Digital Audio for Dummies

I would put myself in the same position as corelli trying to go into streaming but the computer language is confusing. Hopefully it is OK to ask a question. I do not have a large cd music file. (250 cd') I have all the music on a thumb drive. (lossless) I was wondering if I buy a Lumin streamer (D2) or similar, can I just plug the thumb drive in the usb rather than getting a NAS? Also, how important is MQA looking down the road?

Not an expert but here's my thoughts on the best way to capture audio from a CD.

1st - when you put a CD into a computer, in the default setting the computer "knows" it's an audio CD and will choose to ignore any errors in the data stream it encounters.  It does this because there's less strain on the computers processing and the assumption is you're playing music not processing payroll checks so errors in the data can be tolerated.

You can change that default by going into the properties settings for the device.  This is true for both Macs and PCs.

When you make that change, the computer will treat the disc as though it holds data.  When it reads (rereads if necessary) the disc it performs additional steps to ensure all of the bits are read and stored correctly.  I've used this feature when ripping discs that had skips ... and if the disc is not too badly damaged, the CD player was able to recover the data and hence the digital copy had no problems playing.

Bottom line if you set your CD reader to treat the disc as data and not music you will end up with a perfect bit for bit copy.

Beyond that you need to determine the quality of the stored copy.  I choose FLAC because disc storage is cheap and FLAC is also a perfect copy.  If the size worries you, 320K recordings are quite good.  It's not too much of an issue what format/quality you choose as any decent receiver or pre/pro will have the appropriate codecs/software/hardware to decode the format.

This is not to be confused with the quality of the DAC which most definitely can make a difference in the sound.

Although I'm sure some will disagree, I find using the method above with a good fileserver (in my case Synology) is an excellent way to capture and store high quality music at minimal cost since virtually any CD reader will be able to capture the CD bit stream perfectly.

This does not apply to how the Oppo handles video.  Their upscaler is top notch.  My post only applies to audio.

Thanks myoungva.  You clearly answered one of the questions I had on capturing bit perfect data via an inexpensive CD drive.  Excellent concise info.

I just ripped my collection this past fall to a Musicvault by Sound Science- it was painless (though time consuming)- the machine did all the work and Neal was always available to help- and it automatically backed itself - in fact I have added several cds since the original ripping months- all were done quickly and backup -