Sound Quality


First off, I am pleading ignorance here, so my apologies up front, but I need some help on figuring out what this digital stuff is all about. It was simple, just to pull out a CD and play it, but with streaming and such, it seems to be a whole different ball of wax.

After finally finishing the remodel on my home, I've have had a bit of time to sit down and listen to my system. My Aurender N200 came with an SD card loaded with music. Most of it is ripped from hybrid SACDs or at 16bit- 44.1kHz "Original Mastering Recording" CDs, (some are DSF files some WAV files, but all sound the same to me). The music sounds flat and dull but when I play the equivalent song on Tidal in 16bit-44.1 kHz it sounds much better.

I have a second SD card  with some HD Tracks CDs at 24 bit-96 kHz that I which sound really good through the N200. Maybe understandable being hi-res, but some say they can't hear a big difference between the two, but I sure can in this instance.

I understand that up sampling, DSD and HQ Player can even bring better sound to the table, but I'm having enough trouble with just the basics here, that stuff is way over my head. 

I'd like to rip a couple of my own CDs to a new SD card and try it to compare with the SD card that came with the N200. What is the best method to do this?

As always, your thought & comments are much appreciated!

navyachts

@navyachts 

The SSD drive (SD Card) doesn’t not require any formatting by end user (you). It’s done by Aurender software. Once you have transferred off all the previously stored music, you can start transferring newly ripped music (cut & paste).  One way to track your music is by creating folders in SSD drive. 
Music 1 ➡️ DSD 

Music 1 ➡️ CD rips. 
 

How to create folders….right click in Music 1 folder, click New, Folder ➡️ rename

@navyachts dsf are dsd files. 
I see you’re having a 💩 ton of fun. Lol. 

Just take a deep breath you’ll get there. 

For what it’s worth, I always rip my CDs to WAV files. Although less supported these days, WAV is an exact copy of the CD and is an uncompressed file. If you look, you’ll find a WAV converter out there. FLAC is a lossless compressed format and please remember ‘lossless’ is a euphemism for negligible loss. FLAC is 60% the size of the original file. Although, in most cases, you may not be able to hear the difference…with a high resolution system and good ears, the difference is there. My argument is twofold: 1) file size is not an issue these days so why compress. 2) once you convert to FLAC, there is no going back.