mp3 and highend components?

There have been quite a few threads on this subject over the last few months and a search on "mp3" or "iPod" will probably find most of them for you.

While it's true that either uncompressed files, played from the CD or ripped that way to a hard drive, or files saved in a lossless format will sound better, your mp3's may sound fine, depending on how you ripped them.

iTunes will let you rip mp3's at anything from 16 kbps to 320 kbps. At 192 kbps or above, mp3's can sound pretty good to me, at the more typical lower rates they can be not so great. Whether the sound is acceptable depends on many factors including the quality of the original, the resolution of your system and, most important, your own standards.

There's no reason to be too concerned about it, though, just try it and listen. It may be that you can't hear enough difference to go to the trouble of re-ripping or playing from CD. It's also possible that it's worth it only for a few albums. I ripped three or four hundred CD's to Apple Lossless format, even after I had at least have of them as 192 kbps mp3's. I'm not exactly sure it was worth it but I figured I'd only have to do it once and it's really not all that much work.

Plenty of input in the archives and over at AudioAsylum (PC Asylum) on this subject.

Who cares if you're offending anyone with your choice of gear?! If you like the iPod and it brings you closer to the music you love...well, it's all good.

If you want better quality sound and higher resolution from your digital files, go back and rip everything in either Apple Lossless or WAV (the latter will take up more space). Your iPod can handle those files as well, you'll just get less of a selection (about 5 days worth of music in Lossless on your 60gb iPod as I recall). Per the previous post, first find out if you can hear, and or care about the difference between Lossless and MP3's. If not, don't bother. I certainly can.

Yes, use the line-out of your iPod (as opposed to the headphone jack) to feed your signal if the iPod's all you got. But doing that is still using the so-so DAC in the iPod to convert the signal, and leaves much room for improvement to my ears. Better to go to a hard-drive based system using a USB DAC, or convertor like the Waveterminal U24 + a good DAC. In WAV or Lossless I doubt you would hear much of a difference, if any between your CD player and a well-designed PC front end system offered by say a good USB DAC spitting out a signal to your integrated amp. You may find the computer front end sounds better.

Marco

While my main sources are vinyl, Redbook CD and FM, I also have a computer hooked up to my system to stream radio stations off the Internet at speeds from 64k to 320k. When I added a tube preamp all sources were improved greatly, but the biggest improvement was with the streaming. My theory is that tubes add back some of the harmonics lost during the MP3 compression process. Regardless of how/why it works, it makes streamed music very listenable.

I say hook up the iPod and enjoy!