I haven’t done anything about the switch yet, because I borrowed the D100 ripper and then bought it. The rips sound significantly better than my earlier 2013 versions via Unitiserve. So now I’m on a project of 400 hours of re-ripping.
Meantime I see on the Naim forum that some people have been getting good results from Daisy-chaining inexpensive Cisco switches, so perhaps a bit of caution for the moment?
Have you compared the rips using your old ripper to your new ripper using AccurateRip or similar?
There must have been errors in your old rips if your new ones sound better.
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No. Life’s too short!
Hehe, I would suggest life is too short to re-rip 400 CDs when the first rips are almost certainly bit-identical to the new ones. A quick 5 minute AccurateRip check of a few disks would show whether re-ripping is making any difference.
It is of course possible that there was something wrong with your first drive which has caused faulty rips. What’s not possible is that bit perfect rips from one drive sound any different to bit perfect rips from another. In your situation I’d be quite interested to know the answer.
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Jamie,
I didn’t want there to be a difference, but comparing 5 or 6 rips of very familiar CDs between the Unitiserve originals and the DL100 versions made re-ripping a no brainer. It is in that context I made my remark about life being too short. I will let someone else work out the ‘why’, but I will pursue the music, as always.
David
Oh and by the way, it’s not 400 CDs, but 400 hours to re-rip more than 2000.
Your point is?
My point is that, if reripping the CD produced a result that actually sounds different, then the two WAV files, produced by the procedure linked-to, would differ.
Conversely, if the WAV files, produced by that procedure, are identical, then the difference in how they sound is entirely imaginary.
Fair enough. I would love to know though, from an educational perspective, if there is a difference In the ripped files. Wouldn’t take long to find out.
But I know that the difference is not imaginary, so my better course is to re-rip, and let someone else come up with the explanation of the difference.
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Skills beyond me, I’m afraid, even if I were inclined.
If you’re so confident, post the MD5 hashes (or send me the files, and I’ll compute the MD5 hashes for you).
I proposed on another forum where there are also claims in Melco rips being better or different that someone test the D100 Melco drive on a pc using dBPoweramp and see how the rip compares to a rip using a regular cd drive with dBPoweramp. If the drive is the factor then it should effect ripping using any old software and a difference should be noticable. If the two rips on dBPoweramp are the same then it likely points to something the Software on the Melco is doing and not the drive at all. dBPoweramp say rips should sound the same whatever drive is used so it’s an interesting test of this £1000 drive to see how it compares. Someone has offered to do this and compare both to same rip via Melco and D100, so will feed back the results.
Sorry Jaques, but you are speaking a language I don’t understand. I don’t need to prove anything to anybody. I’m just reporting what I have heard, with my own ears, in my own system.
I am not imagining the difference.
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What part of “Send me the files and I will tell you whether they are actually different.” was unclear?
Seems to me that someone is not as confident in the difference they heard as they profess to be.
Ok. Is it possible for me to email to you 2 WAV files of the same CD? If you explain to me how, I will do it, and you can do your own listening/analysis.
I PM’d you with an email address to which you can send the files. I’ll report back my results.
I’m happy ASR is around, I do read through it, but it’s not gospel.
The pseudoscience and conviction to “control” tests has issues, and such is true for all things taken in excess. But like I said, I’m happy Amir and those guys around around to do what they do. It’s information and as long as it’s taken with a grain of salt and not in absolution, then I’m happy it’s available.
In this case, I’d still like to test a few of these devices out to see. Is it #1 for me, no. I’m still eyeing a new set of floorstanders in that category.
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CueTools is a great free tool for this. You can point it at your entire music directory and it will check your rips against the AccurateRip database. See the screenshot - it’s user friendly and simple.
If your rip matches in AccurateRip then your rip is fine. There will be no benefit in re-ripping. You could save yourself days.
Also, using CueTools will give you the satisfaction of knowing that you have a perfect rip so you won’t have that niggling feeling that there is somehow a “better” rip out there.
If I was convinced that I was hearing a better sound from a new rip then I’d want to be sure that my new rip was “the best”. 
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