I dont have the room to use a turntable, let alone space to keep all my vinyl or Cd's on a shelf near my stereo. I use my laptop as my sole source of audio. all my favorite tracks have been converted to lossless files. I use itunes. then an apogee duet. (firewire I/O) to my Pas 3 and ST70.

just curious if anyone has suggestions to get the best performance. any hardware/software I should add?

Hi,

Winamp can play FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) files directly. There is another thread on the forum here about this.

What you do is convert your CD's to FLAC files using the FLAC encoder. Once encoded they are played directly with Winamp. The sound quality playing FLAC files is noticeably better than playing mp3 files. Both the FLAC encoder and Winamp are FREE downloads.

Where to get the FLAC encoder

Where to get Winamp

Bob

I use a similar setup but the sound in my system is greatly improved with a DAC in front of the amp.

You may want to check/google Winamp - Roxio problems.
If I recall, when I was using Winamp there was a conflict with Roxio the disabled the Disc Burning capabilities of your DVD Drives. There was no resolution to this problem - Uninstalling did not work.

I ended up upgrading to a new Hard Drive with Win7 and not installing WinAmp.

I don't know if the conflict still exists with newer versions of Winamp.

Bob Latino wrote: Hi,

Winamp can play FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) files directly. There is another thread on the forum here about this.

What you do is convert your CD's to FLAC files using the FLAC encoder. Once encoded they are played directly with Winamp. The sound quality playing FLAC files is noticeably better than playing mp3 files. Both the FLAC encoder and Winamp are FREE downloads.

Where to get the FLAC encoder

Where to get Winamp

Bob