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 with the understanding that (a) I am not really interested in bettering CD quality sound and (b) I like it for its small size and compatibility with the Apple lossless format to which my CD collection has already been ripped. I am using a Pure i-20 digital dock to extract the digital stream from the iPod and passing it through a Schiit Bifrost DAC via SPDIF to my amp.
Can you let me know if my following assumptions are correct?
(1) I'm guessing 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 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/volume control, would 24 bit samples allow me to cut volume without throwing away bits that contain useful information?
(3) The Pure i-20 dock will export a digital signal via SPDIF 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!
