Digitised music vs CD

The standard way of ripping in iTunes is at a low bit rate, 320bits I think.  You have tell iTunes specifically to rip lossless.  If you look at the file extension of the files on the computer and it's AAC then it's at the low bit rate, if it's ALAC it's Apple lossless.  There is a real difference in quality between the two.  There is different ripping software and different lossless file types (FLAC, WAV etc), but IMHO the dregree of improvement isn't huge.

Also the DAC in the PC won't be of great quality (to be fair it's probably rubbish).  You don't have to spend much at all to get a decent DAC which will give a massive improvement.  Naturally, the more you spend (generally) the better it will be, but the law of deminishing returns will apply again.

Initially, I ripped my cd's wrong to some lossy format using iTunes indeed. These rips are very annoying and hardly listenable.

I would recommend to rip the files to WAV. Increadibly large, but harddisks are cheap these days. I've used my Dragonfly Black (GBP 90) with my Mac Mini and my PC with good results. Major step up even without all kind of isolation / powersupply tricks.

There are a couple of factors that could be the result of your drop in quality...

1) When you ripped your CDs to iTunes, did you rip them in in a lossless format (i.e. WAV) or in one of the lossy formarts such as mp3? If the latter this will always give you a lower quality of sound

2) If you are using the analogue output from your pc, then you are limited by not only the DAC in your PC, but also the audio quality of the PC's output (if you have a high-end sound card in your PC, this may go some way to keeping the quality higher - but I would question if this was a good as the CDX

So firstly if you have not already done so, rip the CD's in a lossless format (Apple lossless, AFFI or WAV) - the disadvantage is that you will need more storage space than if ripped into one of the lossy formats... this will be the cheapest option i.e. no cost - but will take time to re-rip all your CDs

Unless you have a good sound card - look at upgrading the sound card in your PC

Better improvement (this would mean additional spend) - would to be to output the music via the USB on the PC into an external DAC when then feeds into the NAC92R

Another options might get a streamer which would pull the music files off the PC and feed it into the NAC92R or maybe even sell your NAC92R and get something like an N172. This will be able to access the files sitting on your computer or even give you the options of putting all your files on a NAS so that you can stream your music files even without the computer - but this will involve spending money even if you go for a used N172. 

I agree with everything Parlow's said. I ran a similar system for a while in my studio and adding  a DAC will transform sound of music stored on your computer. 

As you liked the naim CD player why not look for a naim DAC?

If you haven't ripped your CD's at the highest lossless quality I'd rip them again (assuming you still have them).  I know it's a pain but it's really worth while  

The good news is that you can now buy 24bit high res music and with the right DAC achieve a superior replay performance. . . 

many thanks for all your responses!  Most helpful 

First observation... CD's contain digitised music!  

Second observation...  You can get a LOT more reliable rips using something like EAC or DBPoweramp to do the rips.

These programmes compare the CRC of the ripped track to a central database to see if the track ripped correctly.  They also listen for the drive to report read errors for each sector as the drive reads them; when errors are found (and the track wasn't read correctly) it re-rips the track (sometimes more than once), and compares the data .  If it's still not read the track right, it works down the list of sectors with errors anf rips each sector multiple times to get a 'vote' on what's the most probably closest to the real data.

the file extension in iTunes is M4A which google tells me is AAC  Looks like I'll have to spend weeks re-doing them if I want better quality.

Please do yourself a favour and download EAC to do the rips to WAV; unless every disk reads perfectly all the time it will, overall, give better results than iTunes.

sounds like a plan!

So far not too impressed with my NAS => NDX / XS5 => Conrad Johnson amp setup sound wise, convenience great and radio + Tidal streaming, just seems to lack any oomph. Considering adding CD player or DAC

Try it without the XS5, the PSU for the NDX is a XPS or 555PS.

If that doesn't work, then unless you're using a mains conditioner (if so try without) I suspect your interconnect cables.

The NDX doesn't really lack oomph!

Huge posted:

Please do yourself a favour and download EAC to do the rips to WAV; unless every disk reads perfectly all the time it will, overall, give better results than iTunes.

I've installed EAC, do I select FLAC or WMA from the prompt I'm seeing now?

Thx

You should be able to select WAV (aka WAVE).

no it is asking for either FLAC or WMA lossless as the 2 options to rip at 6MB/min.  There are other options available for lower quality either MP3 or WMA (once again mentioned)

Odd.  I used to use it and could select WAVE output.

FLAC is also a good choice, if you're using a PC and a DAC as a rendered than you won't notice any difference between FLAC and WAVE.

It at a later stage you move to a Naim streamer, then you can convert (or transcode) FLAC to WAVE losslessly anyway (many, myself and Naim themselves included, think Naim streamers sound slightly better fed a diet of WAVE streams).

ok cheers I'll go with FLAC

I believe converting iTunes to WAV has an issue,  sorry can't be more specific but I ran up against it a while back when I was asked by someone to help & I can't remember how we did it other than it took a bit of fiddling

Huge posted:

Odd.  I used to use it and could select WAVE output.

FLAC is also a good choice, if you're using a PC and a DAC as a rendered than you won't notice any difference between FLAC and WAVE.

It at a later stage you move to a Naim streamer, then you can convert (or transcode) FLAC to WAVE losslessly anyway (many, myself and Naim themselves included, think Naim streamers sound slightly better fed a diet of WAVE streams).

hum, looks very difficult to use!  Have inserted a CD and it doesnt recognise anything about the content; Artist, Title, Track names etc.  What happens now?  Guess I have to copy the CD to my hard drive somehow?

Hi,

if you want to stick with iTunes as playback software, think about either AIFF or ALAC as file type. I think this works better inside the Apple ecosystem. XLD is another fine ripper and can be used to batch convert files as well.

An alternative is DBPoweramp (which, for the full version, is paid for), but that has a good metadata search facility using various internet sources.

The suite has another tool to accurately convert music files from one form to another, to find artwork and to find duplicate audio files on your system to help you maintain a 'clean' system.

Bear in mind that most CDs don't have their names or their track names coded on them, just the music.

Mulberry posted:

Hi,

if you want to stick with iTunes as playback software, think about either AIFF or ALAC as file type. I think this works better inside the Apple ecosystem. XLD is another fine ripper and can be used to batch convert files as well.

He said he was PC based not Apple.

Huge posted:

He said he was PC based not Apple.

Which I failed to notice . Thanks for pointing this out.

I have found AIFF the most compatible format all around, especially if you use iTunes -- and it sounds great.  

The only reason I do not rip with iTunes is XLD for Mac is better at getting album art embedded.

Nick

daveyu posted:

So far not too impressed with my NAS => NDX / XS5 => Conrad Johnson amp setup sound wise, convenience great and radio + Tidal streaming, just seems to lack any oomph. Considering adding CD player or DAC

Try a WAV or AIFF music from a thumb drive into the front of NDX.  If it sounds better, you have a NAS or network issue to resolve.

Nick

NickSeattle posted:

I have found AIFF the most compatible format all around, especially if you use iTunes -- and it sounds great.  

The only reason I do not rip with iTunes is XLD for Mac is better at getting album art embedded.

Nick

XLD (the Mac ripper) is Mac only, not (Windows) PC; the equivalent is DBPoweramp.