Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

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You Are Not Alone........

Posted by Todd Krieger (A) on July 12, 2014 at 17:50:23

In Reply to: Why do my CD rips sound uh, dull? posted by Tympani on July 10, 2014 at 10:49:11:

I've almost never heard a PC playing CD-quality wav files that I thought sounded comparable to a good CD player or transport/DAC....

"Since buying the Bryston BDP-2/BDA-2 player/DAC combo last winter, I've ripped almost my entire CD collection in uncompressed wav using DB Poweramp's latest version, using AccurateRip. Though much of my current listening is HiRez downloaded files (which the Bryston combo handles beautifully) I still love to listen to music from my old CD collection."

I personally find CD the most-enjoyable digitized medium.... I think the RFI just gets too overbearing with high-rez.

"I've noticed that these tracks don't have the punch and involvement I recall when previously listening through my Marantz SA7S1 player (now sold)"

Your mistake was presuming it would sound comparable or better.... I've tried it with a handful of recordings over the years, and when I sampled the playback, it became apparent that PCs were not going to displace CD playback for me in the foreseeable future.

"I've tried 2 different optical drives for reading the discs - my internal Blu-Ray writer, and an external LG read/writer. Both yield 'perfect' rips - and produce the same results."

Different PCs, operating systems, clock speeds, hard drives, ripping software, software drivers, etc. vary the performance of the ripping. Even defragging the drive affect how the data is read off the disk. There are so many variables in playing music off the hard drive, it could be a very exasperating endeavor if the resultant sound isn't right.

The fact the PCs are RFI monsters doesn't help matters either. As I've stated elsewhere, I've never heard playback off a computer that I thought was as musically satisfying as playing CDs on a good CD player.

"Did the Marantz player spoil me by somehow enhancing Redbook playback, and I'm now hearing the real deal? Have I been spoiled by hi-rez and so all 44k/16 bit sounds lacking? Well, to test the latter, I downloaded a 44k/16 bit version of a CD rip and compared them. The download sounded better, more space, deeper low end and definitely more involving. A quick 'blinded' AB (with the help of the wife) correctly identified the source each time."

You should also check the data if the files are numerically identical. You could have downloaded a better mastered copy.... Of if the data is identical, the software writing the data to disk wrote the data where it was later read in a more ideal manner.

"So, despite an 'accurate' rip, are there other factors, namely in the source/reader hardware or others, that could audibly impact the quality of a rip?"

Could be a lot of factors. From the latency between data read and write (which can induce jitter), synergy with operating system, synergy with device drivers, etc. ... With a different music player, you might prefer the other file. This is how unpredictable the process is.

This is the reason why I use audio playback with my computer expressly for streaming music or video off websites. I leave purchased music solely for CD playback on a CD player/changer or for vinyl playback.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Kimber Kable

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