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Author Topic: Alternative transports to USB/PC or 'Spinning a disc'?  (Read 7861 times)

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Azteca X

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Re: Alternative transports to USB/PC or 'Spinning a disc'?
« Reply #30 on: August 14, 2015, 06:38:27 PM »
Also, depending on your ripper of choice it will include information like number of read errors, the number of "retries," which can tip you off to possible damage on the disc, any jitter error it detected and also list any damaged sectors. This works correctly: it will do it's damnedest to retrieve truly damaged audio and give you an exact number for where the damage is. To have truly high confidence and be sure you don't have some weird physically damaged disc or defective pressing with mangled data you want to be sure that other people in the AR or CT databases have the same results as you. If even two people do, that's a good sign. Any semi-popular album probably has 90+.
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DaveBSC

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Re: Alternative transports to USB/PC or 'Spinning a disc'?
« Reply #31 on: August 14, 2015, 06:39:31 PM »
Quote from: Anaxilus on August 14, 2015, 06:35:21 PM
You think?! EAC is the reason I stopped trusting the everything is just bits argument. Now, could there be a problem with a burned clone disc playing back with different jitter characteristics or some PC process affecting how the rip is played back? Sure. All I know is I've had identical checksum rips from two different rippers sound different. Take that fwiw. Placebo, psychosis, whatever.

My guess is its the burn that's the problem, not the rip. Quality of blank CD-Rs varies a lot. I've had some that would completely fail to play, and others that had drop outs or skips. Some people have also reported that burning at your drive's max speed sounds worse than 4X or 8X or whatever.
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Azteca X

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Re: Alternative transports to USB/PC or 'Spinning a disc'?
« Reply #32 on: August 14, 2015, 06:39:48 PM »
Quote from: schiit on August 14, 2015, 06:35:39 PM
I'll take a Linux source over the inconvenience of a disk-spinner

Sell me a souped-up Linux source you bastard.
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Anaxilus

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Re: Alternative transports to USB/PC or 'Spinning a disc'?
« Reply #33 on: August 14, 2015, 06:40:03 PM »
Quote from: schiit on August 14, 2015, 06:35:39 PM
But then again, one of the unspoken commandments of Schiit is "thou shalt not feed audiophile nervosa."

Guess that rules out vinyl then. :)
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schiit

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Re: Alternative transports to USB/PC or 'Spinning a disc'?
« Reply #34 on: August 14, 2015, 06:41:27 PM »
Quote from: Anaxilus on August 14, 2015, 06:40:03 PM
Guess that rules out vinyl then. :)

Vinyl still sounds the best to me, but there's no way I'm dealing with that level of insanity. Personally, that is.
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Anaxilus

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Re: Alternative transports to USB/PC or 'Spinning a disc'?
« Reply #35 on: August 14, 2015, 06:44:15 PM »
Quote from: DaveBSC on August 14, 2015, 06:39:31 PM
My guess is its the burn that's the problem, not the rip. Quality of blank CD-Rs varies a lot. I've had some that would completely fail to play, and others that had drop outs or skips. Some people have also reported that burning at your drive's max speed sounds worse than 4X or 8X or whatever.

I'm not even talking about drops outs or skips. That's obvious.

Ask them to perform a checksum on the cloned disc if it sounds different. Same. Woopie! It's a useful metric just like any other. People just take it too far it and extrapolate too much it seems to me.
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schiit

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Re: Alternative transports to USB/PC or 'Spinning a disc'?
« Reply #36 on: August 14, 2015, 06:45:01 PM »
Quote from: DaveBSC on August 14, 2015, 06:39:31 PM
My guess is its the burn that's the problem, not the rip. Quality of blank CD-Rs varies a lot. I've had some that would completely fail to play, and others that had drop outs or skips. Some people have also reported that burning at your drive's max speed sounds worse than 4X or 8X or whatever.

Oh hell, if you're comparing a burned CD (not files), well, you're listening to the quality of the burner (plus probably phase of the moon, quality of power management, whether or not the PC was updating, the number of times you swung a dead chicken over your head, etc.)

I've seen burned CDs cause the transport servos to go crazy, generating hundreds of times more jitter and error-corrected outputs than a good CD. Of course, I've also seen commercial CDs do the same thing.
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DaveBSC

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Re: Alternative transports to USB/PC or 'Spinning a disc'?
« Reply #37 on: August 14, 2015, 06:45:57 PM »
Quote from: Azteca X on August 14, 2015, 06:39:48 PM
Sell me a souped-up Linux source you bastard.

It's really not hard to make one yourself, like at all. The new Celeron N is a great platform, much faster than the old Atoms while still using a tiny amount of power, making DC input jacks and passive heatsinks possible. Get some laptop memory and an SSD or M.2 drive, install VortexBox or Daphile, and you're good to go.

« Last Edit: August 14, 2015, 06:47:51 PM by Anaxilus »
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drfindley

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Re: Alternative transports to USB/PC or 'Spinning a disc'?
« Reply #38 on: August 14, 2015, 06:46:15 PM »
Assuming the bits are the same (bear with me), couldn't one use USB to send the bits but not use the USB audio protocol to send/clock/stream them? Once the bits are at the DAC, it could clock them etc. appropriately.

That should provide a mostly consistent sound and should eliminate the USB thing.
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schiit

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Re: Alternative transports to USB/PC or 'Spinning a disc'?
« Reply #39 on: August 14, 2015, 06:48:07 PM »
Quote from: DaveBSC on August 14, 2015, 06:45:57 PM
It's really not hard to make one yourself, like at all. The new Celeron N is a great platform, much faster than the old Atoms while still using a tiny amount of power, making DC input jacks and passive heatsinks possible. Get some laptop memory and an SSD or M.2 drive, install VortexBox or Daphile, and you're good to go.

Bingo. No need for us to do it.
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