Hi Folks,
I post often to the Open Baffle circle, but would like to pick your collective brain on a few assumptions I'm making regarding music servers. To start, I have become intrigued with using my existing iPod classic (160GB) as a small music server. Please understand that I am not really interested in bettering CD quality sound and I like the iPod for its small size and compatibility with the Apple lossless format to which my CD collection has already been ripped. I use a Pure i-20 digital dock to extract the digital stream from the iPod and pass that through a Schiit Bifrost DAC via S/PDIF to my amp.
I was thinking some things through and wanted to know what you think:
(1) I'm thinking that jitter might actually be lower from an iPod than my Windows 7 laptop via USB since iPods don't multitask and aren't burdened with random housekeeping tasks that can occur with many operating systems?
(2) All of my music files are 16 bit, 44.1khz originally ripped from CD's. I also have the option of storing them on the iPod as 24 bit with at either a 44.1 or 48 khz sample rate. I'm assuming this will really not buy me anything in terms of sound quality, other than the use of additional disk space? But if I were to use the iPod as a sort of preamp w/ remote volume control, would 24 bit samples allow me to cut volume without throwing away bits that may contain useful information?
(3) The Pure i-20 dock will export a digital signal via S/PDIF through either Toslink or Coax. In thinking about the iPod as the source, are there any significant advantages to one over the other?
Thanks very much for your thoughts!
