Re Ripping, is it worth doing?

Shouldn’t be worth it. Everything you’ve done so far is effectively lossless.

Thanks Nick.

If you had converted the WAV to FLAC on the US before you parted with it, the metadata would have been preserved, but I guess it’s too late for that now. Other than that, your rips should be bit perfect, so unless the metadata is a real mess, I wouldn’t bother re-ripping. 

There were some albums the UnitiServe did not recognise, neither did XLD! However, dbpoweramp and PerfectTunes hasn't missed a beat yet. I have re ripped the one's the UnitiServe spat out.

You can scan the whole media folder with the PerfectTunes application from the same developer that makes dBpoweramp.

It will tell you which rips are bit accurate and which are not.  Should become substantially easier then to know which discs need a re-rip and which do not.

I had no idea PerfectTunes could do that, what a bloody good idea!

Thanks

I've been in a similar situation with a big collection of HDX ripped files. There was nothing wrong with the rips, as will also be the case for the US. What I needed to do all over again was the tags. Since I can hear a difference between WAV and FLAC, in favour of WAV, bulk converting to FLAC (which corrects the Naim tags) wasn't an option.

 I use dBpoweramp. It took a long time. But it was worth it. I now have a collection tagged exactly how I want it tagged. A lot of the stuff I download comes either over tagged or wrongly tagged. And HiRes files ripped from DVDs and BDs often have no tags at all.  Plus, it's a good CD ripper.

I'm re-ripping my CDs. I have AIF files on iTunes via an Apple superdrive that I ripped a few years ago when I got a UnitiCute2. Now I have a Core and Nova. Comparing the iTunes through the core versus a new rip of the same CD on the Core, there is a lift in SQ, not night and day, but there is more refined detail in the new rips. The user interface is way ahead on iTunes to.

Mike Sullivan posted:

 The user interface is way ahead on iTunes to.

To me, that reads as if you prefer iTunes, but I suspect that might not be what you mean!

ChrisSU posted:

Mike Sullivan posted:

 The user interface is way ahead on iTunes to.

To me, that reads as if you prefer iTunes, but I suspect that might not be what you mean!

Ah, yes. I meant that the user interface with the Core is way better than I-tunes.

Harry posted:

I've been in a similar situation with a big collection of HDX ripped files. There was nothing wrong with the rips, as will also be the case for the US. What I needed to do all over again was the tags. Since I can hear a difference between WAV and FLAC, in favour of WAV, bulk converting to FLAC (which corrects the Naim tags) wasn't an option.

 I use dBpoweramp. It took a long time. But it was worth it. I now have a collection tagged exactly how I want it tagged. A lot of the stuff I download comes either over tagged or wrongly tagged. And HiRes files ripped from DVDs and BDs often have no tags at all.  Plus, it's a good CD ripper.

I was in essentially the same place.  A decent sized library of files ripped by my UnitiServe. After I sold it off, I went thru a process of converting all of those files to be useful on my nas-based server.  There was no need to re-rip, just had to fix the metadata.

I've been happy enough with flac on my server and letting the server transcode to wav.

Short answer - zero reason to re-rip. Far easier to just fix up the metadata!

"I've been happy enough with flac on my server and letting the server transcode to wav".

Hi Bart - I have never tried that. Are you letting Asset do the transcode on the fly? Will my Qnap TS 112 support that?

Meerkat posted:

"I've been happy enough with flac on my server and letting the server transcode to wav".

Hi Bart - I have never tried that. Are you letting Asset do the transcode on the fly? Will my Qnap TS 112 support that?

Yes, you can do it on Asset or Minimserver running on a NAS. Easy enough to give it a try and see if you can hear any benefit. The old Naim servers also do it, i.e. Unitiserve and HDX, but not the Core.

Thanks

And for those with a Netgear RN102... using the inbuilt ReadyDLNA media server, play some FLAC media, and play some WAV media, ideally the same music... if using an NDX, perhaps with offboard DAC, what do you notice? Then use  Asset, or MinimSrver or a Uniti and repeat..what do you notice?

I have neither Simon, but if I did, what would the answer be?

I don’t want to lead anyone.. hence inviting observations..

I used XLD to rip my discs to wav, then retried some on dbpoweramp. The dbpoweramp ones sounded better. Now I have some ripped by a uniticore and these sound better still. I really don’t understand why but there definitely is a noticable difference.

Mr Happy posted:

I used XLD to rip my discs to wav, then retried some on dbpoweramp. The dbpoweramp ones sounded better. Now I have some ripped by a uniticore and these sound better still. I really don’t understand why but there definitely is a noticable difference.

Well, I've done about 35 CD's with dbpoweramp, so I'll continue with the rest. The one thing I would say, my old UnitiServe did not recognise about 12 CDs and spat them out! Whereas dbpoweramp had no problems and gave full metadata. So even though it may be a waste of time, in my head, it'll be done just as I want it.

Mr Happy posted:

I used XLD to rip my discs to wav, then retried some on dbpoweramp. The dbpoweramp ones sounded better. Now I have some ripped by a uniticore and these sound better still. I really don’t understand why but there definitely is a noticable difference.

Slightly unclear by your post.. are you really talking about the difference in rips or difference in media streaming servers serving the rips?. If the latter there is a difference that I find deterministic that I have written about on this forum severeal tines before... but it’s nothing to do with the actual media or the ‘rip’

Simon, Im talking about the actual rips. Both xld and dbpoweramp ones were carried out on the same laptop. Didn’t actually expect any sonic difference but just needed metadata sorted as xld was terrible but dbpoweramp was excellent. I was very surprised to hear a difference. A couple of friends could also hear the difference.

With the uniticore rips I was less surprised to hear a difference as I realised that naim had had built the core with sound quality first and foremost.

Digital streaming keeps pleasantly surprising me. I bought the raved about cisco 2960 switch thinking that if it makes a very small positive difference then its worth the £75 price tag. The difference was actually huge, as if it had removed a bottleneck in the system.