Brand new Mbox user - some real BASIC questions!

[dsw7777]

Hello all, I just got my Mbox and have been playing with it all weekend. I plan to sit down this week with the manuals, but had a couple of basic questions. I'm sure I'll be posting more as I proceed!

Bouncing to harddrive - when saving as a .wav file the audio quality is terrible - I see in the user guide that it's says it will only save it at a quality of 6.5 and that you must use a "wma application" to convert it to a higher quality. What the heck is a wma application? Also, is there no way to hook this up so you can hear the playback (before bouncing it down) through the computer speakers (using soundblaster live card with good sub/speaker system), or are you limited to using headphones only? What about routing the spdif output on the Mbox to the spdif input on the soundcard?

Is there a book out there any one could recommend - I know there is tons of stuff here in the forum and in the user manuals, but wondered if there was a Mbox/LE "bible" that you might find helpful for a newbie.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[badperson]

I use an 001 and have never used an mbox, but when you bounce to disk, select 16 bit stereo interleaved wave file.

That sound quality should be good.

I'm not familiar with the other conversion process you referred to. To rip mp3's, I use musicmatch.

bp

[soundsurfr]

You should not experience significant sound degradation bouncing to disk.

Select File-> Bounce to disk
Select Stereo Interleaved, 16-bit, 44.1K (Standard CD format), convert after bounce.
You should be going through a master fader, and you should probably insert a dither plugin to the master.