[D2Girls]

CD drive, DVD drive, who cares? I have owned more universal players than CD only players and I don't see why a CD only transport mechanism would be superior. I have a BD and a DVD drive in my PC and both will rip a CD into the computer error free on the first pass.

The topic I was discussing was the spinner mechanism, not if it’s a universal mech or not. The context being if a Sony or Philips mechanism is superior or not to a modern DVD drive in a transport. In my experience, yes, the type of mechanism used for the transport is important. But this is irrelevant to what you are talking about, a bluray drive for ripping.

 

[sam6550a]

Personally I find CD players using Chinese DVD drives (single speed or otherwise) to be of inferior sonic quality compared to a player designed around a classic Philips or Sony CD mechanism. I have owned and heard a lot of different transports and the difference between even an early 2000s Arcam or NAD spinner using a decent quality Sony mech was leagues better than the Marantz and CA units I heard.

When I say the Cambridge Audio is “bad quality” I’m referring to the Chinese DVD drive that is inside the unit. The Servo 3 thing is neat but it is unrelated to the actual cd mechanism.

Sorry to burst your bubble but all of these CD players made in China are using a DVD drive. Aside from a few manufactures that make their own CD drives still (TEAC/Esoteric, Meridian, Marantz, amongst others) there are no more CD mechs being made by Sony or Philips anymore. And in the case of said manufacturees, they only include their custom CD mechs in their ultra high end 5+ figure flagship modes. Don’t ask me how manufactures come by new mechs, but they do, and they certainly make a point to advertise it in the marketing.

If you can’t tell, I’m a firm believer that the type of mech used in a cd transport is very important. I mean it could be the single most important thing in a transport.

What I think Schiit is trying to do is challenge the ultra high end transport market. There are quite a few manufactures of CD players and transports that use a Philips pro mech, but they are almost all in the mid to high 4 figure range. (Ayre, Naim, etc)

Your best bet to get a good transport is a second hand Sony ES series, an older Arcam or NAD, or a Proceed or an older Pioneer Elite. (The newer Pioneer Elites use variable DVD drives) but, being a used product you will have the worry about the laser dying. If schiit comes out with a transport I believe it will certainly sound better than anything CA has to offer and approach performance that you can only get from 4 figure transports. Which is totally in line with Schiits philosophy.

Let’s hope Mike stumbles upon a hidden stache of Philip cd mechs!

Look at the TASCAM CD-200 [not the CD-200i and other derivatives] player. It uses the new Teac CD-5020A drive designed for audio playback, and appears to be sturdy and rugged. The CD-200 has all linear power supplies, minimum frills, SPDIF output [it also has analog output from an AKM D-A with variable speed playback], and lists for about $300. I bought mine for $220 to replace a Rotel that has mechanical transport issues, and have been very happy with it feeding a Gungnir MB DAC. If you are not satisfied, the investment is very small.

 

[US Blues]

I don't understand why folks keep playing the physical CD instead of ripping to a hi-res digital format?

Cheers

And play them on a 2 channel system how? Tell me what I would need to buy, and how much I'll have to spend, to equal or exceed the sound of my Oppo plugged into Yggy2. In advance I can say that machines with built-in hard drives do not have the storage capacity I require. Thanks!

 

[ToTo Man]

Raising the output impedance causes the frequency response to track the impedance curve of the transducer. If you want an equalizer, buy one you can actually adjust.

There are headphones that are designed to be driven from a higher output impedance. AIUI, output impedance doesn't just affect the frequency amplitude response, it also affects transducer transient response and decay time, and an equaliser cannot identically mimic this effect.

 

[valiant66]

I don't understand why folks keep playing the physical CD instead of ripping to a hi-res digital format?

I got about 50 CDs form our local library sale recently and all ripped fine. I, too, use EAC and also MP3 tag to prepare stuff for a server that Roon reads from. Works really well. All the CDs are stored in 4 huge storage cases and the jewel cases given away.

Cheers

[Please be patient while I figure out how to upload an image from my hard drive - at the moment it looks like I have to post an images somewhere else on the internet then link to it: that's more work than I'm willing to do for a post.

PS If head-fi has a help area, I'm having a hard time finding it. The search function only returns posts.

PPS When did this change? In the past it was easy to upload images. I no longer care. It should just work.

PPPS Well, this is amusing/frustrating: this FAQ https://www.head-fi.org/articles/faq.6724/ mentions tutorials on how to upload images (bullet point 7), but there are no links to said tutorials, and the only link is to "advanced search" tutorial, which goes to a blank page.

PPPS Here's the link to the functioning FAQ on uploading images https://www.head-fi.org/articles/image-and-video-tutorial.6733/ . It's from 2010 and the instructions don't work. When I click on the image icon I just get a popup asking for the URL to the image, not a dialog box to upload one.

So if anyone can tell me how to directly upload an image to this forum, I will do so. I am not willing to jump through hoops to post an image somewhere else on the web just so I can link to it, however.

I was going to ask for an email to send a bug report to, but I realized I still don't care. It should just work.

Cheers???

PPPPS Final edit. I found the instructions here: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/how-do-i-post-a-photo-by-uploading-from-my-computer.853232/ It was buried in a forum somewhere. It should be in the FAQ.

After all that I feel like the actual photo is barely worth it. That's 45 minutes of my life I'll never get back.]

Only part of my collection.

I have ripped most of these at least three times - once as mp3 and twice as ALAC, thanks to the Great Hard Drive Crash Of 2014. (Yes, I’ve learned (I hope) about redundant backups.....

If I had just ripped them then sold them I would be in the position of having to rebuy them or search them out on streaming services - and some of these are too obscure to make it to that status.

Also, I have not been able to reproduce the frisson of perusing the stacks and magically coming across something I forgot about that was wonderful. Digital interfaces haven’t reproduced that for me.

And yes, there are 45s, cassettes and even an 8-track in there...
.

 

[Robert Wortman]

There are headphones that are designed to be driven from a higher output impedance. AIUI, output impedance doesn't just affect the frequency amplitude response, it also affects transducer transient response and decay time, and an equaliser cannot identically mimic this effect.

I am not that informed about headphones but they really are just really small speakers. In what way would a headphone transducer be designed to be driven from a high impedance source? High impedance speakers can tolerate a higher source impedance but they don't require it. It seems to me that the effect on transient response (decay time is just the back end of that curve) would be deleterious. i.e To reduce the ability of the transducer to follow the electrical signal should be bad.

 

[Robert Wortman]

The topic I was discussing was the spinner mechanism, not if it’s a universal mech or not. The context being if a Sony or Philips mechanism is superior or not to a modern DVD drive in a transport. In my experience, yes, the type of mechanism used for the transport is important. But this is irrelevant to what you are talking about, a bluray drive for ripping.

It seems to me that if the type of drive in question can rip a CD without error into a computer it will be able to do the same into a DAC. Seem relevant to me. Superior in durability or reliability, I can't say, but superior in function is not the same thing.

 

[Ableza]

The Cambridge Audio CXC transport is a dedicated CD-only transport. What they use as a drive I am not sure but I will try to find out.

 

[golfbravobravo]

And play them on a 2 channel system how? Tell me what I would need to buy, and how much I'll have to spend, to equal or exceed the sound of my Oppo plugged into Yggy2. In advance I can say that machines with built-in hard drives do not have the storage capacity I require. Thanks!

Well, I can only tell you how I do it )

I deliver the digital stream via wireless to a [RaspberryPi] DAC, Freya, Vidar, Double Impact pipeline. My Oppo sits, largely unused, in the media room to play BR discs.

As to storage, I think you must have an outdated view: my computer that stores music - amongst many other things - has 48 terabytes online and is quite modest by modern day systems.

Cheers

 

[golfbravobravo]

[Please be patient while I figure out how to upload an image from my hard drive - at the moment it looks like I have to post an images somewhere else on the internet then link to it: that's more work than I'm willing to do for a post.

PS If head-fi has a help area, I'm having a hard time finding it. The search function only returns posts.

PPS When did this change? In the past it was easy to upload images. I no longer care. It should just work.

PPPS Well, this is amusing/frustrating: this FAQ https://www.head-fi.org/articles/faq.6724/ mentions tutorials on how to upload images (bullet point 7), but there are no links to said tutorials, and the only link is to "advanced search" tutorial, which goes to a blank page.

PPPS Here's the link to the functioning FAQ on uploading images https://www.head-fi.org/articles/image-and-video-tutorial.6733/ . It's from 2010 and the instructions don't work. When I click on the image icon I just get a popup asking for the URL to the image, not a dialog box to upload one.

So if anyone can tell me how to directly upload an image to this forum, I will do so. I am not willing to jump through hoops to post an image somewhere else on the web just so I can link to it, however.

I was going to ask for an email to send a bug report to, but I realized I still don't care. It should just work.

Cheers???]



Only part of my collection.

I have ripped most of these at least three times - once as mp3 and twice as ALAC, thanks to the Great Hard Drive Crash Of 2014. (Yes, I’ve learned (I hope) about redundant backups.....

If I had just ripped them then sold them I would be in the position of having to rebuy them or search them out on streaming services - and some of these are too obscure to make it to that status.

Also, I have not been able to reproduce the frisson of perusing the stacks and magically coming across something I forgot about that was wonderful. Digital interfaces haven’t reproduced that for me.

And yes, there are 45s, cassettes and even an 8-track in there...
.

I share your crash pain. I rip to Flac and am happy with the results. I also buy albums in Flac. As to security (having done the grunt work a number of times, as you have) I now use an old Mac mini to track changes to online folders (one for each of MP3, Flac and Speech folders - I don't backup Podcasts) and incorporate into one sparsebundle per folder. These sparsebundles are each uploaded to BackBlaze. I think I'm paying about $6 per month, but I'm lazy and don't clear out e.g. zips of each album that have sneaked into the pipeline.

The frisson I get, but have found that I do faaaaaar more of the searching and serendipity now that Roon is fully operational and with Tidal ( even though poorly) integrated. I also subscribe to a number of download producers and find that I can sample most, but not all, of the wares they are advertising via this method too. Works for me!

BTW, your erudite rant didn't show in the email deliverable!

Cheers

 

[Ableza]

My contact who is a dealer of Cambridge Audio products tell me the drive in the CXC and in the Azure transports is a custom-made CD-only transport and is not a re-purposed DVD or BRD drive. They are made in China to Cambridge design specs and are single-speed CD-only drives.

 

[valiant66]

As to storage, I think you must have an outdated view: my computer that stores music - amongst many other things - has 48 terabytes online and is quite modest by modern day systems.

Cheers

48 TB is hardly common or modest.

Many, many laptops still only ship with 0.5 TB hard drives. Most "gamer" towers ship with 2 TB. Anecdotally many of the people on this thread "own" less than 20,000 tracks which will fit into 2 TB quite handily, and many of them listen primarily to streaming services and may "own" little to no music. Cf. all the references to Roon, RasPi, Tidal vs Quobuz, music recommendations on Spotify, etc.

A prebuilt 40+ TB NAS is over US$3,000, building it yourself won't save much money: a 12-bay NAS is >$1,500 and a dozen 4TB drives is also >$1,500. Nowhere near chump change when you're agonizing over spending $200 on a Schiit stack.

I would guess you are in the top 1% of readers of this thread in terms of in-house storage.

Personally I have a 4 TB internal HD for my music, along with two other 4 TB external drives to back up to, and a collection of "only" 160,000 tracks. On my finances it's a big deal when I step up to the next size drive, because I have to buy 3 of them.

Cheers!
.

 

[FLTWS]

I just realized I am actually quite curious about the “buy better gear” light. Are there other people that experience this turning on on a regular basis? This post is actually the first time I’ve heard anybody talking about it…
.

This is the only time it has ever happened to me. Of course with a cold start up the BBG light blinks, I guess, until certain internal settings / parameters / checks of the Yggdrasil are completed.

 

[valiant66]

I share your crash pain. I rip to Flac and am happy with the results. I also buy albums in Flac. As to security (having done the grunt work a number of times, as you have) I now use an old Mac mini to track changes to online folders (one for each of MP3, Flac and Speech folders - I don't backup Podcasts) and incorporate into one sparsebundle per folder. These sparsebundles are each uploaded to BackBlaze. I think I'm paying about $6 per month, but I'm lazy and don't clear out e.g. zips of each album that have sneaked into the pipeline.

The frisson I get, but have found that I do faaaaaar more of the searching and serendipity now that Roon is fully operational and with Tidal ( even though poorly) integrated. I also subscribe to a number of download producers and find that I can sample most, but not all, of the wares they are advertising via this method too. Works for me!

BTW, your erudite rant didn't show in the email deliverable!

Cheers

Thanks for the heads-up about the email! I don't subscribe by email to this thread, so I didn't see that. Note to self - don't put square brackets around rants...

As for the subscription lifestyle, I am very wary about that. I am a freelancer and things are very much feast-or-famine. $10/mo for Roon + $20/mo for Tidal + $10/mo for online backup (and those are all in US$, so _much_ more expensive in CAD$) + all the other subs they want from you (SetApp, Adobe, Prime, etc. etc. etc.) and all it takes is one bad month when my card is maxed out and everything bounces and I'm up Schiit creek (PS There's a Canadian TV sitcom called Schitt's Creek which is pretty funny).

So, no, subscriptions don't work for me. I'm getting on towards retirement age, and once I'm on a fixed income, putting aside a significant % of it for subscriptions that may increase without warning does not strike me as a sustainable plan for the future.

But your observations RE: the interaction with Roon and Tidal are very interesting. I see there's a lifetime option for Roon which might be a good deal if they stay in business for more than another 4 years. The chances of that? Who knows.

The digital landscape is littered with spunky startups that got swallowed up and put to bed. Already there's rumours swirling that Tidal's losses may lead to bankruptcy, that Spotify is being headhunted, that Google is trying to take over that space, and, and, and. I have no confidence that any of those streaming services will be with us in 5 years (except for Google, who stream at a max of 320 kbps., and even then they're famous for sunsetting their services).

Here's to frisson!

Cheers.
.

 

[Xcalibur255]

@valiant66 Haha, I see an original Sonic Impact T-amp hiding on the shelf in that photo. Those things were and probably still are the most audio fun you can have for $25.