I agree and frankly I rarely listen to my cds on my hard drive now. Lot of vinyl and of the digital, 80%+ is qobuz. I listen to my own needledrops more often than cds and frankly to my ears they sound better 
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My wife is perfectly happy with playing her CD’s on our Moon 260DT CD transport / Qutest DAC and has no interest in our Melco. I prefer the Melco - I love it for its ease of use and it sounds better. But sometimes I do wonder if sticking to CD wouldn’t have been so much simpler - and cheaper.
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I can’t understand what anyone is trying to show here and what it will accomplish. If I’m understanding it correctly there is a desire to ‘prove’ once and for all if CD’s ripped on a D100 sound different to those ripped elsewhere. The ‘proof’ being in the resultant files being identical or not.
So if they are not identical that is the proof of them sounding different. Or is it? How do you know it is? You are making assumptions. How do you know it’s not due to some other reason?
If they are identical then that proves that they don’t sound different. But it doesn’t. Because they do.
It’s a pointless exercise. I’m not surprised that D100 owners are not clamouring to provide proof of what they hear. Why would they? I know CD’s ripped on my D100 sound better than CD’s ripped on my Macbook Air via a USB Apple optical drive. Why would I feel any need to convince anyone else that this was the case?
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I don’t see why. Ethernet is galvanically isolated by design. The first hop from the streamer is the one that counts. It’s not a single contiguous connection through each device. There isn’t cumulative noise added. On top of which, they aren’t inherently noisy devices anyway. I pay some attention to how that first connection from streamer to switch is made but for the subsequent hops don’t worry about it.
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When I moved into my new build 4 years ago I decide to rationalise my network down to a single switch fitted in a comms rack (Aruba 1930, 48 port) housed in a separate room to my system. The comms rack houses my NAS boxes, blade server, firewall and router, which are all powered from a UPS. Cat 6A Ethernet cabling in the walls runs to RJ45 sockets around the house, including the music room. An AP mounted on the ceiling of the landing is also powered from the rack via POE and provides good Wi-Fi 6 cover for the whole house.
I might get a better cable to run from the RJ45 socket to my NSC 222 and consider a final switch for further isolation. But then again, I might not bother.
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Haha, I knew I should have used the D100 to make the bits legible 
I looked inside the D100 and apart from the melco magic dust there was a Pioneer Blu-Ray drive. About the same model as I use for ripping on my computer. I wonder if the “PureRead” and “Mastering” features on those drive have something to do with Melco, its not like Pioneer would add features to improve ripping when the CD market was in full crash-mode. Apart from that very well built.
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Perhaps because you are fighting here to convince that identical rips can sound different 
I personally abandoned.
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So if I have this right, bury your head in the sand, and scream lalalalala
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The noise from the SSD seems to have something with the microcontroller inside the SSD, certain makes and series sound better than others. I know people are chasing down things like certain old Intel SSD:s because of the sound & musicality. But keeping track of which microcontroller sits in which SSD-model - while not as boring as network switches was no fun!
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Yes I can believe it. Just think its better and far cheaper to take it off the table as a relevant factor! Anyway each to his own
My gear will go into racks very shortly. In two locations in the house. I have made sure that power and cable is separated but its really hard to do consistently without racks. Another project that got distracted by covid. The original plan was a single switch currently sitting underutilised in my study! The kit has been in test bed mode since early 2021! Worth racking now through before my new streamer arrives.
Still think there is benefit from dedicating a switch to the hifi imho and i think a lot of people have found the same! Enjoy.
Well the “ssd” that I put in the Nova was about £80 ie usb. I’ve just realised the £££ you guys are talking about. Goodness. I need a new car though. Buys a lot of good islay malt too.
For what it’s worth, at the minimalist budget end;
Windows laptop, £30 cd drive, media player or dbpoweramp, flac, ssd into usb of nova. Sounds same as the CD so far. Yes just budget cd transport, (project E and old arcam cd33).
What part of ‘identical’ do you struggle with?
Actually I’m not. Not at all. I know what I hear that’s all. If others hear something different or want to believe differently then that’s fine.
But if anyone tries to tell me that I’m mistaken in what I hear, well that’s quite a different matter. Not because it’s impossible that I’m imagining it, but because everyone else is just as likely to be imagining what they hear. So to say I’m mistaken means that they are equally likely to be so.
Perhaps not so flippant. But something like that. I’ve yet to discern how ‘proving’ the matter one way or the other will change anything for me. Perhaps someone can enlighten me?
If you disagree with me then why not just say so and give your reasoning?
Reasoned debate requires a shared language - which doesn’t appear to apply here.
I have been misunderstood. You know it’s sounds better, like me. But as you are alone now against few members who are telling you with assurance and certainty that it’s impossible, you are a bit fighting here against a windmill.
You are however spiritually supported by Dunc, Dark Bear, RipandAudio, and the French chicken.
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How so?
Good to know. 
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