Have you tried it double blind? If you put the two identical tracks on a repeat random shuffle, can you consistently tell which one is the better rip to a statistically significant degree? It’s no good just listening to the new rip and saying “This is better” when you know it’s the new rip you’re listening to.
That’s the only foolproof way to check really. Any other method could, as Kenneth said, be a result of auditory illusion.
Kenneth,
Does this mean that we don’t need a top class sound system at all? All we have to do is imagine it! What a relief. I just have to imagine the Naim Statement system which I cannot afford, and bingo!
I’ll give it a go tomorrow…,
Since he claims that the difference is totally obvious, I have PM’d David with a challenge to identify which file is from the Unitiserve and which is from Melco D100.
Anyone who thinks they share David’s golden ears is welcome to try the same test. PM me, and I will send you a link to the files.
Pm sent…
Being sincere, I will answer that question this way: spend your money in a manner that makes you enjoy your system.
For me, that means prioritizing system components that have the greatest impact on sound quality, not on things that have negligible (or zero) impact on sound. My last big purchase was a new pair of Mangepan speakers (which, incidentally were in a similar spend magnitude of the Melco Ethernet switch).
I am not above spending money on things for my system that I like - I am just honest with myself, with respect to the “why”. For example, I spend money on audio “knick knacks”, like attractive shelving and cables. I know that my Kimber Hero interconnects with WBT connectors will likely sound the same as inexpensive Blue Jeans Cables RCA interconnects. But I like the way they look and feel - a lot - and I know I will gain some satisfaction from the overall visual appeal of my system.
But when something is somewhat expensive (like $2K) and I am confident that the science/engineering doesn’t support what the vendor is claiming, or can be supported with verifiable measurements, I take a hard pass.
My recommendation is this: spend $49 on a metal-cased Netgear switch (they are very high quality) and spend the remainder on purchasing well mastered, great music - the artists will thank you for your support and you will for sure hear an improvement in your system.
So the rest of us are not ‘honest with ourselves’?
Give me a break.
David
Ok David has passed the originals on to me. I was very sceptical about this and wanted to try myself as to why this might be if it did exist and try and work out why, not just dismiss it outright. And listening to them on my headphone rig they are definitely different in presentation. It almost sounds like they are from different masters, the vocals stick out the most and are clearly different with one with more air around them the other flatter. Also the guitar twang after the chorus intro sounds dull on one comapred to the other. Now I have to take David at his word they are both from the same CD master but I would swear they are not if I was not told this.
At this stage I have no idea which rip is from which as I have not checked metadata or asked but they do sound different. All I have done so far is I added them to my ROCKS storage they showed up in roon and I have been listeinng and switching between them. The waveform in Roon looks the same, they are showing as the same duration and have the same volume levelling being applied, but they do sound different.
More to follow. This has thrown me I can be honest.
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.
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.
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.