HDD Capacity

Posted by: Mercky on 06 August 2018

Can somebody tell me roughly how many CD’s when ripped to WAV will fit on a 1TB drive? Thanks 

Posted on: 11 August 2018 by Mercky
alan33 posted:
TallGuy posted:

Interesing - you've got enough CDs to be worthwhile ripping them, but as you spend most of your listening time with Tidal it doesn't sound as though you can justify the cost of a Core unless you give up on Tidal and buy everything on CD instead.

I think what I'd do is get a copy of dBpoweramp and rip your CDs to either a USB disk (or stick) and plug into the rear USB socket on the Nova, or a cheap NAS so that the old material is available to you, but carry on with Tidal.

Hi Merky-

To get started with local streaming, given you have a Nova, you really only need minimal extra hardware. Ripping a few CDs to FLAC using your home computer and putting them on a USB stick or a simple USB external drive would be a great way to start. This not only plugs into your Nova for direct play (via the USB input) as Talllguy says, but if you switch on the Nova’s UPnP server mode (via settings) then it can stream to itself (via the Seevers input) and anything else on your network. Even if you only have the Nova and no other streamers, this is a worthwhile thing to do since the presentation options are much better: with USB you get only the “files” view, whereas with UPnP you also get “artist”, “album” and other useful presentations that take advantage of the metadata tags that get added via your ripping software.

If you decide to buy extra hardware later, like the Core or a NAS, it’s easy to copy your existing ripped CDs over and then start using the external drive as your backup storage location.

Good luck, don’t worry, choose a software package for your PC (check out EAC)  or Mac (check out XLD), and give it a whirl  it’s easier to do than to explain! Like you, I mainly listen to Tidal and my new CD purchases have fallen to zero ... but I still listen to some of my rips and will surely buy one or two new discs at some point when something grabs me or captures my imagination.

Regards alan

 

 

I downloaded dbpoweramp (free 21 day trial version) to my laptop and ripped a couple of cd’s in WAV and then copied them over to a usb stick, all went well however they don’t sound too good on the Nova, I’m listening in server mode, all the artwork is good and they display as WAV 44.1 so everything appears fine, the level seems down and the overall sq is not great, listening to the same track on tidal and there’s no comparison. Anyone got any ideas? 

Posted on: 11 August 2018 by ChrisSU

Well that’s certainly the first time I’ve heard anyone say Tidal sounds better than a CD rip, even though I think the gap has closed recently. Is the CD the exact same version of the album?

Posted on: 11 August 2018 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Well it might be you prefer FLAC to WAV... you might want rip in FLAC instead... other than that if the same master, I suspect there is something wrong with your ripper/media server.

Posted on: 11 August 2018 by Mike-B

I always rip to WAV using dBpoweramp,  and have quite a selection of playlists on USB sticks & they all play OK.   Maybe its a Nova thing,  did you make sure the USB was formatted to FAT32  

Posted on: 11 August 2018 by Mercky
Mike-B posted:

I always rip to WAV using dBpoweramp,  and have quite a selection of playlists on USB sticks & they all play OK.   Maybe its a Nova thing,  did you make sure the USB was formatted to FAT32  

No! It was a virgin usb stick, I just stuck it in and copied everything over! Not sure what went on as I think it’s come good and sounds fine now, do I need to format it? Sorry, I’m a bit of a Luddite in this area!

Posted on: 11 August 2018 by Huge

Unless you used one (or more) of dBPoweramps DSP effect filters, then I would suspect different masters are the problem here.

Did you normalise the playback volume from the two sources?
If not the lower volume one will sound dull and restricted due to the effect of changing playback volume on the response of the ear/brain combination.

Posted on: 11 August 2018 by Mike-B
Mercky posted:
Mike-B posted:

I always rip to WAV using dBpoweramp,  and have quite a selection of playlists on USB sticks & they all play OK.   Maybe its a Nova thing,  did you make sure the USB was formatted to FAT32  

No! It was a virgin usb stick, I just stuck it in and copied everything over! Not sure what went on as I think it’s come good and sounds fine now, do I need to format it? Sorry, I’m a bit of a Luddite in this area!

You should at least check the USB is correctly formatted & if in doubt then do it.   FAT32 (& exFAT) work with all operating systems by default,  so its the one to go for.     But if it seems as you've sorted it so you're OK, unless that is you want to start over.

Posted on: 11 August 2018 by Mercky
Mike-B posted:
Mercky posted:
Mike-B posted:

I always rip to WAV using dBpoweramp,  and have quite a selection of playlists on USB sticks & they all play OK.   Maybe its a Nova thing,  did you make sure the USB was formatted to FAT32  

No! It was a virgin usb stick, I just stuck it in and copied everything over! Not sure what went on as I think it’s come good and sounds fine now, do I need to format it? Sorry, I’m a bit of a Luddite in this area!

You should at least check the USB is correctly formatted & if in doubt then do it.   FAT32 (& exFAT) work with all operating systems by default,  so its the one to go for.     But if it seems as you've sorted it so you're OK, unless that is you want to start over.

Thanks Mike, yeh it seems fine now, not sure what was going on but it sounded foul! I’ve just done a factory reset to clear any gremlins. I also did an a/b test with another stick which had a ripped copy of one of the same albums but ripped on a different system a while ago and they seem pretty much the same. Have to say I’m liking dB, is it worth using the secure setting as opposed to burst? I’m also liking the server view on the Nova which presents the albums nicely and also has a Genre view which is great along with nice metadata info too. This was really just a test today to see how it all worked. I’ll now pick up 1TB USB drive and rip most of my cd’s to it - would that need to be formatted to exFAT or can I just bang away? Out of interest why don’t people use this simple solution as opposed to a NAS? 

Posted on: 11 August 2018 by ChrisSU

The previous generation of Naim streamers didn’t have a server built in, so you had to use the USB input which generally doesn’t show metadata well, if at all. It also doesn’t handle large libraries as a NAS can, and as your collection grows, you may find a NAS is a better solution for you too. 

Posted on: 11 August 2018 by Mike-B
Mercky posted:

..............   Have to say I’m liking dB, is it worth using the secure setting as opposed to burst?     I’ll now pick up 1TB USB drive and rip most of my cd’s to it - would that need to be formatted to exFAT or can I just bang away? Out of interest why don’t people use this simple solution as opposed to a NAS? 

I set to "Ultrasecure",   If the disc matches an AccurateRip it then does a burst (fast) rip & finish.   If it doesn't match AccurateRip, it runs additional passes,  then if the multiple passes match you get SECURE. 

A new USB drive should be formatted to FAT32 (or exFAT maybe)  

I really don't like using USB,  its just a clunky PITA.  I have a few play lists at the mo, but sometime I will move these over to NAS.  With NAS & its UPnP media server software we can use the Naim app & thats what gives very easy-pleasie, multi view browsing & so much more.  I can't say what browsing USB is like a on Nova/Star/Atom,  but on the ND series & Uniti streamers its Jurassic compared to NAS + UPnP + Naim app

Posted on: 11 August 2018 by Mercky

This what you get on the new Unitis, it’s pretty good really although I haven’t used anything else to compare but having a Genre tab is such a relief compared to Tidal, not sure if composer and conductor works yet but otherwise all good 

Posted on: 11 August 2018 by Mercky

Like so