner adjacent to the computer and when i wanna just relax and do headphone listening (which is mostly what I do these days), I turn the screen on the iMac off and lay back in that chair. To change albums or tracks I don't wanna have to get up and go to the computer, so I have an old iPad 2 that sits right beside that chair permanently to do that and do my reading on as well.

All that being said, I haven't touched XBMC in a year so I may check it out again. I'm now running that on my Apple TV and it's very good at what it does.

audiocr381ve

Running bitperfect through iTunes now, sounds great! Thanks for the suggestion!