Ripping CD's - Bypassing Computer CD Player

I've scanned it and will read it carefully soon. Is there a bottom line in that discussion? Seems like it was one opinion against another. Did you reach a conclusion?

Just ripped over 600 CD's using Dbpoweramp Batch Ripper with the Nimlie USB Plus, and an old PC. Took about 3 days. Load 100 CD's at night, in the morning they're ripped.
Let me know if interested.

NAB2 - those discussions never reach a conclusion. There are people who insist that two bit for bit identical files sound different. There are people that think that flac always sounds worse than wav. There are people that think that a wav file that has been converted to flac and back to wav will sound different. There was even a controversial 4 part article in the Absolute Sound that found sound differences in pretty much every conceivable way to produce bit for bit identical files.

Who knows what is going on, buy there is a small group of people who are absolutely convinced of these differences, but most people cannot hear the differences on their systems. Its kind of like expensive power cables, little silver cups, myrtle wood blocks, etc. You can spend your life looking for these differences or you can listen to the music. Just depends on which part of the hobby most interests you.

You might want to spend some time experimenting. Most of us have. I must say getting a new Chord Hugo DAC swamped any possible improvements in wav versus flac, etc.

Dts, Digital files can sound different in spite of being "bit perfect". The main and only reason for that is jitter - a variation in time that converts into noise. Jitter creates sidebands that are at very low level but still very audible since not harmonically related to the signal. Jitter is a main problem of digital playback. It can be generated by the source, digital cable or the DAC itself. It is pretty much system dependent.

Kijanki - I assume bit perfect software/hardware delivery is a given. I am talking about different sound from bit identical files. There is no timing information in a digital file so the jitter comes on playback. There are lots of sources of it, as you say. But, how do you get different jitter from 2 identical files played back on the same system? It is theoretically possible, for example, if one file is contiguous and the other is badly fragmented and you computer and disk drive are really noisy. But if two bit identical files are contiguous and on the same platter on the same drive, some people will still say they sound different. That is the part I just cannot hear. Can you?

Let's not take this thread down the road of debating all those issues, unless the OP wants to. There are certainly endless threads on that topic I just wanted to explain to him some of the issues that are so often debated.