On a similar theme and equally unfathomable, I have just bought a Melco E100 Expansion Drive as my main Melco storage is getting quite full. I was using a standard USB external drive before this and when listening to exactly the same file played from the new Melco drive compared to the original drive it was cleaner and more pleasant on the ear. I have heard some of DB’s Melco rips on my system via his USB stick and compared to my PC/dbPoweramp rips it was the same result … cleaner and more musical. The downside is I guess I now owe it to myself to get a D100… that will have to wait!
What matters in this discussion is not what you or I are interested in but what is useful for people who still have to rip their CD collections.
For people who want to rip their CD collections, it is essential to use devices that makes faithful copies of the original data.
If two devices end up with different rips – modulo metadata, of course, – at least one is not making faithful copies.
In this case, it is possible that the rips of a device sound better (on certain systems, and to certain users) than those of another device but so what?
If one is about to rip a CD collection, all one wants is to make exact copies of the original, not something that pleases certain ears, systems or devices at a certain time.
That is very useful information, that may help with identifying cause. So the question is, what does Melco do different - is it the file, or something to do with something ancilary (e.g. metadata), which might fit with the Melco line of it being to do with packing.
Take care with the next update at the begining of December Minim and SongKong will ab added.
If a lot of people testify that one component, like here the melco D100, rips better vs rips on pc, I don’t want specially to know why. It’s just a strong indication for me and which can give me the desire to listen to it.
However you may have other desires…I understand. Speak just for me.
Every CD reader implements standard error-correction algorithms at different level. This is not rocket science and the algorithms are well known since many decades.
However, error correction has nothing to do with the issues discussed here.
What we have here are reports of rips from different devices sounding differently.
These reports raise the obvious question of whether these rips are identical or not.
The question has so far not been answered.
What is useful for some may be not useful for others…
The rip done this way is very good but not as nice sounding as D100 to N10… interesting …
Incidentally N10 to Bluenodes has added a lot of extra bass.
This is certainly the case. It also holds for many other properties, apart from usefulness. But not for all properties.
So, if rips on a Melco sound better than those done on other devices, if someone has ripped their entire CD collection on another device, the full benefit of the Melco is lost, and maybe not as worth buying - but even if otherbenefits make it worth the money, the collection will forever be held back in terms of sound quality.
And whether one has a Melco or any other store, if the cause of the non-Melco rips not sounding as good can be identified, there is a chance that the non-Melco rips could be processed to convert them, and so allow everyone - Melco owners and not - to bring existing ripped collections up to Melco ripped sound quality. If you have an already-ripped CD collection, wouldn’t you like that?
Non-Melco rips don’t relate only to rips of one’s own CD collection, but to purchased downloads if they are ripped from CDs.
I already use Songkong, as that works fine stand-alone with Twonky alongside. I only use it to tag metadata with album artworks, as Naim cannot for some reason ever use the ‘Folder.jpg’ image in the album folder - and I use WAV so without the Naim picking-up the artwork I have to edit the individual track metadata - a pain but it works fine and Singkong does it.
I’m aware Melco have worked with Minim to produce a new music server product - my Dealer will give me a demo of that before I do any upgrade as I prefer by a reasonable margin Twonky when I last tried both.
But if Minim works as well as Twonky in terms of SQ then I’m OK migrating to it, but not otherwise.
DB.
I feel that without the quality of the Melco hardware , it will be not possible to replicate the same with common pc or Mac.
If we give up bit-perfectness, we can easily make rips that sound better than the original. For instance by upsampling. Or by slightly increasing the volume.
Thus, the question is whether the Melco rips sound better because they are not bit perfect or because of other reasons.
To answer this question, it is necessary to compare the Melco rips to other rips bit-by-bit. This requires stripping off the metadata from the rips. This is not completely trivial but it can be done quite straightforwardly.
Regardless of your feeling about Mac or PC, what about people with, any other store or system, bearing in mind Darkebear’s observation regarding a USB stick into a 272 a couple of hors ago? And what about Melco owners like yourself, who have already ripped their CD collections, or purchased ripped CDs?
You’re right let your ears make the decision, I still have Twonky on this one but disabled via Minim.
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So you think that the hardware and not the software is responsible for the differences that you hear?
I would be interested to know how to do that, once the metadata is stripped out.
There are different possibilities but, assuming that you have two .wav rips of the same track, say A.wav and B.wav, what I would do is
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Convert A.wav and B.wav to A.flac and B.flac. This is a bit-perfect conversion.
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Use metaflac with the options “–remove-all” and “–dont-use-padding” to get rid of the metadata of A.flac and B.flac. This is a also a bit-perfect conversion.
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Compare the resulting files with “cmp”.
If the resulting files are different, they cannot be both bit-perfect.
Meaning one or the other (or both) is not a faithful copy of the CD
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I have not enough cds to bother with that…