Melco D100 Ripping CDs

It would be nice if the person with this CD and the Melco switch could do the two rips and check them both with Accuraterip (AR) to ensure true bit perfect rips as compared with many others (i.e., the entire point of AR). It typically requires the entire album to get a full AR match (at least in PerfectTunes program by illustrate, the dbpa company). This can be done with free software (either CueTools or Foobar2000).

Or we could just move on.

Looking at the the different wavs in audacity as they where supplied to me they needed aligning due to the silent padding on one. Once lined up the time shift tool the waveforms are identical and seamless switching between sources and using my Dragonfly DAC as the output from Audacity they sound the same no difference. Probing the metadata the durations are the same, all the encoding parameters are the same.

So this makes no sense to me at all. Not being able to switch seamlessly does not make comparison between the two when listening normally easy maybe this is throwing things off and making me make assumptions, I just don’t know but it does sound subtly different… I know there is no difference empirically as the files are showing me they are the same, one has different metadata than the other but other than time alignment nothing is different. So is it the metadata? Unlikely Is it this tome alignment? Unlikely. Is it my ears playing tricks? More than likely. Its very hard to disprove the evidence. you can see, but then what do I do about the evidence I can hear but only when files are untouched and played in a different application. So is network playback to blame?

Very confused. Going to bed before my head explodes.

Very wise CJ. It’ll be clearer in the morning.
I can assure you that both rips came from the same CD.
This has been one of my favourite tracks since it was released, but the rip from the D100 really reveals the fun these guys were having when they recorded it. It’s not that the other is bad - I lived with it for years -, but when I heard this version, I knew I had to re-rip my entire collection.

Why don’t you do that James, if you think there’s nothing to see here…,

I do remember a Naim demonstration/presentation where the representative was asking which application used to rip their CDs - dBpoweramp, EAC Audio, iTunes etc.
He argued that the Ripping software mattered to SQ, and how Naim had analysed this carefully, and written their own software, in the UnitiServe to rip CDs.
I didn’t buy it, at the time.
But that was 6 years or so ago and I no longer believe the ‘bits are bits’ argument.
Why does the Uptone EtherRegen switch sound better than the Cisco SG100D-05 unmanaged 5-port switch it replaced, which sounded better than the Netgear Prosafe GS105 before that. Why does the Sarum Tuned Array Streaming cable sound better than the Chord Anthem Streaming cable.
If it was just ‘bits are bits’ and bitperfect is the absolute, then these changes shouldn’t make any different - but they do, and they can be heard.

I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt DAVID_O_Higgins. Never mind then.

I’m sorry James, but that’s a bit too cryptic for me. What are you trying to say?

Well Simon, one possible explanation is ‘Auditory Illusion ‘, of which I stand accused, but I don’t think either of us would agree with that.

Yes, that’s pretty much what I am saying.

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Ur no - I may have been accused of having other illusions, but after 30 years or so, of ‘messing about’ with HiFi, system building (& repairing), experimenting with components, cables, connectors, formats, filters etc, “Auditory Illusion’ is a first.

Jacques has already done the equivalent of that by generating sha256 hashes of the file in question. I think we’re all agreed that both rips are identical, but some people are hearing a difference when they know which rips are being played.

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I don’t know which rip is from the Melco or Unitiserve, David has not told me and the metadata has no clues. And I only inspected the file after listening to them for some time and then returning to them after looking more closely. One does sound differnet and it’s not expectation bias when you don’t know which is which. Also in Roon there is no indication of which file it is until you go deeper to reveal file info.

I can’t understand why I hear a difference via Roon but not Audacity as it makes no sense or that fact is out brains are easily fooled when you cant seamlessly switch sources as you cant do this via Roon is cognitive process of memory to comparr them.

Can you do this blind? I would think the best method would be to play the two tracks in a random shuffle where you could get any combination of plays, including sequences of the same track consecutively.

If you can then identify the same track with a statistical level of significance,say 8 times out of 10 over time, then that would be a very convincing result.

I can I imagine I won’t identify the same one. To me I think the whole thing is down to our brains and the process of trying to compare two things at different times as your relying on memory and this is flawed or at least in my case. The files contain exactly the same data I have no doubt about that. Using Audacity it’s all a real-time process and not from memory and this reveals a different story as they sound the same. In Roon or any other music streaming app you can’t compare in real-time it’s always from memory. And what I have noticed is the more you do the memory comaprison then it’s not always differeny sometimes its more apparent others not.

I think you’ve got it right there - it’s all in our heads. I suspect the result of such a blind test over a long enough period would be 50/50.

This has generally been a fairly refreshing thread about this sort of topic. Usually they descend into insults and shouting very quickly but people have been willing to get involved in some proper analysis. Would like to see someone try the blind test though.

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I still need to listen to the files you removed the padding and metadata from to see if this is any different. I doubt it but needs to be done all the same. But I guess this now comes with some sort of bias. It’s a funny old game this audio, and I feel is what the industry plays on with all these devices to fix the issues we never knew was there.

I wonder if someone with the files can use foobar2000 and the ABX Comparator component to perform an ABX test with the two files.

Delete the one that sounds worse and be done with it.

That’s what I am doing, disc by disc.