I-tunes

[tooskinny]

I tried to listen to I-tunes threw my laptop. I used the same cable from the Ipod. Connecting from the headphone jack to the rca's on the receiver. I used the headphone jack on my laptop, but it only played out of one speaker. Not sure on what I need to use my laptop to play I-tunes threw my receiver to get 5.1 to play.

[SnowmaNick]

I tried to listen to I-tunes threw my laptop. I used the same cable from the Ipod. Connecting from the headphone jack to the rca's on the receiver. I used the headphone jack on my laptop, but it only played out of one speaker. Not sure on what I need to use my laptop to play I-tunes threw my receiver to get 5.1 to play.

1st look to see what other output options your laptop may have, many have some kind of Toslink connection. A headphone jack to RCA adapter may work but headphone outputs are variable and generally not the best way to get a good connection for anything other than headphones.

5.1 will require a digital connection from your laptop (or any device that doesn't have a built in decoder and 6 jacks to connect to the analog in section of a receiver). Digital will most likely give you better SQ as well as a lot of laptops have junky soundcards in them. Another option would be to get an external soundcard. Finally if you just want stereo, and better quality out of your laptop and you don't have a S/PDIF connection on your laptop, look at an external USB DAC.

[gonk]

If you only got audio through one speaker, I suspect that the cable was not properly seated in the laptop's headphone jack - if it were just a bit loose (or even pushed in a bit too far), you could end up with one channel of the plug not being in contact and thus not getting a signal.

The files you are playing in iTunes are mostly going to be stereo files, so to get surround sound you will need to get both channels working and then use a matrix processing mode like Pro Logic II to expand that stereo signal to 5.1. An alternative would be to establish a digital connection (using a different sound card, either a PC card unit or a USB unit, to replace the internal sound card). That would still give you just stereo in most cases (unless there are some movie or TV downloads available in iTunes Store that have surround sound), so you're still going to be using Pro Logic II, but it would also allow the receiver to be the only component in the signal path that is doing any D/A conversion. A few receivers even have USB inputs that let you connect a computer directly, at which point the receiver basically becomes an external sound card. This capability is kind of rare, though.

[tooskinny]

I will have to hook it back up and make sure that it's pushed in all the way. I ordered a external USB soundcard that has both rca and optical connection. Have to see how it sounds first.

Thanks you guys for all your help.

[tooskinny]

I hooked it back up and must not of had the cables pushed in all the way. It now plays out of all my speakers and sound pretty good using I-tunes and the EQ. Can I convert all my songs to lossless or do I have to rip them all again using the lossless setting? Is it going to make that big of a difference using lossless?

[SnowmaNick]

As far as I know you will need to re-rip the info as it was discarded when you ripped to MP3 or Apples equivalent. I have compared the same song using Apple Lossless vs MP3 and to my ears there was a sizable difference. Plus I had a lot less fatigue after listening to the lossless encoding for long periods of time vs. the MP3's. Keep in mind a lossless file is much larger than an MP3, so it will take up some space if you have a decent music collection.

[gonk]

Yeah, you'll have to re-rip. The existing files have already gone through lossy compression, so (even if you had a tool that would convert to a lossless format) the original data has already been discarded and can't be recovered without going back to the original.

[tooskinny]

As far as I know you will need to re-rip the info as it was discarded when you ripped to MP3 or Apples equivalent. I have compared the same song using Apple Lossless vs MP3 and to my ears there was a sizable difference. Plus I had a lot less fatigue after listening to the lossless encoding for long periods of time vs. the MP3's. Keep in mind a lossless file is much larger than an MP3, so it will take up some space if you have a decent music collection.

Dang it. Figured I would have to rip everything again. Can I save two different folders I have about 200 songs. One for regular and the other for lossless so that way I can put regular on my Ipod and use lossless when running threw my laptop?

[NekoAudio]

Or you can keep them all in the same iTunes library, and use smart playlists to pick the ones to copy over to your iPod or play off your computer.

[tooskinny]

Or you can keep them all in the same iTunes library, and use smart playlists to pick the ones to copy over to your iPod or play off your computer.

That sounds even better. I need to start using iTunes more I guess.