[HendrixFreak]

So I was gonna get an iRiver SlimX to play my CDs at home, got hooked on the idea of having all of em on a device, decided NJB3 over Zen and IPod (not going there now though). After playing with AudioGrabber, Lame encoder, WMP9 (thought lossless WMA would sound the best but NJB3 won't play it), I'm not happy. I make no audiophilial claims but seems to me that a CD playing in my laptop sounds better (through my DT770s) than anything I can rip/encode to the NJB3. I've tried Lame at highest VBR quality (VBR0?) through audiograbber. Sound still seems to lack something and have some added - don't know what to call it, almost distortion regardless of volume.

Any thoughts before I go back and hope that the store will really stand behind its 14-day satisfaction guarantee? Was I just blinded by technology to believe that anything like an NJB3 could sound as good as a decent CD portable player? Is there some lossless format that NJB3 will play that will, even at expense of disk space, make me keep it?

 

[Ruahrc]

I'm not familiar with the Audiograbber software's capabilities, but it seems like your source WAVs for compression are the only thing you have not yet tested. Try using a different ripper for your source wav's maybe? I use EAC, and sofar as I know it has a great reputation for being the standard ripper program for perfect rips among audiophiles. It's freeware too- www.exactaudiocopy.de. (don't worry the page is in english)

Also- just a random thought: perhaps the laptop's amplifier circuts just have a coloration or a quality that is more appealing to your ears than the NJB?

As far as lossless formats- I think straight wav's are the only types of lossless files the NJB will play. Big on disk space and big on battery usage though (since the hard drive has to spin up very often to fill the buffer with this uncompresed data).

Ruahrc

 

[HendrixFreak]

Well, giving it a little more trial - I'm back to using EAC, have to agree that it seems like it should be more accurate than others. And encoding to 320 CBR. According to r3mix.net site, anything above 256 should be audibly identical to CD.

I'm testing now by listening to MP3 file or CD on my laptop so sound card coloration is not an issue.

One thing I've realized is that it is possible for the result to be better than listening to CD directly since EAC should be able to make corrections that CD in real time can't. So I'm not giving up yet!

And so far it seems like results are better. Hard to do double blind tests without help though and it will be hard to convince my wife to figure out how to do it.

 

[Peddler]

The Nomad 3 sounds far better than the SlimX - I would recommend that you use LAME/EAC with the -ALT PRESET STANDARD setting and see what that sounds like.

I hope this helps.

 

[geom_tol]

The NJB have great sound imo.

Use -alt preset extreme setting with lame.

The size difference vs. the -alt preset standard is small and the quality improvement is worth it.

 

[HendrixFreak]

Yeah I'm still trying. I'm actually using --alt-preset insane for 320 CBR. Which results in pretty large files and is probably identical to the ear as preset extreme. I'm just trying to give it the best shot.

The point is that it was either get a PCDP or NJB3. Mostly what I want to do is listen to my CDs and it seemed tempting to be able to do it without having to shuffle CDs around (and have them in my room since typically they're in the car or down in the basement where I play them in a home player). But I want the sound to be virtually the same on NJB3 as if I had a good PCDP, and I'm not sure if this is reasonable.

I tried to get a survey going to see if others thought as some of you guys, that I could get as good sound with good ripping/encoding as I would if I shuffled CDs in a PCDP, but no one responded!

 

[Ruahrc]

Didn't see the survey- but I think you can. I ripped all my CD's using EAC+Lame alt preset extreme. They are all great except for my Norah Jones CD. Even at preset extreme, the music is very quiet and therefore I ended up with average bitrates around 160, which isn't bad but the thing is that it often drops down to 112, and you get CLEARLY audible compression artifacts. I will just re-rip the CD and set a bottom limit on the bitrate- so the minimum compression per frame will be 160, that should fix the problem.

Has anyone else seen this behavior in their CD's when ripping at VBR?

Ruahrc

 

[waffenschmidt]

HendrixFreak, I highly doubt that what you're hearing is a problem with the MP3s, assuming you're using LAME alt preset extreme or greater. I'm using a Neo Jukebox with MP3s at that setting, and it sounds as good if not better than both of my PCDPs (a Panasonic SL-CT570 and a Sony D-25S). Both PCDPs have more background noise than the Neo (all running from line outs, using either a Corda HA-1 or a TAH, with a variety of headphones).

If your profile is reflective of your actual equipment, that means you're running Beyer DT770-250s without a headphone amp. Now that's insane! There is no way your MP3 player, any PCDP or your sound card can drive those cans properly. You need a headphone amp or different headphones.

 

[HendrixFreak]

Well I'm sitting here with a profile that needs updating and loving my NJB3 now (in a proper sense, my wife need not be jealous)! Waffenschmidt you were too kind. The difference - my DIY Meta42 with AD8620 opamp biased into class A operation. Hot Damn!

I settled on --alt-preset extreme -b 160 -q 1. Files not so small but lots smaller than constant 320. Almost no complaints now. Yes, I still hear a little "something" I don't like but I think the answer will be more electronics. Will be adding crossfeed to the amp very soon to see what that does. DT770Pros are known (by some) to be a bit bright so we'll see.

Glad I stuck it out though because NJB3 is a nice player. Almost brought it back in favor of Zen but glad I didn't because its got removable battery and line out and that's more important than size.

So success!

(PS - what do you think of R3Mix preset? I did a couple CDs with it but noticed that it created considerably smaller files so assumed alt preset extreme would be better. Anyone prefer the R3Mix preset?)

 

[waffenschmidt]

I don't claim to be an expert on LAME encoding, but from what read a couple of months ago, R3mix is considered to be inferior to the current alt-presets.

I'm using --alt-preset extreme, although I've read in at least a couple of places that the increase in quality of extreme over standard is negligible. I'm not too worried about file size and figured it would be better to err on the side of higher quality, especially since some in this forum think using mp3 compression at all is a major compromise.

I'm not sure about the -b and -q switches, but I'd make sure you know what you're doing with those. I figure somebody slaved and fretted over how to set up the presets; I sure don't know as much about it as they do, so why would I add switches that might override or conflict with the decisions they made.

Anyway, glad it all worked out for you!

Ruahrc, what version of LAME are you using? I checked my Norah Jones files, encoded with LAME 3.92 --alt -preset extreme, and the average bitrate is in the range of 215-235 kbps. That's a little lower than the 225-260 I get on something like Garbage with a lot of stuff going on at once, but it's not 160. I don't hear any problems, but I don't claim to be a "golden ears."

 

[Zemo]

Just a quick thingie...if your using EAC (which you SHOULD....the ONLY accurate ripper) make sure that the "drive settings" is set to "secure mode" not "burst mode". Burst mode takes away the point of using EAC altogether! Better yet, if you want a guide to setting up EAC/LAME to run with the BEST possible settings, check out the ultimate guide to creating the ultimate MP3

Oh, if you're into the idea of a P2P network that shares music (only full albums, none of this single song junk) ripped/encoded following that guide, check out the BEST P2P music sharing network for audiophiles

 

[ADS]

You're completely ruining the quality with that "-b 160" setting. Alt-presets are exactly that, PRESETS. Don't try to change them unless you know exactly what you're doing. Change to a different preset if you want smaller files, don't try to tweak an exisiting preset (especially like you're doing there).

 

[ADS]

And just as a quick update to the above, the specific problem with specifying a "-b 160" with a preset is that you're forcing a constant bit rate on a preset designed for variable bit rate. VBR will always sound much better than CBR (using lame at least) and will let you get smaller file sizes with better quality. Personally, I use --alt-preset extreme -q0 for everything unless I need a little smaller file size, then I go for --alt-preset standard -q0.