A good point. Whenever I’ve experienced noise it’s been cheaper kit and obvious. There seems to be a class of (expensive) audio gear so resolving that all faults in a system are ruthlessly exposed. At the same time the manufacturers seem to have neglected to use those engineering smarts to do anything about the seemingly obvious noise issues. 
Myths. To appreciate valve amplifier technology we must first debunk audiophile myths that incorrectly describe them. Many Audiophiles believe in alchemy and behave similar to religious cults. Cult driven audiophiles are easily identified by their repetitious chanting of brand names, model numbers and meaningless superlatives concocted by high priest reviewers and marketing spin doctors. The highest Deity worshiped by the occult audiophile is the Single ended Class A valve amplifier. They are extremely inefficient, average 3 to 20 Watts and often generate excessive 2nd harmonic distortion. The reason for worshiping one output valve is the same reason the religions of Abraham worship one God. These single ended amplifiers can be decorated with gold, and interconnected with oxygen-free cable which channels Orgone energy (un-used sexual energy) from the lost city of Atlantis, enabling anything connected to the cable to transcend the laws of physics.
Slightly edited chunk from
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Oh dear. Digital systems = bit-for-bit. If there’s interpolation or extrapolation between formats, it’s not a noise issue, just one of the translation schema used. ‘Noise’ only becomes an issue once you’re into the analogue domain, assuming that jitter and scaling are within the bounds of the hardware’s limits.
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Not everyday in audiophilia that one runs across a reference to Wilhelm Reich.
Thanks for the link.
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Hey guys. I did point out at the beginning of the thread that I was not well. Over the weekend I also developed a fever so it comes as no surprise that some of the things I said were a little ‘wonky’. Let’s be kind and leave it at that.
I do stand by my feeling that compression is undesirable and that with the cost of storage and network bandwidth today it’s not necessary any more. There are valid reasons why others find might it helpful. I shared my system components with you and if you look it up you’ll see that my DAC is also galvanically isolated. But I still don’t want to pass it a decompressed file to it if I can avoid it. That is my choice and it works for me. What you choose to do and the reasons you choose do it, at the end of the, are none of my business. I’m just sharing, not looking for a fight.
Looking back I think that what set me off on a delusional rant was that one of you, I’m not even going to go back over the thread to see who it was, was adamant that we should use FLAC. At least, that’s how I read it (remember I had a fever so may not have read it correctly). I’m glad that file format worked for him but none of use have the right to dictate what anyone else should use or feel comfortable with.
I am going to apologize one last time. As I write this I’m struggling to decide if I should share one last thing with you. I’m hoping you’ll see it as an expression of my thinking of our community as a supportive one.
Context is everything. Roughly 8 months ago I was awakened by my wife’s alarm. I was surprised when she didn’t role over to turn it off but I knew she had the day off and that with her tinnitus it never bothered her the way it did me so she was probably just ignoring it for a bit. The sun was shining through the window and I was thinking how lovely she looked and how lucky I was to be the man who got to wake up next to her every day. I finally got out of bed, walked over to her alarm and turned it off. Then I went back to lie beside her again. She hadn’t moved so I reached out to touch her wrist. It wasn’t cold but it wasn’t warm either. This was odd because she had a high metabolism and I called her my little hot water bottle. Still not really awake I started to sense that things weren’t quite right so I thought that if I just held my hand to her mouth and felt her breath that it would set my mind at peace and we’d get on with our day. As I tried to focus my eyes on her lips to guide my hand towards them, I noticed that they were eerily still. Then I noticed that her chest wasn’t moving.The panic set in. I jumped up and rolled her over. She had been sleeping with her arm tucked under her head and as I rolled her over her arm swung with her. I knew immediately that she was in rigor and there was nothing I could do. I called 911 and in that moment my life turned upside down and inside out.
I understand that this is not what people log in to a high-end audio thread to read. I’ve included it here to provide some context and when you might think that I’m not all right in the head, well, you would be correct. I’m left dealing with the trauma of waking up next to a dead body, the grief of the loss, and the stress associated with the greed of her family and the cleaning-up of the financial mess she left. And as if that wasn’t enough I started a new job about a month after she died.
I’m sure you each have your own demons and issues to deal with and so at the end of the day there is nothing particularly special about my situation.
We are here because we are passionate about our audio. But perhaps, before jumping in and forcing our opinion on everyone we should all take a moment to step back and consider that what works for us may not work for others.
I hope that my apology is accepted and that I have provided some context that helps you understand how this unfolded.
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DSD is a different coding scheme from PCM, so it has to be recoded. DSD is arguably a better coding scheme–at least some people argue so–but not if you’re recoding something that was already PCM. Any information lost in coding the original analog signal into PCM is already lost. And, you’re “:cascading algorithms”. No coding scheme is perfect, so you’re combing the imperfections of both. If you have software and hardware for ripping SACDs (I know of none) and you have a DAC that can deal with it (presumably you do) then DSD would be the way to go, since they are native DSD. Otherwise, stick with PCM.
Also, why are you using wav? You’re losing metadata capability, in addition to lossless compression that puts the same information into a smaller file size. Roon likes to use metadata, so you’re decreasing the chances Roon correctly identifies your files.
BTW, if your DAC can only deal with DSD by recoding it into PCM then it gets even sillier.
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“Before solid-state technology existed, the majority of domestic valve radios and radiograms were manually assembled by large teams of women in often appalling conditions that would not be accepted today.”
They don’t make them like they used to.
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Why don’t you do a test?
Rip the track to wav, flac and DSD.
Use your ears (blind test recommended) (use same equipment)
I bet you will not be able to hear the difference.
Then, choose the file which occupies the least space and also enables you to add metadata (aka FLAC)
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Thank you for sharing that David. Certainly with that perspective I think we can all see there are bigger priorities than choice of codec or wrapper. For us all, music is a shelter from those harsher realities. I hope it keeps being your shelter!
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Do we need the meta data with Roon?
When I rip to wav Roon detects everything I need. Or it seems so.
It’s good to have metadata in the file, since Roon is not the only use case for music files.
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Maybe somebody noted this already, but I am pretty sure Roon doesn’t currently handle DSD. It converts it to PCM 192/24 or something similar.
Two questions: Has anyone had any luck easily ripping audio BluRays? If so, how? I tried it a few years back, and it required tracking, etc.
Also (and I think the answer still is “no”), is it possible to rip SACDs to DSD? If so, what sort of a disc drive would one use? I cannot even figure out how to get a DSD signal out of my cheap Yamaha player, but I think some SONYs have a DSD out. Still – how do you convert that into a file you can load in a music player like a Chord Poly?
Roon will play native DSD, if your DAC supports it.
Software to rip the SACD layer of a disc -
Doesn’t play native dsd except for Dave. All other chord products convert dsd to pcm, then, processes it to analog
More information about DSD and Chord rationale in this thread.
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As far as metadata, when I rip wav or flac using dbpoweramp both files seem to have the same metadata. Also, when I choose the wav fiile over the flac file on qobuz it has the metadata. Am I mistaken?
On a side note I’ve been meaning to use FLAC -t to test checksums. I’m surprised my googling skills are not returning much. Lots of Linux stuff.
Anyone got a handy batch file or powershell script that will loop through all subdirectories and test FLAC files?
Once again, WAV can carry metadata, but I don’t think there’s a standardized way to do it. Depending on the app, they may or may not be accessible. With FLAC, it’s guaranteed.
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