No it isn’t cheap but it is superb in both ease of use and sound-wise. Plus if you upgrade your music library then you just keep the D100. You can power it with a Plixir LPS for even better performance, as do I.
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I used one for a few years with a Plixir LPS and it was excellent. Now upgraded to the N50-S38 which is just so much better. Far more musically coherent and with much greater authority and drive. Of course at over twice the price it should be.
But on its own terms the N100 is lovely and nothing obviously lacking until you hear better.
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You can use a £30 cd drive as i do now, and just un plug it once you have finished ripping. yes the d100 is slightly better if you have the right system to show it, but for 99% of use the cheap drive is more than good enough, plus it’s probably about the same as you will get in the innuos anyway.
You can use the d100 as a cd transport as well, but that’s only when you connect to a melco using USB.
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Another vote for the Naim Core. I have almost 7tb of music on mine and it is lightening fast to find anything i want. Huge music store is no problem at all. Very flexible way to both rip and download music, built like a rock solid brick, and sounds absolutely great direct into a dac. Easy to replace drive as well if necessay.
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Hi again, have you not considered the Lumin L2, which would match the P1 and Lumin amp?
I know it is only storage, but there must be a way to rip CD’s on to it cheaply.
I once used my work computer to Rip, organize, transfer music files onto an external hard drive, which I still have.
I had checked with Lumin wrt the L2. There is no way to rip CD’s direct to the L2, it does not have the software to do it and they have no plans to add ripping functionality to the L2, so it is just storage/server that you have to load your existing digital files to.
Maybe Lumin missed an opportunity here, but Innuos’ new equipment don’t come with in-built CD rippers (external plug in only), so it looks like the industry is going that way as they seem to expect people to already have digital files, which I guess for a lot of people and especially younger generations that’s the case as they have already ripped their CD’s or are buying downloads not CD’s and BluRay Discs.
Good to hear from someone with first hand experience that spending more on higher range music servers is worth the money for the improved sound quality.
There are people on the forum (and posting on other threads) that say its a waste of money and makes no difference.
The PC or NAS or Dedicated Music Server debate on sound quality is a can of worms that I don’t want this thread to get into, maybe a separate thread is required to debate that issue in detail.
Good to hear that I don’t have to get the D100 and can use any external CD drive, I was not sure if the Melco’s had some special digital handshaking to only work with each other.
It makes the Melco option more attractive financially now.
I have used several different drives with my old Melco N1ZH including a second hand D100 for a while, all worked fine.
Lately I have used a small slim portable Pioneer Blu-Ray writer. It is not cheap but it is small and easy to move around, I sometimes connect it to a MacBook and the TV to watch movies.
Pioneer-mechanisms has very good RedBook software for reading CD Audio. The newer ones can enable PureRead 4+ which varies the read speed and laser parameters with bad discs. I have also enabled another parameter that only accept a rip if the disc is free of errors (no need for AccurateRip). There is a small utility to set these features. The model I use is BDR-XD08EMB-S.
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I spoke to another Innuos dealer that is located closer to where I live who has a Statement on demo that feeds all their demo rooms.
They said that CD rips played off the SSD sounded marginally better that CD quality streaming from Qobuz or Tidal via the Statement. However, they also said that the big benefit of Qobuz or Tidal is that they stream Hi-Res which sounds better than the CD rips all via the Statement.
They also stressed the point that Qobuz and Tidal have pretty much all the music you would want to listen to at only a small cost per month.
I’m not in the market for a Statement, so I don’t think I’ll waste the dealers time to go and have a demo to listen to it myself to confirm what they are advising me, I’m tending to believe what these industry professionals say that deal with this equipment every day.
The other info I got was that the Innous Zen Mk 3 comes with a HDD where-as the upgrades S spec Zen Mini Mk3 now has SSD and with the Innous external Linear Power Supply sounds better than the Zen. But they also did say that quite a lot of their customers just make the big cost jump to the Zenith which is also SSD, has a better Linear Power Supply, so sounds better, in their experience.
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You can listen to all your music as MP3’s on your 'phone and for 99% of the population that’s more than good enough.
Many people will tell you that dedicated hi-fi music servers are all a complete waste of money and that music stored on a laptop or IT grade NAS drive will sound identical.
So who’s right and who’s wrong here? The answer of course is nobody. It’s all a matter of personal opinion and value judgement.
As always, you must listen for yourself. Sweeping statements such as these carry no weight and are ultimately meaningless however well-intentioned.
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Really? How would they know what I want to listen to I wonder?
I’m going to make a small criticism here which I hope you’ll take in the spirit in which it’s offered and that is that you seem to talk a lot about what other people say about how things sound and not at all about what you think about how they sound.
I’m sorry - but that is complete nonsense. Of course you are in a position to challenge their advice or opinions. Ultimately what they say isn’t important, it’s what you hear that matters.
With this approach you may just as well hand over your money to them and just let them choose whatever they like for you.
It’s your call and your money of course but do you really want to let someone else decide how you should spend your £5K? Wouldn’t you rather decide yourself?
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I’d agree with all you’ve been told there bar the above. Some Hi-Res sounds better but much does not because it depends on the mastering. The Qobuz Hi-Res of Moondance by Van Morrison is noticeably better than my CD rip. The CD rip of King Of America by Elvis Costello is noticeably better than the Qobuz Hi-Res.
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Hi I’m new to this community.Not sure if anyone has mentioned the Bluesound vault 2i . I have one and have ripped my CDs. It has 2tb storage. Hope this helps.
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I’m in the fact finding and research stage of looking into rippers/music servers and trying to narrow down the options before I go and listen to a short list of equipment, otherwise I will be spending loads of time going to multiple dealers and doing multiple listening tests, which will waste a lot of my time and their time too.
Once I get a short list, I will go and listen for myself, but until then, helpful advice from forum members with more experience of this equipment then I, who is just starting out on this equipment, is most welcome.
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Totally agree. There is a lot of difference between the different masterings and especially for CDs, it is especially the first releases that are the best.
I think many of the remastered CDs sound bad, but I agree with you about Moondance
Understood and sensible.
Yes it was certainly a steep learning curve for me when I got into the whole music server/ripping thing around 4 years ago.
That’s why one of the things I would really caution you against is ripping your CD’s via a cheap drive as opposed to a D100. Especially when you have such a large number of discs to rip. Don’t rely on what others say. Some will tell you that there’s no or negligible difference. Others will say that the D100 produces far more musically coherent and enjoyable rips.
You must listen for yourself to both options before ripping. Don’t just listen to rips made via a cheap drive and think ‘well that sounds fine to me’ and leave it at that. You may later hear rips made via a D100 and think that they sound far better. You will then be faced with re-ripping your entire collection. So do the comparison first. If no difference then go with the cheap drive obviously.
Likewise compare Melco with Innuos and others if you can. It’s not always easy to do these sorts of comparisons in a meaningful way though as not all dealers stock all options. Maybe you might need to travel in order to do this but again that’s not always desirable for everyone.
Hope you get on OK. 
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There has to be an element of cold hard realism though. If a rip is error correct then its ripped, to think otherwise or to believe (which is all you have) that one drive some how pulls the exact same data, that can be checked for accuracy, differently to another, is concerning.
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Thanks for your advice.
Would would be helpful for me is if you could advise what other makes and models of music servers you compared/demoed before upgrading your Melco to another Melco.
And what would be even more helpful if you can share your experience with comparing a CD played on your Moon CDT Transport into your Qutest and a ripped version of the same album on your new Melco into your Qutest and advise what the sound quality difference is between the two, if any.
That would be very useful to know as I also have a Moon CDT Transport into my Lumin Streamer/DAC.
Thanks in advance for your further help.
Welcome to the Forum and thanks for your input.
What software is used to rip and catalogue/enhance the metadata when you use your Vault 2i and is it user friendly?