Digital Audio for Dummies

I could have written your thread opening  message down to the last period.  I’m firmly planted in the two channel analog past too and much interested in converting my CDs and maybe my LPs to digital.  I’m at the stage where it’s difficult to know which questions to ask.  

Just to get started,  I am so confused about what to choose for ripping and then  how to merge streaming  into my several stereo systems. And what if I want to do LPs too?

I have had recommendations for the Naim Uniti Core for ripping and storing digital music.  I’ve heard that Roon might be better.  Or maybe it’s just different.  I’ve just today heard about the gear recommended in this thread, Bluesound and Sony.  How to choose??

  Virtually all my music is classical or opera and I’ve read with increasing despair that it can be very hard to get the right tags on classical music, so that’s one issue.

  Which one preserves the audio quality best?

Which software is best for managing playback?

I listened to both the Sony and the bluesound and I bought the Auralic Aries which blew those 2 away in sound and especially the DS Lightning iPad software to control it. I bought the Auralic Aries mini for the living room which I think is superior to the Sony or bluesound, the Aries mini uses the DS lightning software. Also, you can hook up an external usb drive to the auralic. The drawback to all of these units is that it doesn’t support MQA. I sold the Aries and went with the ps audio directstream with bridge which is excellent as a dac and streamer. I use Roon as the GUI iPad interface and you can’t get better than that. Roon allows you to integrate Tidal songs/albums with your ripped music collection so when you shuffle an artist you don’t know if you are playing ripped music or music from Tidal, integrates it perfectly. I do use a dedicated Mac mini with external disks for my ripped cds and the Roon server part. Btw: Tidal has the best quality music from redbook to MQA

Echolane,

From my own experience, classical tags are painful. I just finished re-tagging all my classical music. What is out there, on the Internet and automatic tagging services, is beyond inconsistent. If you are picky about it, you are in for frustration. If you just want an album and will play it from the beginning and never look at the screen, you will be happy. In short, good luck with that. Not to mention that some of the programs will put some albums together as one because they have same name (Mahler 4th symphony, for example). That is another topic, I guess.

As far as transferring LPs to digital format goes, I recently bought Korg DS DAC 10 R (or some combination of these letters, I do not have it here right now) and ripped some DSD files from LPs. I cannot claim that I have the world's best system to play it on, but it sounds good enough that I did not regret. There may be better programs to do it, but I used Korg's own and it takes some learning if you are not a computer-wired soul.

There are many options on the market and I am sure each has some advantages. For a two-channel (well, those DSDs from LPs are actually mono) person who does not want to have the computer in his system permanently and prefers semi-traditional approach with a dedicated player, SONY is quite fine. Check other ones recommended in the thread and see and hear what suits you.

In case it means anything to anyone, it seems that Bluesound does not play DSD files. Auralic Aries does and seems to be way more advanced. Still, it also seem to require NAS somewhere else in the home and is not a dedicated music player. Please let me/us know if this is incorrect as I just looked it up on their websites and might have not picked every detail right.