I have a lot of cds but of all the cds, there are about possibly a bakers dozen that i would like to put through the NDX2. I considered the unity core but it does not make sense to purchase for just these few, as everything else I can stream. The question is how can I do it in high quality without it. If someone could provide an idiots guide with a work around basic step by step it would be much appreciated. I had thought of paying someone to do it, but the problem is I don’t know someone with this device. I will be in the UK next week and I would rather like to get it all done while I am there.
If you want only to keep a dozen of cds, you can rip them through Dbpoweramp and put them on an usb stick. On one usb stick or on 12 , for fun. The Ndx2 accepts usb sticks and the sound is quite optimal.
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It may be easier to just buy the albums as downloads if they are available, and you might even find higher quality 24 bit versions available rather than regular 16/44.1 CD quality.
There are free rippers out there which are perfectly capable of producing decent quality lossless rips, such as XLD or Apple Music, for which you would just need a computer with CD drive either built in or on USB.
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Unfortunately not available on download so o need to rip them from cd
Thanks I will check out dbpoweramp not heard of it
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Or you can use Exact Audio Copy. dbPoweramp is great but you have to pay for it, EAC is just as good and is free.
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You have often a free trial with it. Rip all the cds in one month and you are done.
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Not heard of this application I was going to use Cdex but it’s not for Mac.
If i use Apple Music should o use AIFF or WAV format or Apple lidless encoder? It seems if I set it to WAV I could out 16 bit 44khz as there us no Pitney doing higher as the cd is limited anyway
You can use WAV, AIFF or ALAC for lossless ripping in Apple Music. I would probably use ALAC for smaller file size as it is still lossless. Very similar to FLAC, but with greater Apple compatibility.
If you change your mind you can convert between formats later, so don’t worry about making the wrong decision now.
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I had a few cds which were not recognized in dbpoweramp. Alternatively, it was possible with X Lossless Decoder for mac
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If lossless has compression then how does it un compress them? Is it not lost from the compression?
No, once the files are unpacked by the streamer the original data is intact. Lossless is lossless.
There is an argument that the electrical noise generated by the streamer when processing compressed files can produce very subtle changes to sound quality, but that’s a separate issue. It was somewhat noticeable on the original range of Naim streamers, but not so much an issue now.
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Think of a flac file as a full wav file but zipped. Flacs are typically half the size in Mb.
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