Qobuz Hi-Rez Not Necessarily the Best Sound

@designsfx

I’ve ripped all my CDs to cd res files using dbpoweramp. Thousands in my music library now. Nothing to fear sound wise as long as the rip and playback is done right. Cd quality in and cd quality out.

I use mostly Plex and Plexamp app to stream. Plexamp in particular provides a greatly enriched environment for streaming including ability to suggest similar sounding artists, albums, and tracks. So many ways to find and enjoy all that music.

It’s all good but much less problematic to stream from a file than to play a cd. Cd physical media quality varies widely. Try ripping with dbpoweramp and you can directly see how it can take much much longer to accurately rip a poor quality cd than a good quality one and the poor quality ones are way more common than one might expect. Hint: you can’t tell the good quality CDs from the poor quality ones just by looking at them. However a good quality ripping software like dbpoweramp rereads the disk as many times as needed to get the data off the disk accurately which is why poor quality CDs may take 10 minutes or more to rip whereas comparable length good quality CDs can rip in less than 5 minutes.

I guess I didn’t clearly describe my setup and use. I audition music via streaming services before making the decision on what to buy. Once the disks arrive they sit in the listening queue. All disks are ripped via my Naim Uniti Core and stored for playback on SS drives. The disk is put away afterwards. I haven’t spun a disk in so long I can’t remember!

@designsfx yup me too. I buy CDs, rip them to disk then store them away. Have not played a cd in years. I use a small desktop pc to rip and store and use Plex and Plexamp to stream. Good stuff! I also do same with vinyl ie play once, convert to digital and store on pc, then use audacity to do some basic processing and separate tracks, then Picard to auto tag the files. Also dbpoweramp tag editor if manual tagging needed.

@p05129 

I might agree with you on Hi Rez sounding better but until this day I’ve only been able to playback within the limits of my Dac. I’ve used Native DSD’s site and have heard some really interesting music there but ultimately had to downsample to DSD 128 to avoid DOP playback.

I had considered purchasing a T+A Dac earlier this year to experience more of the DSD stuff but even that was limited for me because of the Mac OS. I don’t see going into a windows machine or some other device grouping as a value spend. I hope that changes in the near future as it would be interesting to experience artists using that format of recording/mastering. Honestly the only difference I’ve heard (with true mastered hi res- not just up conversion) is a little more air in the presentation- but it wasn’t life changing.

@mapman 

So how has the vinyl conversion been working out in whole with the process you described? Do you find yourself still acquiring new titles or purely archiving your previously purchases albums?