Great sound, but more flaky than I’d like

This is an excellent idea with some execution issues.

I keep mostly 16/44.1 ALAC files ripped from CDs (yes, those still exist!) on my machine, but recently a few artists have released direct to digital at higher depth/sampling rate (mostly 24/48). The problem is that iTunes is kind of dumb about this and resamples the 48kHz down to 44.1 unless you go change it in Audio MIDI setup, and then you have to change it back to listen to something else. Ugh.

BitPerfect solves this problem, and does seem to subtly alter playback in general, though I’m not sure how much of a difference it makes with the regular 16/44.1 content.

So, if it’s so great, why only 3 stars? First, I’d give it 3.5 if I could. But becasuse writing great software is hard, and this isn’t quite up to the standard. This cuts out for no reason, often doesn’t handle sleep/wake without dying, and just generally requires a lot more futzing around than I want to keep it working. (Have to quit and restart iTunes pretty often to keep this from going wonky.) It’s cut out twice just while writing this review.

I will, however, say that one thing I *LOVE* about this is that it forces iTunes to go through my optical digital out while letting every other app just use my standard computer speakers. I know other people treat this as a bug, but as far as I’m concerned, this is an amazing feature. I’ve wanted that for years, and have been really missing it since the old utility I used for this (Detour) died. I hope if this issue is “fixed” for other users, it is at least left as an option for those of us who want it.

SunByrne about BitPerfect