After auditioning ND5XS2 and NDX2 I decided to trade my NDac in and get an NDX2. I’m using a Tidal subscription with great results.
In addition to streaming from Tidal I’m using the front USB port.
My digital music library is mainly AIFF format both CD quality and HD and is in disks with MAC format that I have to move to FAT disks.
As I have to copy files to new USB devices I can take the opportunity to change codecs.
Any experiences using different codecs?
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Many people use FLAC and transcode to WAV. I used to but found better SQ by storing as WAV.
If you don’t have the “transcode” option do a comparison with your current format and FLAC/WAV via USB.
I transcoded some files to WAV using xAct (Mac) but I lost the metadata.
Do you know a transcoder that can keep the metadata?
I compared FLAC vs AIFF vs WAV for only a few files but could’t detect any difference, but it was a very limited experiment.
I’ve also never heard a difference when I tried comparing years ago. I just store all my files as FLAC and don’t give it much thought otherwise. Life is too short to worry about it and not sit back to enjoy the music, IMHO.
JDP, I think I will go to FLAC. Doing some testing I discovered that the NDX2 didn’t read the metadata in some AIFF files, but after transcoding them to FLAC It did. Strange.
I have NDX2, and I only use it as a Roon endpoint with Qobuz. Roon seems to work just fine with all my FLAC files.
I have ripped to NAS in a WAV format from the start and happy with the SQ upon replay.
btw: congratulations on the NDX 2, I ran w/o a PS for 6 months, then added a XPS DR and it was a vast improvement. Something to think about after things have settle down.
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I concur. I started with a raw NDX2. Adding a XPS-DR a couple months later was so transformative to the sound (and my wife noticed it instantly), it convinced me to also get a SuperCap DR to replace the HiCap DR on my 282.
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Do you viewing the files on the USB drive through the USB input or the Server input? The latter usually dies not display metadata properly.
If you use your music with other devices flac is the way to go.
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