DIGITAL SOURCE COMPONENTS
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go to: Contents | Feature | On The Horizon | DACs | CD Players | Music Servers | Integrated Amps with DACs | Portable | Our Top Picks<br />
The<br />
Personal<br />
Audio<br />
Revolution<br />
Your Guide to Computer and Portable Digital<br />
Spencer Holbert<br />
SPONSORED BY<br />
Since the late 1990s, digital music downloads and streaming services<br />
have gone from a somewhat illicit network of peer-to-peer file sharing—<br />
e.g. Napster, Limewire, Kazaa, and BitTorrent—to a multi-billion dollar<br />
industry. Today consumers have an abundance of choices when it comes to<br />
how they access music—from major players such as Apple, Google, Amazon,<br />
Microsoft, Sony, and Beats (now owned by Apple) to grassroots startups such<br />
as Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, and Slacker.<br />
The irony of the current state of the<br />
music industry is that, while sales of<br />
physical media are in major decline<br />
(aside from the resurgence in vinyl),<br />
more people are listening to more music<br />
than ever before in history. While digital<br />
downloads—starting with the infamous<br />
rise of Napster in the late 1990s—may<br />
have revolutionized the way we obtain<br />
music, streaming services like Spotify<br />
and Pandora have revolutionized the<br />
way we consume music. Pandora, the<br />
only publicly traded streaming service,<br />
delivers about 1.5 billion hours of music<br />
to its more than 70 million users—each<br />
month.<br />
If music software and file exchange have<br />
drastically changed in the last decade,<br />
so has the hardware associated with<br />
converting those files into analog signals.<br />
Once a device found only in laboratories<br />
and recording studios, the standalone<br />
digital-to-analog converter (DAC) has<br />
been miniaturized to the point where<br />
smartphones now have DAC chipsets that<br />
allow users to enjoy high-quality digital<br />
playback.<br />
But all this change and choice can be<br />
confusing, if not overwhelming, even for<br />
those familiar with portable audio devices<br />
and music streaming services. This guide<br />
will help you navigate personal audio<br />
(listening to music via your computer<br />
or portable device), music streaming<br />
services, and the hardware and software<br />
needed to maximize your listening<br />
experience. Whether you have been<br />
using portable devices and streaming<br />
services for years or are new to the<br />
world of streaming music, this guide has<br />
something for everyone.<br />
Getting Started<br />
Personal audio falls into two main categories:<br />
computer audio and portable audio.<br />
Both means of accessing music can be<br />
used in isolation, but your experience will<br />
be much more satisfying when portable<br />
and computer audio are used together.<br />
Let’s delve into computer audio first.<br />
Computer Audio<br />
Computer audio is simply the ability<br />
to play digital music using a computer.<br />
There are two main ways of playing music<br />
through your computer: 1) via locally<br />
stored digital audio files (whether ripped<br />
from a CD, stored on a flash drive, or<br />
7 Buyer's Guide to Digital Source Components 2014 www.theabsolutesound.com<br />
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