Quote:

A big chunk of the price is the included 1.5 Terabyte hard drive.
Those types of drives sell on Amazon for about $125. http://www.amazon.com/Iomega-Prestige-De...3892&sr=8-1

I would say it depends on what you are using it for. The audiophile would be best if you are doing recordings, where you wouldn't want to introduce small amounts of noise, as is present on compressed files. For everyday use (practising, casual recordings), the non Audiophile version is fine.



I'm thinking about buying the Mac Audiophile edition. A couple of questions: is that "small amount of noise" really the main issue in terms of a discernible sonic difference between the audiophile and other editions? Sure, I'd always like to avoid noise, but it seems to me that it might not be much of an issue with many rock or country styles -- more of an issue with a quiet jazz style that might be using mainly piano and bass. Will I hear other differences? (I should mention that I am fussy -- I never buy Itunes from the Apple store, for example, because I can hear a subtle difference between a 256 bit rate, vs CDs I convert myself with a lossless codec).

Another question: I own both the Mac and Windows versions of BIAB. If I buy the Audiophile version on one platform, can I use the aiff (or in the case of Windows, wav) files, with the non-Audiophile version on the other platform? I've been hedging my bets by purchasing the latest Ultra or Everything Pak in both Mac and Win versions, but buying and consistently upgrading the Audiophile versions both on platforms would be stretching the budget a little too far.

And finally: I'd need to back up the drive, obviously. Since it ships on a 1.5 T hard drive, but apparently about 1/3 of the space is still open, can I back it up to a 1T drive? I'm also assuming its a USB, not Firewire drive, correct?