Trounced, David pc-audio vs Goliath cd-transport (David TKOed)

[Nenon]

Not surprised at all. Computers are noisy, and it takes a lot of effort to achieve similar performance to a well designed CD transport. 

 

Tidal's streaming quality is far away from playing a locally ripped CD. People have been able to improve Tidal's quality by taking a really good care of the network using SOTM switches, JCAT Femto NET cards, good LPS, cables, etc. But I have not heard anyone with a good resolving system saying that Tidal sounds as good as any other sources. 

 

You would be better off comparing a CD that is properly ripped on your local computer vs. the same CD played through the CD transport. You might be surprised that some locally ripped CDs may sound better than hires HDTracks files.

 

I personally do not expect your Lenovo laptop to get even close to the transport no matter what decrapifiers/reclockers/etc. you add after it. Your laptop is adding a lot of noise and it's nearly impossible to completely get rid of it. It would be a much better approach to start with a very clean digital signal and try to keep it clean all the way to your DAC. This is what companies like Innuos do in their products. But to be honest, I don't think any of their products besides the Innuos Statement ($14K) would be able to compete with the Zanden transport. Maybe the Innuos Zenith MK3 gets close but not there... 

 

And just for the record, I don't have a CD transport and have been trying to make computer audio to sound as good as a CD. It has been a long journey...

 

If you look at the big thread here, you would see the extensive efforts people put into their digital source set ups.  This comes to mind:

On 4/22/2019 at 12:27 PM, austinpop said:

[Nenon]

3 hours ago, aswp said:

I don't understand how locally ripped files can sound better than HDTracks files. Can you clarify how this is possible.

 

I did not mean that ripped CDs are always better than files downloaded from HDTracks. It depends where the files were extracted from. It could be from a different CD release than yours than may or may not sound better. If you are comparing a CD playing from a transport to the same music playing from a computer, it would be a good idea to reduce the variables by playing the same data (ripped from the same CD) rather than downloading the album from HDTracks and assuming it is the exact same recording, mastering, release, etc. 

 

When you are ripping a CD, there are different settings you can use. Generally speaking, you can do it the fast way or you can have the ripping software take its time to ensure every bit is downloaded accurately. CDs can have have micro scratches, which makes some sectors difficult to read. Your ripping software could skip those hard to read sectors (i.e. fast mode) and interpolate the data. Or it can take it's time, go back and forth until it could recover every possible bit. On a resolving system it is not very difficult to hear audible differences on the same track ripped accurately and not so accurately. 

 

Then, there is the upsampling. I don't believe that every source HDTracks sells as 192/24 is a native 192/24 recording. And I do believe they use an upsampling process. Not to open a new can of worms, but upsampling does not always sound better and that would be system specific. In my system for example, a native CD 44.1 kHz/16 track sounds better than some of the upsampled tracks from HDTracks. And I have also heard the opposite - an HDTracks track that sounds better than my CD rip.

 

People also report that playing the same file from different media (i.e. SSD, HDD, NAS, USB, etc.) sounds different. I also find that to be true and most likely it is the interference of the storage device with your computer while reading / writing. For example, SSD drives are quite noisy devices, and people don't like to play their files from SSD (they generate noise while extracting the file). I use a software player that loads the track in RAM while playing, and that helps.