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Setting up your Mac to get the best
sound from iTunes is quite simple. Here are the steps:
1. Click on the “System Preferences” app on your Dock.
Then in the second row, “Hardware”, click on the “Sound” icon.
First choose the “Sound Effects” tab, which controls
the various sounds your other programs make (such as the “e-mail
notification” sound). Select “Play alerts and sound effects
through: Internal Speakers” so that these
sounds are not routed through your stereo system.
Then click on the “Output” tab and select the Ayre
USB D/A converter. This will route the sound from iTunes through your stereo system.
2. On the Dock select the “Finder” app.
Select “Places - Applications”, scroll down the
list and click on the “Utilities” folder.
Find the “Audio MIDI Setup.app”.
If you are only playing CDs and MP3 files, you can just run
this application once. But if you have a mix of
standard-resolution and high-resolution audio files with various
sample rates, you will need to change the settings more
frequently. Simply drag the “Audio MIDI Setup.app” down to your
Dock and it always be handy.
3. Open the “Audio Midi Setup” application and select “Audio
Devices”.
For the “Default Output”, select the Ayre USB D/A converter and
this will send the sounds from iTunes to your
stereo system.
For the “System Output” choose the “Built-In
Output” and this will send system sounds such as a “New Mail Alert”
to the built-in system speakers.
There is a drop-down list called “Properties For:”.
Select the Ayre USB D/A converter and choose the appropriate
sample rate in the “Audio Output” section. Normally this will
be “44100.0 Hz” for playback of
CD-sourced or MP3 music files.
If you select a sample rate that
is different than the sample rate of the music file itself, OS X
will perform a sample-rate conversion, and the data sent to the
Ayre USB D/A converter will not be bit-perfect. Be sure to set
the “Audio Output - Format:” setting to the native sample rate of
the music file that you wish to play. You must exit iTunes first for the sample
rate change to take effect. Then restart iTunes and play the desired music file.
4. Launch iTunes from the
Dock.
Choose “Preferences - General” from the iTunes menu.
Click the “Import Settings...” button.
Be sure to check the box “Use error correction when
reading Audio CDs”. This is very important to ensure that the
data transferred from your CD collection is accurate.
You will need to select a music file storage format from the drop-down
list at “Import Using:”.
If you have plenty of hard drive space,
choose “AIFF Encoder”, which stores the uncompressed audio data
from your CD plus tags (“Artist”, “Album”, “Song”, et cetera)
that are obtained from an internet database.
If your hard drive
space is limited choose “Apple Lossless”, which will reduce the
size of your music files by about 40%.
Then click on the
“Playback” tab and make sure that the checkboxes for “Sound
Enhancer:” and “Sound Check” are cleared. This will ensure that
the data sent to your Ayre USB D/A converter is not altered in
any way that might degrade the sound quality.
5.That's it! Now you are ready to enjoy
high-performance music playback from your computer.
iTunes only has three foibles, and these are relatively minor for most users.
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