Redbook Keeps Surprising

My cd player is a Vitus SCD-025Mk2 rbcd player. It employs a heavily modified Phllips Pro 2LF transport, modular design, 4 x custom-made UI-core psu's and uses sample rate conversion to minimize jitter via a new Q8 stereo-synchro upsampler from EngineeRED (formerly Anagram Technologies) which accepts pcm signal from 32 up to 384 kHz with 8 x oversampling (using true extrapolation like the Soulution 745), and accepts DSD64/128 via its asynchronous USB board. It delivers a 24/384 kHz pcm signal that drives 2 x mono ADI1955 d/a converters. The output stages are taken from the SL-102 Mk2 preamp. Vitus design and build their own master clock in-house. This player also has wide bandwidth (to beyond 2.5MHz).

The design in Hans Ole Vitus's hands is very well executed. It is very resolving, yet smooth and non-digital at the same time. In fact it is the most analogue-sounding cd player i've heard. Bad recordings still suck mind you, but they suck a lot less on this player compared to most ss rbcd players. After hearing some great rbcd's on this player such as the Marten Supreme Sessions, XRCD24's & DXD's, I don't pane for SACD. Yup, RBCD keeps surprising..

I too second charles1dad and I would like to add that- the more you isolate and refine the AC power to both your analog and digital units the more impressed you'll be with the quality of Redbood CD. Experiment and enjoy.

One more time, and let's see if I can make this clear. One can do what one wants with the original recording. One can play it (but not in public), resell it, give it away, throw it away or rip it *for one's own personal use*. The one thing one can not do is keep the ripped copy of a CD or a track and then dispose of the original, or vice versa. It's neither legal or ethical to make copies of a CD, Redbook or otherwise (think "Enhanced" CDs), and sell them or give them away. Likewise. it's neither legal or ethical to make any kind of a copy of a recording and then sell or give away the original. Possession of the original is one's license for "fair-use" of the copy. If one doesn't have the original, one can't have a copy, no matter how one came by it.

It's not at all like selling or giving away a used bicycle. You haven't duplicated the bike. If  one starts exactly duplicating the bike, and potentially violating associated patents and trademarks, and then giving away or selling the duplicates of the bike, you'll then have a similar situation, and a potential legal problem. It's the same with recordings. It is absolutely illegal and unethical to give away that burned duplicate of a CD. Playing the duplicate in your car makes no difference. You don't own the music on that duplicate CD to give away. The Grateful Dead can do what they want, but most people in the music industry aren't in the position or of the disposition to be so generous.

Copyright law can be bizarrely complex, and highly lawyered. But the basics are pretty straightforward, and fair to all.

BTW, whether or not a ripped copy of a CD sounds better/different/worse than the original will certainly have much to do with the format it's ripped to and then what hardware is used for playback. An mp3, especially at a low bit rate, played through some cheap USB arrangement won't sound nearly as good as a WAV file that is an exact duplicate of the original and then played through a high-end system.

lp2cd,

Your clarification has been most helpful.
I was actually thinking of donating my entire physical cd collection to the local library but it looks like I can't do that now.  :(

J.

Ripped great CDs -- or very good ones -- sound extraordinary on my Lampizator DSD Komputer (output to my Lampizator Lite 7 DAC).  And most of mine are ripped via the WAV format, although I have a fair share of FLAC and Apple Lossless files as well.