I wanted to pass on my late realisation that ripping cds direct to my Melco sadly is superior to any other method I have used. Sadly as I am having to do rip them all again! Bits is bits right? No! I always thought the sound I was getting was not on par with my cdx2 for years and I now know why. I suppose my system before couldn’t hear the difference but I can now. If you can afford it the Melco ripper it is amazing but it is slow. But once your all done the improvement from ground up is worth it… like listening to a better mastered LP. I am only using an Apple SuperDrive but even so it’s worth it to hear the full benefits. And it wasn’t what I had imagined. The air around the instruments and tonal changes is not subtle and where it was harsh it’s smooth! Try it if your lucky enough to have a melco or of course I assume the Core does the same? but for me ripping on a Mac and transferring doesn’t cut it sadly as the convenience of doing it this way I thought outweighed the bother of getting on my knees which is where the unit sits at the bottom of my Naim rack! IT IS! Can I pay someone to do it? 
… I await it’s all in your mind comments!! 
How did you rip them on the Mac? AccurateRip check?
Before you get too far the usb cable supplied can be bettered…….i only found out recently😬
The following thread is worth a read. Sadly there was no progress of the suggestion of sharing files between several people to do more comparisons, both listening and data/metadata/file structure, so reasons for the observed difference in sound is unknown.
Bits definitely are bits when it comes to CDs.
An accurip verified CD extract is exactly that - a 100% accurate bit perfect copy of the data stream held on the CD.
Manufacturer and device independent, verified against a public database. No secret sauce.
Where there may be technical differences are the post rip encoders which generate FLAC files etc.
Yes I used db and it was mostly all accurate
How do you change it it’s internally attached?
Either way the melco rips are far superior you can hear it what else would you recommend ?
There is a usb cable supplied with the D100 melco ripper that sends the ripped data to a melco server. My dealer lent me a qed cable……it was better than the one supplied by melco.
There is no technical way to achieve a “superior” rip of a track from a CD. The bitstream is 1411 Kbps and if you capture a bit perfect copy that is that.
Running the bitstream through a lossless codec then back out gives the same perfect bitstream.
This is not subjective, it’s technical fact.
I don’t have the melco ripper only the server
Understand now.
But ripping direct to my Melco into the hardrives using their server software must be a whats making the difference and my ears don’t lie 
Comparing a melco as a server to another uPNP server is nothing to do with superior rips though.
Ok …. I never said superior rips? I said it sounds a lot better? If you can tell me another way of doing it please enhance the conversation n a way that helps! Thanks 
If a file sounds better than another file ripped from the same source, when served by the same server, then is this not ‘superior’?
That’s not what he’s comparing though, he’s comparing different rips both served using the Melco.
This declared experience of Melco ripper giving different (better) sounding files is discussed in the thread I linked in my earlier post. If I’ve got the correct thread, the discussion had someone with the Melco rip they said sounded better do a direct data comparison with an AccurateRip via other software, finding no difference, yet they said ha a distinct sound difference. There was a discussion of other things to look for, which, if memory serves, included how the meta data was saved which if different might have an effect while playing (Is this what the Core dies?). As I mentioned, there had been a suggestion of distributing the files to other people, both for confirmation of sound difference, and for people with capability of file analysis to see if there was any discernible difference, even if not of the rip itself.
Probably.
Time to apply Occam’s razor, though. If the file sounds different, it’s either because:
1 your brain is playing tricks on you
or
2 there is a difference in the file contents
If the files are the same, that eliminates option 2.
I remember people saying the same for speaker cables there all the same!!! it must be my tiny brain hearing the difference and of course my dealer lying to me also were all mad bloody snake oil and of course f you can’t hear any difference then it must be so… I should ask you next time I buy some equipment that might be more suitable to my ears what you think before I buy! Stick to Binatone! it’s time to vacate these forums!