Best possible quality audio - PassThrough Greyed out

[xandra]

I'd like to ensure that audio quality is best possible--but original quality of my CD-G's vary (44.1-48mhz)

I figured PassThrough would automatically handle this but the item is grey-out.

Questions:
1. why is PassThrough grey out. (and is my assumtion correct?)

2. If I have import set to 48mhz but the disc's music is 44.1 - Is kjams smart enuf to not to upconvert?

3. ditto on exporting (if I've set 48mhz, but the rate is lower...

4. Lastly, is it my imagination or does audio quality degrade when pitch is adjusted.

Thanks in advance - xandra

[dave]

when ripping from CD:
set your encoder to Apple Lossless, you'll get a reasonable compression but virtually (or actually?) lossless audio.

for *pristine* audio, use AIFF, note: it's very very large.

when exporting:
you need the pro version if you want to make super high quality quicktime movies.
again use Animation / Lossless or Animation / uncompressed

I'm not sure what you're referring to regarding passthrough. is this for import or export? if you've already got MP3+G then i assume you're exporting?

kjams only uses 44khz audio. if your source is 48khz, it will downsample. sorry there's no way around that, it's the uncompressed format that all the music goes thru when playing.

the audio quality does degrade a bit when you adjust pitch but i have a fix for that coming soon, it will sound perfect.

-dave

[xandra]

Wow thanks for quick reply (I was waiting till I imported my next batch)

I've been using AIFF (primarily cuz my final output is iPod vids -and I prefer to work with as much data as possible, when something's going thru multiple conversions) so I guess that's the best I can do for now.

the audio quality does degrade a bit when you adjust pitch but i have a fix for that coming soon, it will sound perfect

That's GREAT news - since pitch adjustment does ugly things on karaoke machines. I was hoping a computer digital adjustment would be better. Really looking foward to this improvement and the ability to add comments.

thanks - xandra

[dave]

you should probably use AppleLossless as your encoder, you'll still get perfect files but save some room on your hard drive.

You'll also be happy to know i've fixed the pitch bending right now for playback, assuming you have a fast computer (>990 mhz) and 10.4 and the latest quicktime.

tonight's release will add the same pitch bender to burning CDs and to exporting quicktime.

ability to add comments is in under the hood but not exposed in the GUI. you can see my work on this by right clicking and pick "comment" and you'll get a new column. i will VERY soon let you edit that and search on it.

[xandra]

I've fixed the pitch bending right now for playback, assuming you have a fast computer (>990 mhz) and 10.4 and the latest quicktime.

That's GREAT news, a good reason to finally update Quicktime ( I've been hesitant given all the reports of sound issues.

Can you use Apple Lossless if you're going to export as iPod Vids?

Thanks for all the hard work.
xandra

[dave]

the iPod exporter was written by apple to be sure to conform to the very stringent requirements for guaranteed playback on the iPod. There are no end-user configuration options for anything at all, including sound quality.

Fortunately the sound quality is pretty good!

If you're not really going to iPod, and just plan to play it back with QuickTime, then sure, use whatever encoder you want