@jastralfu Yes, you are correct, my bad, I'm sorry.
Sound Quality
First off, I am pleading ignorance here, so my apologies up front, but I need some help on figuring out what this digital stuff is all about. It was simple, just to pull out a CD and play it, but with streaming and such, it seems to be a whole different ball of wax.
After finally finishing the remodel on my home, I've have had a bit of time to sit down and listen to my system. My Aurender N200 came with an SD card loaded with music. Most of it is ripped from hybrid SACDs or at 16bit- 44.1kHz "Original Mastering Recording" CDs, (some are DSF files some WAV files, but all sound the same to me). The music sounds flat and dull but when I play the equivalent song on Tidal in 16bit-44.1 kHz it sounds much better.
I have a second SD card with some HD Tracks CDs at 24 bit-96 kHz that I which sound really good through the N200. Maybe understandable being hi-res, but some say they can't hear a big difference between the two, but I sure can in this instance.
I understand that up sampling, DSD and HQ Player can even bring better sound to the table, but I'm having enough trouble with just the basics here, that stuff is way over my head.
I'd like to rip a couple of my own CDs to a new SD card and try it to compare with the SD card that came with the N200. What is the best method to do this?
As always, your thought & comments are much appreciated!
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@navyachts no apologies necessary my friend. Hope you are enjoying your new streamer. I’ve been on the hunt for one myself. Not sure whether to get an Aurender or an Innuos. |
@jastralfu Thanks! I don't think you can go wrong with either. |
You make it sound like the N200 is just not that good :( If you are finding that streaming FLAC sounds better than WAV files, something is seriously wrong. WAV files are the original unaltered format that anything else has to try to sneak in being unnoticeably different from, since people are cheapskates about letting their collections take up space. I use Audirvana on PC, and I can directly compare streaming FLAC vs local WAV's. While the streamed FLAC's sound slightly muddy compared to local, the FLAC part is agitating even locally compared to uncompressed. Local WAV files are so noise free, that I feel like falling asleep with them compared to FLAC. I also find that local files on ssd's sound quieter than mechanicals, but I have to admit, both sound like I'm getting more confident reads than optical disks ever gave, with all of that ECC and making sure you only record at 4x business. I theorized that a thumb drive would beat my 2.5 ssd, due to lower power draw from not trying to max out SATA speed, but I could tell no difference between the two. I ended up getting a little square drive that's about the size of 2 thumb drives, with a little cable, instead of the thumb drive, because it can read and write at around 900mb/s, given the chance. If you still have cd's to rip, nothing on PC could beat Exact Audio Copy, thanks to it's extreme error detection and correction capability. I haven't heard of newer software that can beat it, but since most people are probably already done with ripping, I doubt anything will come out that beats it, either. DSD is nice and natural, but it's too bad that since they can't be edited, you will probably only get remastered old tapes and live performances that way. At least lots of gear is throwing in dsd decoding chips also into their designs. Listening to "The Chicks" for a change, and wow, talk about life wasn't already them! Maybe I'll buy a new high purity cable, so that the rest of the women find out they'll have a hard time beating them.
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@audioisnobiggie The N200 sounds fine. Thanks for your thoughts on WAV over FLAC. I am re-ripping my CD library in WAV files and using dBpoweramp to do so. I ordered the inexpensive DSD sampler from Native DSD and give it a try. |
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