Discover How You Can Enjoy Hi-End Sound From Your Laptop Or Desktop Computer With a USB DAC!
If you listen to music from iTunes or other programs you’ve surely realized that the sound quality of most computers is not what you would call “Hi Fi”. Computers typically use cheap low resolution speakers and low quality DAC’s (digital to analog converters) that don’t even come close to giving you true, life like play back.
Enter the Fubar USB DAC
Luckily it's easy to make dramatic improvements with a good USB DAC and your home stereo. What the heck is a USB DAC you ask? A USB DAC is a Digital to Analog converter that takes the digital signal from the USB connection on your computer and coverts it to a high quality analog output that can be played on any home stereo. Now you have the convenience of hundreds if not thousands of songs stored on your computer and the high quality sound of your home stereo. Installation of a USB DAC like the Fubar II or Fubar III is totally “plug and play” and requires no drivers or additional software.
Convenient and Versatile
The versatility and sound quality of the Fubar is truly amazing. We are continually receiving testimonials from owners who are using the Fubar's in all sorts of creative ways. There are restaurant and bar owners who use it to play endless hours of music for their customers; musicians with home studios using it to playback and mix their creations and some who love the convenience of being able to set up an entire evening of music for a dinner party without ever having to touch a CD. Most people though simply use it to enjoy their favorite music, Podcasts, CD’s and DVD’s. There are Fubar owners enjoying them at home and at work, at their cabins and even in their motor homes and while camping. With Fubar III you can also listen with your favorite Headphones
Play Endless Music From Your Computer
With CD sales falling and music downloads skyrocketing it is naïve to think that the computer as a “music server” is going away anytime soon. Even though the sound quality from a computer can be down right poor, nobody can question the convenience and portability of 1000's of songs at your fingertips. When you combine your computer with your stereo and a high end USB DAC like the Fubar you’ve got the best of both worlds, hundreds of hours of your favorite music and high end sound.
Easy USB Installation works with any Computer and Operating System
Want another big plus? The USB protocol is bidirectional and has error correction and buffering on both ends. So the data your Fubar is receiving from the computer is exactly the same as the data on the disk. Also since the USB interface is asynchronous, the clocking issues associated with SPDIF and CD players are non existent resulting in VERY low jitter. Both the Fubar II and the Fubar III are operating system and platform independent. This means you can connect them to any computer with a USB connection without having to install additional drivers or software.
Our Top Tips For the Best Sound
With that said our goal is to extract the maximum sound quality from the music stored on your computer and achieve as close to as or better than CD quality sound. So here are a couple of tips for getting the best sound from your computer using a USB DAC. These range from beginner to medium level tips so you experts may not find anything new here. There are several software programs for storing and playing music from your computer. The most popular is iTunes for so I'll use it in my example but others such as Media Player, Real Player etc. can be set up the same or similar.
1. Transfer Quality
When you copy your CD’s to iTunes do so using Apple Lossless format. This gives you a CD quality transfer. This is far better than any of the MP3 settings and I haven’t met anyone that couldn’t hear the improvement. The downside is this format takes up more space on your hard drive, but the sound quality is definitely worth it and modern hard drives can hold thousands of songs at these settings. The settings below are for iTunes version 5.0 and higher.
From the iTunes main screen select:
Edit → Preferences → Advanced → Importing
Now you have some additional choices to make:
On CD Insert Show CD (Or your preference)
Import Using Apple Lossless Encoder
Setting Automatic
Details All Automatic
Play songs while importing or converting I leave this unchecked
Automatically retrieve CD Names I check this
Create file names with track Numbers I check this
Use error correction when reading Audio CD’s Definitely check this one!
Then click OK
That’s it; these settings will give you the highest quality transfers from your CD’s to iTunes. Other programs have similar settings to achieve the same high quality.
Also when you load the songs on to your iPod you will have the highest sound quality possible.
2. iTunes Plus and HD Music Downloads
Itunes recently introduced a new download product called iTunes Plus. iTunes Plus downloads are twice the quality of standard iTunes downloads (256Kbps AAC encoded for Plus vs. 128 kbps for the standard downloads) The Plus downloads are also DRM free, so there are no burn limits and they’ll play on any iPod, Mac or Windows computers, and most other playback devices. The iTunes Plus music currently sells for $1.39 per title and iTunes allows you to upgrade songs, videos and complete albums you’ve previously downloaded in the standard format for a reduced price. Be aware that not all songs are currently available in the Plus version, but more and more titles are added each week. You must have iTunes version 7.2 or higher for iTunes Plus.
If you download music from iTunes I highly recommend the Plus version. It’s still not as good as the lossless format but it’s the best they’ve got for now.
There are also several sites that offer High Definition downloads that are as good or better than CD quality. Most have free downlaods so you can try out their service and listen for yourself. Here are a some of the sites we use.
Music Giants www.musicgiants.com
emusic www.emusic.com
HDtracks www.hdtracks.com
3. Turn Off the Computer Sounds
If you work on your computer while it’s streaming music to your USB DAC you’ll probably want to turn off your computers sounds. Otherwise you’ll hear them through the speakers at the same volume as the music and probably scare the crap out of yourself (speaking from experience here). It’s usually pretty straight forward and varies depending on your operating system and version.
So that's it for now, we'll add additional tips to this section in the weeks and months to come. As we mentioned earlier, we welcome your feedback and tips for iTunes or any of the other software programs.
