For those that like to listen to music (I know, other than the PSE, PDK, or "pure car sounds" )--

I was using MP3s ripped at 320kbps with an ipod when I had the 997 and the same setup in the 991 with the Burmester. Decided to re-rip from flac to Apple lossless. Had to buy a new ipod (160GB) to fit most of the non-classical files due to the much larger size. Much better sound. Decay, sustain, reverb, depth, echo, sharpness (clarity- both voice and instruments), separation, tonality, etc. all noticeably improved. This sound system, coupled with the large change from convertible to HT, really shines with higher quality sources. If you like listening to ipod music you might want to give this a try.

 

I ordered Berm as well and am very interested in how music will sound coming from my iPhone. Same goes for music stored on the 10gb hard drive. Not sure what format my music is in right now but knowing I can re rip to a better format to take advantage of the Berm is great.

 

Thanks I have to do this, with my burmester and the iPod I can now hear so much more distortion. Will have to go the flac way.

 

From what I understand once a file has been compressed to Mp3 converting back to lossless will only make the file larger, it won't bring back the music quality back. You have to actually reimport the files from CD in lossless format to get all the original quality. For me that is ALOT of re importing!

 

Yes, you cannot go from lossy back to lossless. Ain't gonna happen, no way, no how.

I originally rip all cd's to flac and then I can go from there to mp3, to apple lossless, whatever. Since I use flac to stream in-house I had all the cd's already ripped in the "master format".

So also yes, it took hours to convert the flac over to apple lossless for the ipod but once I set it up my pc wacked away for those hours. Then back into itunes, then copy over to ipod. About a day and a half for me (almost completely unattended) but well worth it given the sound improvement.

May not be worth it for others.

 

What did you use to convert your flac files to mp3 and apple lossless. I'm not completely up to date on this but the last I remember apple could not read flac.

 

Yes, Apple has their own lossless format which oddly enough is Apple Lossless (Audio Codec) and ipods, as made and sold by Apple, do not play flac. There is a way to get the ipod to play flac but I won't go there.

So I use a product by dBpoweramp. It includes a CD Ripper, which rips CDs (full or individual tracks) and generates tags, and a Music Converter which through various plug-ins allows you to convert to other formats that can be lossy (MP3) or lossless depending on your original rip. Also included is a batch converter and that is what I used for this project. The Apple Lossless extension is ".m4a".

I have used dBpoweramp for years and have been pretty happy. There are other products of course but I haven't looked at them or their prices recently.

 

I have been using an ipod classic with my burmester for several months and it works great with Apple lossless file format. Playlists come through fine. Just plug in the glove box usb and forget. Sounds almost as good as CD's.

 

Should sound exactly the same as CD's if it was an accurate rip and as you say you are using lossless...all other things equal. Now I don't know if Burmester uses the DAC in the ipod and it is just a line out or whether they paid the fee to Apple and did the electronics to get the digital out so that might be a cause of differences you might be hearing as well as any difference between buds, phones, or the Burmester amp and speakers. Some of the buds these days are pretty amazing in what they can deliver given their size and the inherent increase in noise isolation.

 

If you got a Mac try XAct. It's a freeware and works flawlessly and easy to use.

 

I started trying XLD and it rips CDs into many formats including Apple Lossless. I've not had time to listen to the music side by side to compare. Will do that this weekend. When I took my phone to the dealer to test Berm I played some Bocelli. Wanted to hear vocals and 'clear' music. While it sounded pretty good playing MP3's there was an occasional popping which was very annoying. My hope is that using lossless will clear that up and provide a much better all around sound.

 

Popping is usually a sign of a bad rip if it isn't there when you listen to the CD. One of the reasons I like dBpoweramp is that it will tell you whether the rip is good "accurate". It also has recovery capabilitythat tries some things. For most disks it will get you a good rip but every now and then a disc is just bad at one point or another (scratches for example).

 

Also make sure to check the box to use error correction under import settings.

 

If I purchase an mp3 file on iTunes, and burn it to a CD (not as an mp3), is the quality of the song still reduced. In other words, am I better off purchasing an actual CD as apposed to an iTunes Abum in mp3 format? Thanks in advance for the education.

 

Yes the quality of the CD that you burn using MP3 files is still reduced; you cannot make an MP3 file sound better by converting it to a WAV file (WAV format is what CDs use). Another way of putting it is: you cannot make chicken salad out of chicken sh*t.

That is why you are better off buying the original CD. You can then choose to convert the files from the original CD to a lossless format (such as FLAC or Apple Lossless) or to a MP3 file which is a lossy (meaning that it loses sound quality) format. The FLAC or Apple Lossless files will sound the same as the original CD, but will also be smaller than the WAV file. The MP3 file will be even smaller in size than the FLAC or Apple Lossless file BUT it will not sound as good as the original WAV/FLAC/Apple Lossless.

Of course the better your stereo equipment, the more that you will notice the difference between the MP3 version of a song and the original CD or the lossless file version. If you have a not-so-good playback system, you may not be able to tell a difference. With the Burmester, you will be able to tell.