Location: South West-ish, UK
Posts: 476
I'm Patrick.
Ripped most of my CDs to AIFF Apple Lossless here.
Experimented with Wav, Flac all the usual suspects.
Found that there was less cpu “effort” in decompressing the AIFF file compared to Flac before it hit the Dac.
I found THAT could be one of the sources of files sounding different.
Did a deep dive on this stuff back in the day when setting up my Music Server, there’s a lot of factors at play potentially.
Just depends how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go.
Ripping to Flac is absolutely fine though, it’s great.
a difference not really worth caring about, especially if you use lowest Flac compression levels when ripping.
Storage space isn’t really an issue nowadays after all.
AC POWER
Hardwired 10kVA balanced mains powering entire system
AMPS
Meridian 557 power Amp (Modded) / PS Audio BHK Preamp (Modded)
SPEAKERS
Wharfedale Evo 4.4
DAC
PS Audio Directstream (Modded)
TURNTABLE
Pro-Ject X8 balanced output via XLR / Ortofon Quintet Blue cartridge
PHONOSTAGE
Pro-Ject DS3 B balanced Input (TT and Phonostage powered by Pro-Ject Power box RS2 linear psu)
DIGITAL
CD PLAYBACK - Shanling ET3 CD Transport over i2s to Dac + MOVIE PLAYBACK Oppo 203 (Modded: Linear PSU, i2s output to Dac)
Tweaked AP-Linux based Roon Server into Oppo 203 as Roon endpoint
Ipad Roon Remote.
Apple Music/ YouTube via AppleTV, fed to Shanling via Airplay 1 (losslessly) and onwards to Dac via Wireworld Silver Electra 7 i2s HDMI cable
SPEAKER CABLES
Biwired: Duelund DCA10GA (Bass) Duelund DCA16GA (mid & treble) Duelund 12DCA used as jumpers (On "Blackcat Cable" Chris Sommivigo's advice - Yup, it sounds better)
INTERCONNECTS
All Balanced: Ghost+ recording studio XLR cables
neither is CPU power
Current Lash Up:
TEAC VRDS 701T > Sony TAE1000ESD > Krell KSA50S > JM Labs Focal Electra 926.
Your not wrong!
In this case though, less can be better.
comes down to noise again?
I always underclocked the CPU on server builds.
Sounded better that way to me.
AC POWER
Hardwired 10kVA balanced mains powering entire system
AMPS
Meridian 557 power Amp (Modded) / PS Audio BHK Preamp (Modded)
SPEAKERS
Wharfedale Evo 4.4
DAC
PS Audio Directstream (Modded)
TURNTABLE
Pro-Ject X8 balanced output via XLR / Ortofon Quintet Blue cartridge
PHONOSTAGE
Pro-Ject DS3 B balanced Input (TT and Phonostage powered by Pro-Ject Power box RS2 linear psu)
DIGITAL
CD PLAYBACK - Shanling ET3 CD Transport over i2s to Dac + MOVIE PLAYBACK Oppo 203 (Modded: Linear PSU, i2s output to Dac)
Tweaked AP-Linux based Roon Server into Oppo 203 as Roon endpoint
Ipad Roon Remote.
Apple Music/ YouTube via AppleTV, fed to Shanling via Airplay 1 (losslessly) and onwards to Dac via Wireworld Silver Electra 7 i2s HDMI cable
SPEAKER CABLES
Biwired: Duelund DCA10GA (Bass) Duelund DCA16GA (mid & treble) Duelund 12DCA used as jumpers (On "Blackcat Cable" Chris Sommivigo's advice - Yup, it sounds better)
INTERCONNECTS
All Balanced: Ghost+ recording studio XLR cables
noise transfer is a possibility. but it's not a given. Heard some very good sounds from just a laptop plugged into a DAC, nothing fancy added or done.
I've never liked the idea of using a computer as a source though.
Current Lash Up:
TEAC VRDS 701T > Sony TAE1000ESD > Krell KSA50S > JM Labs Focal Electra 926.
Computers are noisy environments yeah,
can mitigate some but not all of the noise issues.
Good digital doesn’t need to be over complicated or expensive nowadays.
GREAT digital… sometimes it can be ‘pay to play’, though I’ve heard very spendy digital gear I never liked.
Naim Dac for instance, oh dear.
Needed the add on psu to make it sound like music.
Its a funny old game.
AC POWER
Hardwired 10kVA balanced mains powering entire system
AMPS
Meridian 557 power Amp (Modded) / PS Audio BHK Preamp (Modded)
SPEAKERS
Wharfedale Evo 4.4
DAC
PS Audio Directstream (Modded)
TURNTABLE
Pro-Ject X8 balanced output via XLR / Ortofon Quintet Blue cartridge
PHONOSTAGE
Pro-Ject DS3 B balanced Input (TT and Phonostage powered by Pro-Ject Power box RS2 linear psu)
DIGITAL
CD PLAYBACK - Shanling ET3 CD Transport over i2s to Dac + MOVIE PLAYBACK Oppo 203 (Modded: Linear PSU, i2s output to Dac)
Tweaked AP-Linux based Roon Server into Oppo 203 as Roon endpoint
Ipad Roon Remote.
Apple Music/ YouTube via AppleTV, fed to Shanling via Airplay 1 (losslessly) and onwards to Dac via Wireworld Silver Electra 7 i2s HDMI cable
SPEAKER CABLES
Biwired: Duelund DCA10GA (Bass) Duelund DCA16GA (mid & treble) Duelund 12DCA used as jumpers (On "Blackcat Cable" Chris Sommivigo's advice - Yup, it sounds better)
INTERCONNECTS
All Balanced: Ghost+ recording studio XLR cables