Rip your files the NAIM way...or else???

Yes - WHOA,

I had taken on board what you said and, mischievously added "To clarify - your 'trash' track (flagged as containing errors) and the same track ripped and 'patted on the back'."

I was attempting to take this case a little further.
In a case where a rip had failed to pass the Acc** validation it is quite possible that the track will still play - and sound "Low and behold they sound just as good as similar music which has been patted on the back as being bit-perfect."

Re-rip that track (either on a more robust drive or from an undamaged copy of the SAME CD). Get a 'bit perfect' rip. You now have two copies of the SAME track - one 'bit perfect' and the other not.

Does the validated track always sound better than the non-validated? If not - then the appeal to Acc** may, sometimes, be redundant and -------- two different rips sound the same.

Peter_RN - Yes, I have the same epistemological query as to how you define 'bit perfect'. I wouldn't take this too far as the existence of many rips with the same checksums argue against randomness of result.

I'll stick with my original concern. Can EAC and the like report confidently that they have ripped accurately WITHOUT reference to an external reference?

I had thought that the way CD information was encoded allowed the reader to determine when a read error had occurred. In the case of a discrepancy a re-read would be initiated.

If this is true - Acc** is redundant.

Ahh...I see what your driving at Adam.

Your argument has logic. I believe the strategy used by the softwares' we mentioned is to compare  multiple read cycles on a continuous basis as a CD rip progresses so at least a decent attempt at establishing if there is repeatability which presumably = bit perfect. This process I reckon can stand alone as a pretty confident report in the absence of an external reference.

On this basis Accuraterip could be considered redundant but it is worth having as a reference.

Setting all this accurate rip / bit perfect stuff aside. I feel that if a CD rips smoothly with no apparent stuttering of the read process and gets up to typically 15x to 20X read speed you can be confident you have a good rip which will sound excellent.regardless of the whole accurate rip thing.

Gents, whilst I have been enjoying roller coasters all day this thread has developed nicely.

My observations to comments raised....

1) as I have said before on this forum 'bit perfect' really becomes rather meaningless in terms of audio quality - its become a term used by marketeers to justify often a lot of nonsense. A flipped 'bit' at worse will cause the briefest click or pause...  Many digital masters have errors.. In the early days of CD they used to be listed... Now nobody bothers. So a faithful so called bit perfect copy.can still have errors.. Hence why I say this bit perfect stuff is often misleading and not that useful.

2) the Accuraterip process allows one to speed up the ripping process. This to me is the main benefit.  If the initial high speed rip doesn't correlate, you let your ripper do a slower more intensively scanned rip. this is slow, so I don't want to do unless I have to. If Accuraterip doesn't have my master in its database, then my ripper does this anyway. The rip takes about three times longer. The ripper then cross validates the checksums produced by the different rip/scan methods, If they match it posts them for all to benefit from. What a nice sense of community..:-) ( effectively one is helping out those with less reliable / accurate CDROM readers.

3) Finally with my latest  CDROM drive which is fantastically reliable, any occasional bad disk that' fails to correlate, even after a brute force scan tends to sound damaged, and the audio will often skip at a point or points. Then if I examine the CD it sometimes looks like somebody has been ice skating on it or the foil is damaged so I can't really complain.

To be honest until this thread I hadn't really bothered to much with thinking about ripping. With dBpoweramp, Accuraterip, a reliable CDROM and a rip to WAV it becomes plain sailing.

Simon

So - to sum this up - if I rip my CDs to WAV format using DbPowerAmp, on my laptop, and store them  on my 1TB Western Digital external "hard drive" (actually digital memory I believe) - then I can connect that via USB to my Squeezebox Touch and via the digital connection to my SuperNait DAC & play all the digitally stored music I rip.  I could also use FLAC on some or all if I wanted to conserve space.

Further, these files, as ripped in the above description, can later be copied or moved to the hard drive of a HDX or US, or played via USB on a UQ product of some sort off this or any other external storage device.  (I admit to not strong knowledge of that whole aspect of the Naim product line - reading about it and seeing it are different things, and my Naim dealer is 3 & 1/2 hours away!

Suggestions, questions, corrections, and even (mild) insults to the above to set me on an expedient and correct path to digitizing my collection (which is about 650-700 CDs as it stands now.)

As an aside to Simon (or anyone else for that matter) - what is your criteria for whether you rip to FLAC or WAV since you indicate4d about an 80/20 split respectively?

Hi, yep you have summed it up pretty well. You might want to look at upnp/DLNA if you can as it makes the whole process of audio file replay a lot less cumbersome, so you can spend more time enjoying your music IMO. But there is no right or wrong way, it's what works for you. Once you have your indexed catalogue of your audio files you can do what you want with them..

As far as ripping, I rip to WAV usually. I have the occasional hidef download in FLAC, and I have some early rips from CD I did when I was starting off in FLAC. I also enjoy BDB music so have many discs of mono 78rpm transfer masters, I did rip these to FLAC originally, but if doing it again I would probably rip to WAV for consistency. 

Not that I want to start a thread about it here, but I did have reliability problems with FLAC early on, where FLAC files would occasionally stop part way through playback on my transcoder, or even with Naim if played directly. When thi happened i used to re-encode the FLAC file with a lesser compression, but i didnt like the uncertainty. This was one of the reasons why I started storing everything to WAV... I wanted to keep things  simple for increased reliability..

Simon

Hi Adam

I absolutely agree you can take things too far, to me if it sounds right it is right, I don’t see what else we could do.

I think we all agree that any of the main ripping programs are if setup properly (and that’s the main criteria) capable of reporting if they have an accurate copy of what is on the disc without reference to Accuraterip. This is what happens if you have a disc that is not in the database. As Geoff and Simon have said the disc is read multiple times if there is not a checksum to compare the read with.

AFAIK this is exactly how the Naim ripping solution is setup. Without reference to an external database for checking its checksum from a read it reads multiple times until it is satisfied it has an accurate copy of what is on the disc. I do hope I have that correct, if so then this must be as valid a method as any other.

To me and I think others here the benefit of Accuraterip is as much to do with speed of ripping and reducing potential wear on the drive, as the warm glow of seeing 100 others have the same result from their rip; though for my rips it usually more like two.

For all that, the rip still has the potential to sound better than the CD, which to us it does, that’s good enough don’t you think?

Regards

Peter

Even after checking on that bastion of 21st century knowledge (Wikipedia), I am not quite sure I understand the upnp/DLNA concept - other than it is a Sony "certification" as it were.  How does this apply practically speaking?

uPnP and DLNA standardise how various consumer orientated devices connect and interoperate to allow your multimedia entertainment to be stored, played and controlled. There are a number of single manufacturer solutions like the Logitech Squeezebox and Sonos music players that pre-date uPnP/DLNA and achieve similar goals, but in a proprietary framework. I use the Squeezebox solution today, but when I get the NDS I will move to uPnP/DLNA as this is the standard used by all Naim streamers.

The practical advantage of these solutions are that you can store your ripped music files separately from your music system - in my case my NAS is in my garage loft. I don't need a computer in my music room, and I can choose to control my system using my iPad.

If you are happy with direct USB connections then fine. Many people round here do the same and some find it easier than setting up a home Ethernet network. Personally I find the networking solution far more flexible.

This is a hypothetical question as the cost along would rule it out, but is there any way of connecting an NDS to a USB output on a computer? I imagine that the results would retain the simplicity of use that iTunes brings, together with possibly the full quality that the NDS - by reports so far - brings.

Though the NDS would always be over the horizon for me, it would be a fascinating way of going if I could afford it!

ATB from George

Hi George -

As with all Naim streamers, the intent is to replace iTunes with nStream, and use the network instead of USB.

However, one could reduce the NDS to a simple DAC because of its S/PDIF inputs.  To connect a computer, you would use a digital-to-digital converter like those from MF or HiFace.   But what's the point?  If you are committed to iTunes, you might as well just go for the Naim DAC.

ATB.

Hook

Dear George,

I am no expert on digital audio as you know. But it seems to me that such an arrangement would effectively render much of the NDS redundant. You would just be using the DAC. It is a fascinating proposition - perhaps I'm stupidly missing something?

Best,

Peter

To Phil Harris and Naim ,

Thank you, on behalf of all open-minded individuals, for your patience in trying to inform this provocative thread. All such individuals are more than happy with your explanations (apparently I can make such a bold claim on the basis of a couple of people agreeing with me down the pub, or on this forum).

Regrettably their are at least 5 or 6 individuals who do not appear willing to understand what evidence is, generally dismissing it if they do not have the the ability to scientifically explain a particular phenomenon.

  But Naim should not be too disheartened at this failure to achieve perfection. Some people refused to believe the Holocaust. Currently their are even people who believe that regulation of newsapapers and banks is 'perfectly' adequate. Lovely chatting.

Andy

Dear Hook,

If I were to go for a USB/SPIDF bridge like the Hiface, or Halide "Bridge" then I'd go tthe whole hog and use a USB enabled DAC, which the Naim DAC is not. I have heard the nDAC now, and did not find it to be good value in terms of performance to cost. At least without a separate PS. And if you add that in it goes from being very expensive to very,  very....

And as per Peter [pjl]'s comments, I am am not going to shift from iTunes to another platform. The iTunes is free, and updates itself as and when with an automatic prompt to accept. And I find the method of selecting music to be utter perfection for my needs, straight off a computer.

ATB from George

DaveBk:

I am not going to re-post your entire answer, but this is in response (can a response be a question - lol!) to your post above. And advance apologies for the length of this post.

Currently I have music in iTunes on an old laptop that is on its last legs (a subset of ~2,700 songs that will fit on my iPhone for when I leave to go in the car, the gym, etc) - and my Squeezebox can see iTunes (I have Logitech Media Server installed on the laptop with the iTunes) and through my home network wirelessly stream the music I want into the DAC on the SN and there we go...and this I can control all through my iPhone.

I am by no means married to Apple/iTunes - in fact, I grow increasingly weary of their proprietary bullcrap and can foresee the day when my phone is a Droid of some sort.

Where I wish to go, is to rip my entire CD collection (and new purchases of course as I go forward.)  I have a newer, second laptop, and I can use something else (e.g. DbPowerAmp) or whatever is suggested that makes sense to rip the entire collection through the new machine onto my 1 TB external drive - and based on Simon's input I think I am leaning towards WAV format.  I would have to use the CD drive on my new laptop, or I could alternatively use the one on my desktop machine if there were a compelling reason to do so.

Were I to do as described - (and please correct me if I am wrong) - I could do this, and the SB Touch could see all the music, irrespective of which machine it was on (and irrespective of storage format), as long as I had Logitech Media Server on each PC.  Or, I could take the hard drive, and go USB directly into the SB Touch as well.

Then later, were I able to obtain/afford a more hi-fi/Naim solution, I could copy the WAV/FLAC files to the new device (e.g., a HDX, or US, or whatever made sense when I got down to actually doing it) or just connect the external HD to the new device (wirelessly through the network or directly via whatever is determined to provide the best performance/sound.) 

At this point, the SB Touch would be reduced to being an internet radio box (If it were needed at all, depending on the solution I choose) and for home use, iTunes becomes superfluous and discard-able.  But I would also like something that allows for some of the functionality of iTunes in terms of selecting music, making playlists, etc...does such software exist in the direction I wish to go?

I still don't see what/where upnp/DLNA fits in all of this (sorry for my density) - or how I would go forward to incorporate it in a flexible solution for ripping that allows me the future flexibility, maintaining optimal audio quality, and not having to rip my collection again (which I dread the thought of doing once, much less twice.)

I again apologize for the long post, and as well for my minimal comprehension of the subject material - and please let me know if any of my thought process or plans are incorrect, and what I would need to do to accomplish what I hope to do.

The person re-ripping his CD library is a Linn / Naim dealer and is doing so because his opinion is that the Linn KDS that he is using sounds better when playing WAVs from (and ripped on) a UnitiServe than when playing FLACs from (and ripped on) his Mac - and as a dyed-in-the-wool Linnite I was suprised that he was quite so definite about his decision.

Phil

Do the same but use the memory sticks in the DAC directly and you can tell a difference - the point is that the decoding takes additional processing that can make the hardware sound subtelly different.

This is why we would suggest getting your UPnP server to transcode to WAV if al all possible.

Phil

As a KDS/1 owner I can agree that WAV sounds superior to FLAC even when as I do using Asset UPnP to transcode FLAC for delivery to the KDS.

This stands as a separate effect from the ripper used IMO since I am using dBPoweramp rather than a US.

Also more interestingly this holds true for WAV's produced on a PC, a NAS running WHS and RipNas Essenials and a MAC using Patalles to run dB Poweramp in a window all of which I have used to produce my WAV's over time.

Geoff

DrMark:

I'll try to answer your questions as best I can... There are several dimensions:

• How do you want to rip the Source CDs (dBpoweramp, EAC, iTunes, etc.)
• Which format should you use to store the resulting files (WAV, FLAC, MP3 etc.)
• What sort of storage device should you use (Laptop hard disk, External USB disk, NAS)
• How will you secure backups in case of disaster (2nd NAS, USB Disks)
• What devices do you want to play back your music on? (Main HiFi, Other Rooms, Car etc.)
• How would you like to control your music playback? (Dedicated remote, iPad etc.)

I can only provide answers based on my own experience, but here goes:

I rip using dBpoweramp as it seems to offer pretty good features, like integration into multiple meta-data sources, and it supports secure ripping supported by Accurate Rip as a cross check. I rip to FLAC as for me it represents the best compromise between rich metadata tagging and lossless compression. The key point here is it's lossless so I can convert this to any other format I like with no loss of fidelity.

Regarding storage I have always used a NAS (Network Attached Storage) as it is the most flexible solution, offers a degree of resiliance to single disk failures (RAID 5) and I can access it from any of my PCs or iPads. Your description of all the files on a single aging Laptop worries me! Is that the only place you keep all your precious ripped music? I would strongly recommend backing this up onto something else quick...!

I have a second much slower older NAS that I use as the first level of backup. I use a directory synchronisation tool called DirSync Pro to replicate all the changes to this NAS about every week or two - certainly after a big ripping session! Every month I copy everything again onto a USB drive that I keep in a media fire safe. So, I have 3 copies of all my master rips, 2 of them on RAID 5 NAS's.

I currently run the Squeezebox Server on my NAS as well as it's powered up all the time and has a reserved IP address so I always know where to find it on my network. I actually run an internal DNS server as well so I can give it a meaningful name so I don't have to type in an IP address. The Squeezebox server supports my main streamer a Transporter and a Squeezebox Boom in another room.

I only use iTunes to synchronise music on to my iPhone and iPad so I am not interested in turning on the iTunes integration features. Instead I maintain a separate 'slave' iTunes library on my office PC. I use the dBpoweramp batch music converter to convert my FLAC masters to m4a files that I then import into iTunes. It's simple and works fine for me.

I choose to use iPeng on my iPad to control the playback of my music - I've never found anything better and to be honest this is an area where Naim still have a lot of catching up to do in my opinion. iPeng supports playlists really well.

So, the questions I have for you are:

Did you rip securely into a lossless format - I've never ripped with iTunes so I'm not really familiar with it as a ripping engine, but I beleive it can do an OK job if set up correctly. Once you have a secure lossless copy treasure it and keep backups. From this you can convert to anything else you want.

How confident are you with computers and networking? It's not that difficult, but if you are unsure you should consider an 'applicance' approach. By this I mean an integrated ripper / storage / server such as the UnitiServe. This takes away the worry and gives great results, although with a bit less flexibility if you are an advanced user.

Hope that helps a bit?

If not, I'll try again....

DrMark

Hope this doesn't confuse too much but to add to what Dave has posted:

I use a a SBT to feed a DAC I have in a second system. You only need one instance of Logitech media server running for all the devices on your network to see it so you would only need the chosen PC switched on when you wanted to use the SBT

You can also log onto Logitech Media Sever via the internet on your network which gives you a nice full screen interface from which you can configure the settings on your SBT and more importantly easily create playlists as an alternative to i-tunes.

DNA/UPnP plays a part in this. Put simplistically DNLA is standard. Devices that are DNLA certified are designed to be easily incorporated in a network because they are automatically recognised when attached to a network. When DLNA devices are connected your network router will dynamically assign I.P addresses to all the devices detected, and then use the assigned IP addresses to differentiate and link devices together as required.

UPnP is a protocol which allows UPnP enabled devices to 'discover' each other and then automatically work together as required. For example the PC running Logitech media Server 'sees' the other PCs and the SBT on your network because the router knows all their IP address and UPnP helps them discover each other. 

UPnP is the way that 'Control point' softwares typically find and talk to Media servers displaying a listing of all the music the media server has found in your chosen Music folder and allowing you to choose what tracks you want to hear. The control point then also tells the media server to serve the tracks you have chosen to your network streamer DAC ( known as a media render in UPnP speak).

Incidentally Logitech uses its own 'internal' protocol to serve music form its Media server to the SBT rather than UPnP but the majority of media server softwares out there such as Asset UPnP and Twonky media use the UPnP protocol to discover your music and your streaming DAC.

Regards

Geoff

Ahem... Phil, would you mind to have a look here:

https://forums.naimaudio.com/di...56#13956224333983556

Thanks

Maurice

...but all a WAV file is, is LPCM data in a file structure with a header to tell how many channels, bits per sample, sample rate etc.... So not sure what you are saying? If you just squirted LPCM data at the streamer without the header it could not render it correctly, so it may as well be in a WAV container?

Confused...

Hi Dave,

Sorry, I was not sure you were writing to me... No need to be confused at all, the phrasing I used in my opening post is probably badly chosen, and inherited from the terms used by Logitech where their server can transcode to 'PCM' (even with WAV !?). Just replace LPCM with WAV in my opening post.

The point I was directing Phil to is, the Naim servers manual says that best quality is achieved with native file format streaming (i.e. non-transcoded). And that is confusing.

Hi George,

M2Tech HiFace Two BNC and a Naim's DC1

Osvaldo

m0omo0,

Yes, I was responding to your post - but on an iPad, which doesn't seem to support quoting other posts...

Thanks, confusion cleared up - I see the apparent conflict between what it says in the server manual vs the previous comments in this thread. I guess Naim are suggesting that given limited processing power in the servers, don't transcode unless you really need to. I suspect they would still say store as a WAV therefore no need to transcode leads to the best performance on their streamers.

Hi Geoff -

There are only a couple of reasons I can think of why WAV and FLAC transcoded on-the-fly to WAV would sound different.  Either the transcoder is broken and is delivering a different bit stream, or there is some EMI/RFI proximity effect from the server's extra processing.  And yet, both of these seem like very unlikely events.  Do you have any theories?

Also, I hope that Guido reads your post.  As I recall, the reports that Naim network players sounded best with WAV was one of his frustration points, but it would appear that it is the same with Linn's KDS/1.

ATB.

Hook