CD vs.same CD ripped to HD


Hi all,

So I hope this seemingly simple question doesn't star a war.  

The background is that I have a ton of CDs and am considering getting a Bluesound Vault 2i so that I can rip them to the Vault's HD, and play them from there. 

The simple question is: how does the SQ compare between the two?  The CD player is a Marantz SA-8004 digital out to a Denefrips Ares II DAC.  I would also use the digital out of the Vault 2i through that DAC.  

FWIW, I prefer vinyl (though it is getting closer and closer).  But more than anything I'm a music fan, with a whole lot of great music on silver discs.

Opinions??

Richard


rnm4
I used DB Poweramp’s CD ripper.  It is very good.  I have a pretty high end DAC and CD Transport.  My transport upsamples the CD to DSD and conveys that to the DAC via either I2S or 3 BNC cables.  After I got a music server and ripped my CDs to the HD I did a live A/B comparison of the CD vs Flacc.  I can switch the inputs on the DAC back and forth.  I could not tell a difference.  I tried this with a few CDs.   I was chagrined to learn I could have saved a good sum on a transport.  Well, I still like to spin CDs sometimes although selecting music with my iPad is very seductive. 


A ripped CD to a HD has just as many read errors as the cd had, as it’s the CD transport/player that uses it’s error correction to correct the bit error reads, and inserts a 1 or 0 in place of the error, which is has a 50% chance of getting it correct.

Then you’ll get bit read errors from the HD that it then has to correct, also 50% chance.

Then jitter also comes into it for both.

A ripping from CD to HD is is NOT any cleaner, it can be worse.

Best is playing the original stamped retail CD, as any read errors are corrected once only.

Cheers George