kjg

Responses from kjg

Conrad Johnson and Proac Speakers
Agree with Jaybo. CJ and ProAc is a wonderful match. 
ExactAudioCopy ripping software
Herman: There are a number of folks providing mods for the Squeezebox 2 and 3 but the two I hear about most are by Boulder Cable and Red Wine Audio. Both of them have internal modifications for both the digital and analog outputs, plus an enhanced... 
ExactAudioCopy ripping software
Fatparrot: There is no loss when decoding an encrypted FLAC, Apple Lossless, or WMA lossless file. I'm sure there is some way to prove this mathematically, but empirically folks have encoded literally millions of music files in these formats and t... 
ExactAudioCopy ripping software
Apple Airport Express and Slim Devices Squeezebox both have analog and digital outputs so the results depend on how you use them. I can't speak for quality of the Airport digital out, but the Squeezebox SPDIF output quality is excellent, and impro... 
ExactAudioCopy ripping software
600 MB or so for a single uncompressed CD (WAV or AIFF format), and about half that if you use a lossless compression scheme such as FLAC, WMA Lossless or Apple Lossless. 
High Speed Ripping Laboratory for EAC
Cwlondon - I probably share your skepticism of ripping services, and if you do pursue this route I'd very much like to hear about your results. I know that the folks at SlimDevices are quite concerned with audio quality, and the gentleman that run... 
High Speed Ripping Laboratory for EAC
Ketchup - Are you sure that Secure mode ripping was enabled when you got 25x ripping speed? I've had several LiteOn drives and with the Secure ripping configuration the best I achieved was about 4x. Outside of Secure mode (e.g. Burst mode) I was a... 
High Speed Ripping Laboratory for EAC
There are a number of services that will rip CDs for you. SlimDevices provides such a service, and a quick Google for "CD Ripping Service" will yield a number of additional resources. You'll need to query the companies directly for details on how ... 
MSB or Birdland DAC?
Depends on what you want. The MSB is faster and more accurate, but the Birdland more tonally appealing and engaging. I've auditioned both on my system (mostly CJ) and for my tastes I'd take the Birdland in a second. Very nice sounding DAC. 
Does "ripping" quality improve if you.........
Nearly all of the tweaks mentioned are designed to improve the real-time extraction of the CD data by the transport, most of which provide little or no buffering and simply read the bits once and send them along to the DAC. Modern ripping programs... 
MP3 vs Redbook?
MP3 and other lossy formats (e.g. AAC, M4A, Ogg, WMA, etc) will certainly sound different from the Redbook source even at high bitrates (320 kbps). While the MP3 encoding won't necessarily sound bad, it isn't the same as source and you should be a... 
Tubes for a Conrad Johnson 17LS?
I like the speed and tighter bottom end I get from using Philips JAN 6922's instead of the stock Sovtek's. The soundstage is a tad smaller, but the sound is better overall. 
Silly Question...does a transport have a "sound" ?
Metralla - Thanks for the reference - itÂ’s a very good read. I already know about many of the issues involved with extracting information off of a CD, and have in fact chosen to jettison my transport entirely in lieu of a PC based system with musi... 
Silly Question...does a transport have a "sound" ?
Danlib, if you hear differences with different transports then one or all of them are bad transports. The bits on the CD are precise (most of the time), and the transport's job is to read and stream them accurately. If they do, all will sound the ... 
Why even bother?
"How any audiophile could be serious about having tuner in his of her system?"Only Sidssp seems to have the right response to this.