Who listens primarily to Redbook CD?

A couple of quick questions: I read in another thread some folks saying their ripped (CD) contents sounded better than original CD. Is that technically possible or its just the differences between the components in the audio path, e.g., CDP vs. NAS, etc., that are contributing to the difference? Also, those of you who listen to CDs as well as stream music from Tidal, how would you compare the SQ? This is if you could actually make a fair comparison given the different components in the chain. I personally find the Tidal MQA content sound better than my CDs using a common DAC.

"I read in another thread some folks saying their ripped (CD) contents sounded better than original CD. Is that technically possible or its just the differences between the components in the audio path, e.g., CDP vs. NAS, etc., that are contributing to the difference?"

Great question. It’s also been reported that Copying the CD Copy also improves upon that Copied CD, ad infinitum. Is this a big can of worms or what? What in the wide wide world of sports is going on here?

Look for something on this subject from George Rankin (wavelength), is where I would start.

I expect we are looking at a re-clocking issue of some sort.

The vast majority of older CDP's, IIRC, get some of their important aspects of clocking cues from directly off the disc read. I has to do with the original design spec. Ie that the disc read itself is intrusive into the jitter spectrum question. Part of why Sam Tellig of Stereophile thought that some of the first buffering portable CD players sounded quite good. The buffer means the disc read jitter spectrum issue is not directly connected to the emergent waveform of the music signal. That sort of hardware does a re-clocking of a sort.

When we rip, the clocking happens elsewhere and if done well, it can be a better reconstruction of the waveform, jitter spectrum wise.

The given individual case sensitive final clocking set up and reconstruction of the waveform is where it is all at. Which is pretty well what Gordon Rankin is on about.

Note to Geoff: the Popper reference elsewhere made me look him up. Thanks for that. I (and many others, obviously) have similar or parallel conclusions in many ways, but not so explicitly perfected and outlined. I've not spent a lifetime refining it as he had. It's nice to be confirmed in one's ideals/conclusions.(Standford website, I'm still reading...)

And the more I say the more I become a target, which takes you 'round to his thoughts on theories......

@teo_audio   

I am am aware that R2R DACs are impossibly expensive - this is because they are trying to compete with the latest 21 bit resolution of Delta Sigma and the technology is limited by the ability to build a resistor ladder to such high accuracy as to be competitive with Delta Sigma.

How this is conflated to mean that R2R is better?? Only if you equate more expensive with better...

I had R2R ladders in several older generation CD players but current Delta Sigma DACs are far superior (at least to my ears.)

It is well known that the optical reader of a CD is motorized. It has been shown that oscillations in this motor (as it attempts to read a spinning disc) can induce via these fluctating power supply demands a subsequent spurious jitter in the CD player output. This is why a copy of a CD might play better (or not) on a particular drive. It is nothing to do with bits but all to do with mechanical reading of the spinning disc data using a servo motor that is drawing power in a cyclical manner from the same power supply used to covert the digital to analog...