User manual AUDIO ANALOGUE USBDAC REV 4-2010

[. . . ] USBDAC Application Note Issue Date: April 2010 AUDIO FUTURA S. P. A. Research & Development E-Mail (support): sblanda@audioanalogue. com podesta@audioanalogue. com saggini@audioanlogue. com elia@audioanalogue. com AUDIO FUTURA S. P. A. April 2010 | revision 1. 0 The aim of this document is to give some advices about the use of the Audio Analogue products having a USBDAC inside. At the end of the document a brief glossary reporting some of the most common words used speaking about this kind of technology. It is not pretending to be a exhaustive and complete one but we hope is useful for who has never approached this matter. It's our intent to update this document for what we can. . . [. . . ] http://www. izaria. us/: is a web radio where listening to music on streaming and downloading music in a free and legal way. http://www. allmusic. fm/: it's music on demand website where listening to music on streaming and downloading music in a free and legal way. http://www. tunewiki. com/: free music website. Note. To access such web services, after the USBDAC mode is selected on the Audio Analogue product, run your web browser on the PC/MAC (Internet Explorer4, Mozilla Firefox5, Safari6, Google Chrome7 . . . ) and connect to the links above. The most important un-free music website is by far the Apple iTunes Store8. ITunes is an Apple application which started as a multimedia player mainly pointed to the music reproduction and audio arrangement. iTunes is a freeware player which can be downloaded at the link: http://www. apple. com/itunes/how-to/. ITunes is at the moment the second player for diffusion in the word being Windows Media Audio, the player by Windows, the first presently. The "war" between the players caused iTunes to support, by default, the audio formats: MP3, AIFF, WAV, AAC and ALE, but not the WMA format which is the Windows Media Audio one. iTunes can anyway reproduce WMA files by a conversion in type which is possible when, as for all the others player, the proper Plug-In is installed. iTunes has largely increased its diffusion in these years because it's the tool to load and arrange music playlist on the iPod. The great iPod success has caused Windows Media Audio to USBDAC Application Note 5/7 AUDIO FUTURA S. P. A. April 2010 | revision 1. 0 make itself compatible with iTunes. In fact now Windows Media Audio can convert its file audio from a WMA format to the AAC one which is the most used in iTunes. has published on web its iTunes Store which is a on line shop where buying music as a whole CD or as single track and also many other audio/video files. iTunes Store has imposed itself as the most important on line music shop with more than 70% of the whole on line music purchases performed on iTunes Store. For selling music on its music-web-shop, Apple has reached agreements with the main record producers such as: BMG Music, EMI, Sony Music, Universal and Warner Bros. Moreover agreements are every day reached with the smaller record producers. iTunes let you download a single track at a price of less than a dollar and require the payment via a credit card on encrypt and absolutely safe web pages. With iTunes you can create your playlist, which can be then transferred to the iPod. The protection system on the music downloaded from the iTunes Store is the: Apple Fair Play, a Digital Right Management integrated based on iTunes Store, such protection System let you burn a unlimited number of copies of the downloaded music while the music can be played by a 5 maximum number of computer . Glossary AAC: is a compressed audio format (Advanced Audio Coding) from MPEG and has been included into MPEG-4. At the same compression is characterized by better performances than the older MP3. Is the most used audio format for iTunes. [. . . ] Plug-in: (also said: addin or add-in, addon or add-on), it's a program working to increase the functions of an other one. For example, a plugin for a audio software allows it to de-code audio formats not originally supported or present in the main program of the player. Vorbis: is a audio open source compression algorithm, lossy type. Can be considered the MP3, AAC antagonist. [. . . ]