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Too Many Variables for Good and Reliable Audio Playback

Posted by Todd Krieger (A) on May 20, 2015 at 20:52:39

In Reply to: Please post your experiences with music stored on a hard drive posted by bboroski on May 20, 2015 at 13:51:18:

1. I've yet to hear a playback of a file ripped to HDD from a CD that I preferred over either the CD itself or even a CD-R copy. I also prefer a CD-R copied directly from the original CD than one first ripped to the hard drive.

2. The sonic variance of ripping software and different HDDs makes it almost impossible to find a combination that I thought would be reliably satisfying, long-term. (I have no ripping programs to recommend, because what works on one hard drive/OS might work awful on another hard drive/OS. I had favorites when I used Windows XP, but these favorites fell down when I switched to Windows 7.)

2a. I find "anti-jitter" options on ripping software to consistently make the sound worse. I find different CD burning software burning identical CD-Rs to vary sonically more than the same CD burning software burning different brands/types of CD-Rs.

3. The audio files I've ripped to HDD over the years don't get much play time.... I prefer the sonics of CD on a computer's CD-ROM drive over that of the ripped file.... I also prefer the sonics of a dedicated CD player over that of a CD played on a PC.

4. I find ripped files almost always to sound worse after the drive is de-fragmented. I find ripped files to usually sound worse after a major update to the computer's operating system. (I started creating a "library" under Windows XP, only to find out everything sounded awful after upgrading to Windows 7.)

5. I find the only tolerable high-resolution playback of ripped files to be uncompressed WAV or AIFF formats. I believe something strange goes on with "lossless" playback decoded in real time. Most notably, an attenuation of "vibrato" from singers and solo musicians. (I passed an "ABX" test on this.)

6. I do enjoy YouTube videos via PC.... But for music enjoyment, that's about it. High-resolution audio from ripped files gets almost zero play time on my PCs. (I've never purchased music in "computer file" formats.)

7. Barring some unexpected surprises, I think I'll still be playing vinyl and CD on dedicated CD players ten years from now. I have not ripped a CD in over a year. To me, the variables (software, drives, OS, hardware, etc.) are too great, and I've come to the realization that it's a total waste of time.

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