CD Ripper/Music Server Recommendations

I first ripped all my cd’s using the buffalo (melco) cd drive. The one they recommend to use unless you go D100.
This is a cheap drive and power supply, it does a great job, very quick, and most will find it move than adequate even if you use it as a cd transport as well into the melco.
I then borrowed a D100 and ripped a few tracks to compare and there was a slight difference, difference enough for me to once again rip all my cd’s.
I have since messed about ripping a few odd cd’s and found that if you isolate the cheap buffalo drive on a nice platform or isolation feet, this helps inpove it, also a better power supply than the one in the box helps hugely, doing both these things still keeps it cheap, but makes a difference that then makes the D100 look very expensive for what it is.
Obviously the D100 looks far nicer, but unless you are going to use it as a transport into the melco, this works well, and sounds good, but is a bit off a faff to use, plus no remote, and you need a good USB cable as well.
Whilst we are on USB, a good USB cable to connect drive to melco also makes a small difference, and so does using a better power supply on the D100.
But it can all start to get very expensive just to rip a cd, especially if buying new. D100, better power supply, better USB cable, you can soon be over £2000. Much better to buy a secondhand D100, rip your cd’s and then sell it on, hopefully not losing anything if you buy right, or just max out the cheap drive and stick it in the cupboard afterwards like i now do, ready for when i need to rip a cd.

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That is pretty much word for word what Auralic recommend………a good power supply on a cheap ripper, but if you have the money……D100. I use the latter with a Plixir power supply, a little better again.

I’m sorry if my reply upset you both in anyway. :slightly_smiling_face: Sometimes software engineering is a complex field and a whole host of factors can intervene and make the actual outcome be different from the intended outcome. Thats why testing and end user validation is a critical part of the process. You measure the outputs and compare them to the intended results. And then try to work out what is the cause. So most software engineers are always looking to work out what might have gone wrong in the process. I am sure you hear differences. I believe you.

The problem is always that there are risks of coding errors or other external factors impacting the outcomes of the whole system chain not just the software layer. Its why software engineers have huge respect for infrastructure engineers. In that murky world there is so much that can manifest and spoil our party!

It becomes a balance of probabilities. If you tell me that for example roon developers and linn made a software error when they coded roon up and tested it. I believe you. It happens all the time. What catches the defect is good testing. If someone says the defect is caused by say a failure in the tcp code they are using, the developers will start out being highly skeptical and rightly so. Because that code is used by trillions of transactions a second to guarantee delivery. Is there a chance that through poor software engineering practices that the tcp team could accidentally or maliciously inject errors then sure it could happen.

I think all of these differences and risks of software defects are right at the margins of sound improvement imho. Now I really must go as I dont want to be late to hear a nice shiny new bit of kit!

Enjoy your music and your hifi! :blush:

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Not at all. If things like this upset me I wouldn’t be posting here!

Thanks for your considered reply. I think we have different approaches here. My approach to hi-fi is that I have aways relied purely on my ears to tell me what I prefer. Regardless of anything else. And yes, sometimes the results are inexplicable in terms of what is generally accepted as being the case.

I admit that your approach is foreign to me and one that I would never adopt. But that doesn’t matter. We don’t need to agree and we don’t need to think about things in the same way. It’s partly this that makes our hobby so fascinating.

Anyway enjoy your hi-fi too, have fun and happy listening. :+1:

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Me too. I have the Plixir Elite BDC with the Statement cable. My dealer told me that a customer upgraded to the new Plixir Statement power supply from the Elite and as a result decided to re-rip his entire CD collection! Too expensive for me though. :disappointed:

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I don’t have an answer for you, but the question has been discussed before, with some postulated ideas as to possibilities:

For further discussion on this particular query I suggest it would probably be best to ask Richard to reopen that thread with its existing discussion rather than go into it much here.

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I agree. However such discussions rarely seem to be very productive with both camps becoming more and more entrenched and they frequently end with someone pushing the button and Armageddon! I try very hard not to let myself get too involved these days - it’s just not worth the effort.

The other thing is that most of us here are lay people discussing complex issues way outside of our own fields. One wonders how much good can ultimately come from a bunch of dumb suckers discussing things that we don’t fully understand. As the saying goes, a little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing.

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Well, from all the posts over the last couple of days, its apparent that ripping CD’s is not that straight forward and another can of worms.

To add to the can of worms, can people share their experience with which sound quality is best between connecting your streamer with in- built DAC with either ethernet cable or USB cable when you have the choice between the two options?
I can do both with my Lumin P1 so curious as to which one sounds better from peoples experience with their equipment.

I would dispute the notion that CD ripping is a can of worms, other than for people who choose to make it so!

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I have heard a digital streaming setup with Naim amps equal or better in performance/preference to a fully optioned LP12 in that same system, in a home setting. That level remains the highest I can hear and enjoy. To reach that in streaming unfortunately requires in my experience many boxes of equipment and digital cables can be a truly deep rabbit hole.

However, since I moved to using fibre optic connections specifically with the finisar 1475 and Corning gold cable more than 2 years ago, I have never felt the need to audition any other RJ45 copper/silver(!) ethernet cable. The 1475 just sounds right (doesn’t really have a sound) and I have collected a small tray of various finisar and Cisco SFP modules while searching for the best spunding SFP module :slight_smile: . Seeing your Lumin P1 accepts SFP modules you might consider it.

If your DAC accepts i2s, a really good rj45 ethernet cable might be reused there.

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OS tuning / cpu clock speed is a thing as well… probably affects low powered streamers for example the ARM type with Linux OS.

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Thanks for your input.
The Innuos, Aurender and Melco Music Servers that Ive been looking into don’t have SFP connections to use with my P1, they only have USB or RJ45.
Lumin’s L2 Music Server has SFP connections but I cant rip CD’s directly to it unfortunately.
The P1 does not have an I2S connection eifher.

You might use a switch with ethernet and sfp, anyway it’s a good idea to separate server from the streamer

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I just about stream all the time as my streamer sounds better than the cd rips.
All my streaming is upsampled to a much higher rate and this just crushes the standard cd 16 bit / 44.1. I have to upsample the cd rip as well for it to get close, but even then i still mostly find the streamer sound best.
But this certainly wasn’t the case years ago when i had the NDS, the melco with ripped cd’s sounded better. But i have come a long way since them days now

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Been interesting to read the various replies and yes I am picking up some new ideas/theories to go investigate. Who would think that black and white cows exist, if they are not all brown can you get grey ones. :grinning: :grinning: Maybe they are not cows but DSD zebras?

I’m still thinking that most of the differences folks are hearing is due to replay channel artefacts being introduced from something (hardware, software or a combination of both). Anyway I’m off to get my GCSE engineering results, so you can guess (or not) my level of understanding. Never too old to learn something new. After that it is a bit of listening to music because that is what it is all about. :grinning: :grinning:

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Agreed, I use my P1 with a Cisco 2960, which has an SFP output. This converts to fibre and plugs directly into the P1. Any server on the network can then feed the P1.
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How were they determined to be different?

Here a post from the thread linked by our venerable @Innocent_Bystander :

“ Thanks Chris. The Core in question was a pre-production unit that I was reviewing. The unit came without a hard disk, but recognized my UnitiServe’s downloads folder as a store, so rips went there. That made it easy to compare the Core rips with those of the UnitiServe (WAV rips in all cases). I was not expecting a difference, but increasingly found myself less engaged with the Core rips. I set up a playlist of Core and US rips, then, using random unsighted playback, noted which version I thought it was, followed by a visual check. On repeated trials, I fared better than chance, correctly identifying the rips about 75% of the time.

An example: The Francis Cabrel’s track “Elle m’appartient, C’est une artiste” begins with an accordion and a brief guitar intro before Francis Cabrel sings. With the Core rip, the accordion was a little more finely resolved and cleaner ; when Cabrel’s voice enters, it was in a narrow band in the soundstage, just left of centre, lacking body. The guitar solo later on in the track was clean and clear, but again lacked body (or the human touch). The guitar was heard more than felt.

Moving to the same track on the Serve rip, the accordion was less finely resolved, but seemed to have better flow. The upper chest component of Cabrel’s voice was more present, with a consequent wider spread of his voice in the sound stage. It just sounded more human. By the guitar solo, my analytical brain had switched off and I was just transported by the music.

This pattern repeated itself many times over three weeks of going back and forth between the Core and the Serve.

When listening on the Core, I found myself picking up my iPhone more often than when listening via the Serve, where I was less easily distracted, the music commanding my attention more fully.

I also tested the rips using the ‘chills’ (goosebumps) reaction, precisely because it is involuntary. It is very difficult to ‘will’ oneself into it. I have a few tracks that reliably produce the reaction. On the Core rips, the reaction would often start at the appropriate point in the music, but would not be as intense as with the Serve rip.

Overall, the Serve rips did a better job of connecting me with the human performing the music and the human who composed it.

I’m fully aware of how our biases can influence what we hear and how we react to music, which is why I raised this on a forum thread in 2017. Five members volunteered to listen to both rips, blind to the source of the rip. The first reply came from a forum member who is also bass player. He consistently picked out and preferred the ‘B’ rips (UnitiServe).

Results from the other four listeners were not as categorical, ranging from a slight preference for the Serve rips to no difference. Overall, in six listeners (including myself), three noted a preference (from slight to strong) for the Serve rips. While the result wouldn’t pass a test for statistical significance, it is the consistent direction of the preference (when noted) that is interesting. One listener remarked that he couldn’t tell the rips apart on casual listening (on random playing), yet when he stopped thinking about the sound and just tried to relax into the music, his score was 5 to 1 in favour of the Serve rips.

Analysis of the rips showed bit perfect copies of each other excepting the leading data bits (zeros), a difference in offset.

The forum thread caught the attention of Naim’s former MD, Trevor Wilson, who reached out to me to investigate further. He compared Serve and Core rips and also found a difference, preferring the Serve rips on some tracks, and the Core rips on others. Different offset adjustments were evaluated at Naim, the firmware was updated, and the delta disappeared.

With the update, I could no longer reliably tell the Core rips from the Serve rips. On 30 random plays of Brush with the Blues, I guessed correctly 11 times. On another of my test albums, I guessed correctly 15 times out 30. Overall, 26 out of 60, so no better than chance.

Still, I was at a loss to understand how a minor offset difference could alter sound quality. Trevor’s theory was that “The music is left/right 16 bit data packet. Maybe the alignment of the non audible data helps align to the internal bus architecture thus it takes one CPU cycle not 2 to get data out.”

Stranger things have happened.

Systems used to compare the rips were as follows:

  1. UnitiServe / S/PDIF into a Resonessence Labs Mirus Pro DAC / 252+SC / Olive 250 / NACA5 / self-built two-way 8 inch floor standers.
  2. UnitiServe (from sys 1) / UnitiLite (or Naim DAC + Supernait2 ) / Bis Audio Vivat speaker cable / Graham Audio LS5/9

Jan”

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I never understand why people get upset and/or heated just because others have a different view, and it is a great shame – and shame is the right word - that sometimes people get abusive and start attacking others.

Exploring things one doesn’t understand to me is the height of intelligent conversation: otherwise how is one to learn? And wanting to know surely is the starting point of learning. It matters not whether or not some have relevant knowledge, as that does not invalidate analysis they may bring, or suggestions they may offer for consideration. In this particular case in the thread I referenced there was some very straightforward and logical discussion, sensibly recognising that bit perfect is just that, so for the D100 rip to sound different some other factor(s) must be at play (just like with ethernet cables it cannot be the data itself being changed by a cable, but other things that later affect the conversion to analogue, such as RF noise).

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It’s not exactly the response to your question. I found only that. Can’t remember where the comparison was done, in which thread. But it was Melco rips vs PC rips, and both were written differently.