Empirical Audio

Recommendations for Computer Audio

General Recommendations

1. Rip to WAV or AIFF files if possible
2. Try Upsampling 44.1 files to 24/96 using S/W programs: SRC, iTunes, R8Brain or Adobe Audition - Wave Editor on Mac (Instructions are on the Empirical Audio audiocircle.com forum)
3. Avoid ripping to ALAC or other compressed formats using iTunes
4. If using a PC with XP, always bypass KMIXER by unmapping or using ASIO4ALL or Kernal Streaming. If Vista or Win7, use WASAPI:
   http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_out_wasapi
   http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd371455(VS.85).aspx

USB Recommendations

1. Laptops are recommended. We have had good luck with Toshiba, HP, Macbook and Mac Mini. Not so good with Dell.
2. If you are using USB output to one of our products, we recommend that you try more than one USB port. They are often not equal. The latency or time it takes to service them varies even on the same computer. Some are even USB 1.1 and not USB 2.0 compliant.
3. Avoid Windows Media Player on PCs. Use instead Foobar, Jriver or Media Monkey. Better sound quality.
4. Dedicate the Laptop to music playback if you are using USB. Using the computer for lots of other tasks can cause conflicts, increase latency and cause popping in the audio.
5. If you are using USB for audio streaming, do not attach ANY other USB devices to the computer, even a mouse and particularly not USB disks.
6. If using USB on a PC with XP, ALWAYS bypass KMIXER by unmapping or using ASIO4ALL or Kernal Streaming.
7. Remove or stop all unnecessary tasks, even screen-savers and virus scanners.
8. Set the player to have the highest priority.
9. PCs with faster processors work better, minimum 1.5GHz
10. Vista needs 2GB RAM and XP 1GB RAM

Software Recommendations

Rippers:

The best ripper we have found for PC (the best overall) is dbpoweramp professional with Accurate-Rip enabled:
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

For Mac, we recommend XLD for ripping:
http://tmkk.hp.infoseek.co.jp/xld/index_e.html

Also worth trying is MAX:
http://sbooth.org/

Players:

For PC, try Foobar 0.8.3, Jriver, Media Monkey and XXhighend:
http://www.phasure.com/index.php?board=1.0

Upsamplers:

For PC, the best upsampler is Adobe Audition:
http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/?promoid=DJDVV

For Mac, the best upsampler is Wave Editor (uses Izotope code):
http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/waveeditor/