@navyachts Remember also, that everything on Internet is sliced into chunks and compressed before transmission and decompressed back. Bandwidth is money so all data is sliced into chunks, wrapped into packets, transmitted frequently out of order and reconstructed at the receiving end. Local network might be the same. File is never transmitted as file in a single chunk. There is no “stream” from Tidal to you, traffic is all pieces often out of order. So there :-)
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!
- ...
- 82 posts total
@larryi yeah i heard about it too, but cant seem to find the information. It is theoretically possible, if computer is slow and memory is limited. Maybe old iPod with hard disk, remember those? I cant imagine modern programs decompressing file in small pieces, it should be enough memory to allocate enough space and decomp the entire file before playback. On the other hand, i have seen manufacturers skimping on CPUs and emloying puny ARMs in music servers… |
“I am riding the WAV!” Thank you for your recommendation. I bought the DSD256 download…loving the album and spine tingling hair SQ. |
I’ve come full circle here and returned to CDs for digital and use Tidal for discovery or if I just want convenience. CD in a high end transport sounds superior to me. That includes DSD which I have also streamed through my DAC. I’m no expert but something is affecting the fidelity when it is uploaded, stored, sent via internet, computer, and finally DAC vs simply read CD and send to DAC. The litmus test says the latter. |
- 82 posts total