How to get started?

Posted by: Flame on 28 September 2008

Hi all;

I'm new to this distributed audio business and I'm looking for help. For starters I intend to use the digital output from my PS3 which is decoded by the DAC within my NAD receiver. The signal is then output as pre-out to my 122x and then will run routinely down the chain. If we all admit that this setup won't give the best results it is what I have to start off with.

Question.... What file formats should I be downloading? What resolution should I consider the minimum and maximum to look at? I found a few sites that sell audiophile downloads but I'm more interested in popular music. Any advice? Oh an BTW, iTunes doesn't work in my country of residence Frown

Regards and thanks...
Posted on: 02 November 2008 by Allan Probin
I've been playing around with the drive settings in EAC and it looks like I may have to set about ripping my CD collection again. Not a pleasant prospect unfortunately.

I ripped the bulk of my collection using EAC over a year ago when playing around with Squeezebox and slim-server. I had the drive options set to what was the perceieved wisdom at the time of Secure mode with 'drive caches audio data' unchecked. I thought I'd try a test with the latter setting checked. Ripping speed dropped from approx 15X to 4X and to my ears it sounded noticeably better.

After comparing the log entries created with this setting checked and unchecked it turns out that the wording of this option in EAC's user interface is incorrect and should actually say (as per the log) 'defeat audio cache'. In other words with this option unchecked, the data from the drive is cached and when checked, the cache is disabled.

Before I set about re-ripping everything again, I think it might also be a good idea to try one or two other optical drives, like the plextor that Dave D mentions, to see if these influence the final result.
Posted on: 02 November 2008 by Graham Russell
Hi Allan,

Don't say things like that!!! I've just finished ripping 700 CDs too.

Interestingly I had a problem with a Kasey Chambers CD yesterday. EAC kept throwing errors on every track. I noticed that drive cache was ticked on that particular computer. Turning drive cache off fixed the problem and the CD ripped with no errors.

I then experimented and ripped a track from another CD twice. Once with drive cache and once without. I was trying to see what difference it had. I check summed the two wav files and they were exactly the same. I must admit I didn't listen to them as I figured the same checksums mean the data was exactly the same.

Cheers
Graham
Posted on: 02 November 2008 by Allan Probin
Graham,

Take a listen and see what you think. Both rips produce the same checksum and both are confirmed accurate according to the acurate rip database. However, I've blind tested myself on this by loading both tracks into a playlist, randomising the playlist (with the playlist covered on my Nokia N800) and then just selecting between track 1 and track 2 on the remote control. If only it wasn't so ...
Posted on: 02 November 2008 by Graham Russell
Allan,

Maybe I'm being cloth-eared but to me they sound the same.

I'll have a go with a couple of different tracks.

Graham