ripping CDs

Anyone who says that a Unitiserve, or a Core come to that, rips CDs better than dBPoweramp is talking bollocks. The rips are fine. You don’t need a Naim ripper. 

Provided you used the Secure Rip option and the checksum was compared with AccurateRip there's nothing else to do really.

You're getting very technical this evening Nigel          But yes I have to agree,  not least for what is the point of a ripper when you've already ripped 1000+ CD's

When I was ripping my cds recently with my cheapo dell laptop using dB, I was thinking as to how the transport was behaving, the cds were spinning at around x 10 normal speed and there was a fair bit of vibration. One thing everyone talks about with high end CD players is the stability of the transport and how this this can effect sq, so why is a fairly cheap laptop no problem in this regard? I know the core uses a reasonably standard Teac transport but I’m sure it’s pretty good. 

Mercky posted:

When I was ripping my cds recently with my cheapo dell laptop using dB, I was thinking as to how the transport was behaving, the cds were spinning at around x 10 normal speed and there was a fair bit of vibration. One thing everyone talks about with high end CD players is the stability of the transport and how this this can effect sq, so why is a fairly cheap laptop no problem in this regard? I know the core uses a reasonably standard Teac transport but I’m sure it’s pretty good. 

This is a very good point, since, in my case, I'm ripping CD's on an HDX, which, when it refuses the odd CD, I revert to making a CD-Rom copy on Toast Titanium on my MacBook Pro in WAV, which also shows copying speeds of up to 12X.

Are these files every bit as valid as a CD playing at normal speed in a CD player, or, for that matter, as those ripped via the HDX, which clearly rips at an, undisclosed, speed?

CD replay has one pass to read the data & it has to do it at a very precise speed,  so a CD drive needs stability & speed accuracy.       When ripping a CD its just copying the data,  dBpoweramp uses either AR to check its correct/complete, or Secure Rip runs through the data numbers of times to be sure it has it all.   So the speed (my DVD desktop drive can go up to x64),   vibration & whatever that would be bad for best SQ in CD replay doesn't matter that much.      

Ta, lah. 

As a Unitiserve owner, my advice would be to stick with what you've got if you're happy with it now. A bit perfect rip is a bit perfect rip, and as long as it has been verified as such, which any decent ripping software like DBpoweramp will do, you're sorted.

By the way, with FLAC you can compress the file as much as you want. It will still be lossless, which is what matters. 

vtpcnk posted:

i ripped my CDs - over 1000 plus - to uncompressed FLAC using an old dell laptop with dbpoweramp.

is this the best way to do it? i was going through some old posts and they seem to indicate unitiserve rips CDs better?

 

Absolutely fine... but if using FLAC you might as well compress to the highest setting, and transcode on playback if you prefer WAV. 

When you rip or play a CD... there is actually a lot of error correction and validation going on in real-time or during the first pass.. it’s what the Red Book standard is largely about... a CD player can recover errors on the fly to extent of the encoding format... which is significant. A ripper has the advantage that if there is a serious error than can not be normally corrected, it can stop and try different non real-time methods to recover the data... but the need to do this I find is rare unless the disc is visibly damaged. DBpoweramp provides a CRC check, which is very powerful and optionally where the CRC can’t be matched it rips using two different methods and compares the results. It’s very secure I find.

ok. thanks so much for the feedback.  i ripped my CDs around 5 years back and if i remember right other than a few most of them passed the accuraterip check. so i guess i am good regarding that.

my attraction towards unitiserve was also for another purpose - i wanted a cd player to play cds with (why have cds lying around unnecessarily). so i thought if this could serve the purpose then it would be the proverbial 'two birds with one stone'. have to check if naim cd players are cheaper compared to the unitiserve. but aesthetics wise the unitiserve would have matched well with my unitiqutes.

If the CDs are ripped there seems little reason to want to play the discs themselves. 

Nigel, other than if you want to use them with the unique sound of a player like CDX2 which for some discs really is most enjoyable... and I maintain is one of the best Naim sources for certain genres and types of master.. it’s just not the most neutral or detailed for others

vtpcnk posted:

i ripped my CDs - over 1000 plus - to uncompressed FLAC using an old dell laptop with dbpoweramp.

is this the best way to do it? i was going through some old posts and they seem to indicate unitiserve rips CDs better?

is that true?

if true, still i doubt i will invest 1000 dollars on a unitiserve. whats the next best option?

appreciate the insights.

Innous Zen Mini

this big data analytics snooping is creepy. "Got CDs?" appeared on my browser today with below url

http://www.thebrennan.com/?gcl...6EAEYASAAEgKmsPD_BwE

Bob the Builder posted:

vtpcnk posted:

i ripped my CDs - over 1000 plus - to uncompressed FLAC using an old dell laptop with dbpoweramp.

is this the best way to do it? i was going through some old posts and they seem to indicate unitiserve rips CDs better?

is that true?

if true, still i doubt i will invest 1000 dollars on a unitiserve. whats the next best option?

appreciate the insights.

Innous Zen Mini

I've bought a Zen mini 2 recently that goes into a DacV1 202/200 and it's LOVELY!

I copied 350 gb of music on and added 50 or so cds I'd been given recently which it did very painlessly and added the artwork automatically. With a click it now feeds through to the sonos system. Very impressive sound and small footprint. Brian and And Trevor's in Manchester were very helpful as ever. Great dealers