Submitted by Desco Audio & Video
Just about everyone has an iTunes account, but many people don’t know how to get the best quality of sound out of it. At Desco AV, we want you to know that iTunes has a lot to offer below the surface.
Not only are there tricks to improving the sound quality, there are some innovative ways to store and stream the music throughout your home
While you can download songs from the iTunes store, those songs are heavily compressed to make the file size compact and easy to send over the Internet. This compression really hurts the sound quality by limiting the dynamics and harmonics found in non-compressed files. The best sound quality comes from ripping a CD. Ripping is a term for copying a CD to a computer hard drive. Once a CD is ripped, you can also adjust or modify its album art and song information (all referred to as metadata).
The default ripping settings on iTunes uses the same compression as the downloads. So, to get the best sound quality, one needs to change the rip settings. To do this, open iTunes and find the “Preferences” button under the Edit tab. When this is pushed, you will jump to the General Preferences Page. Here you will find the “Import Settings” button. Upon pushing that button, up will pop a box giving you a choice of compression settings.
Of these choices, Apple Lossless is the best sound quality. It gives no compression to the music and represents CD-Quality sound while AAC is the default heavy compression settings. MP3 is another method of compression that works across many different brands of playback equipment. If you must compress to save space, use MP3 set at 320K rate for the best “compressed” sound.
The default location for iTunes is the music folder on your local hard drive inside your computer. The downside of using your local computer as the folder location, is that your computer must be on to stream music to your hifi system. A great way to make your files available regardless of your computer’s power state is to purchase a NAS drive. A NAS drive (network attached storage) is a hard drive that plugs directly into your router and is available as a file storage device all the time.
It is amazing how many great products we have at Desco to stream your iTunes music throughout your home. From TV’s and receivers with built-in network streaming to specialty wireless equipment from B&W and Sonos, we can play our tunes for you and introduce you to the world of streaming music. If you have more questions about streaming and getting the most out of iTunes, stop by the store for a free lesson. Our 44 years serving customers have gained us quite a knowledge base of ideas and experiences.
Desco Audio and Video
2306 Harrison Ave NW
Olympia, WA 98502
