CDs ripped by different drives sound different...nearly fell for it.
I had a horrendous experience using a RAID1 setup. One hard disk was 'audiophile' and the other just wasn't. Depending on the most efficient head positioning I'd get a read of 24/192 FLAC data from the "good" drive then some from the "bad" drive. I swapped the "bad" drive and right away the wife came in from the kitchen to ask what had happened to the hi-fi.
I stream my files from RAM, simply because the hard drive isn't then whirring away, creating electrical interference that isn't grounded fully via the DAC. I doubt it has any direct effect on the digital data, but the ground hum can EDITED up quiet passges. Thankfully there is a ground lift on the DACmagic, but its not perfect, and nowehere hear as silent as say the NAD C390 I tried, or even the Chord Qute (both using USB, optical is of course an entirely different proposition)
if you are getting electrical ground hum from your hard drive then you've got more serious problems I would say.
It's not from the hard drive. There is a ground loop via any USB connection, some PCs are worse than others my old Viao was terrible, the Asus is better. Unplugging the PSU completely removes any interference. This is why the Chord Qute has a grounding terminal, so it's not a unique problem that I have.
I would use optical, but USB async sounds better from the Dacmagic.
I stream my files from RAM, simply because the hard drive isn't then whirring away, creating electrical interference that isn't grounded fully via the DAC. I doubt it has any direct effect on the digital data, but the ground hum can EDITED up quiet passges. Thankfully there is a ground lift on the DACmagic, but its not perfect, and nowehere hear as silent as say the NAD C390 I tried, or even the Chord Qute (both using USB, optical is of course an entirely different proposition)
if you are getting electrical ground hum from your hard drive then you've got more serious problems I would say.
It's not from the hard drive. There is a ground loop via any USB connection, some PCs are worse than others my old Viao was terrible, the Asus is better. Unplugging the PSU completely removes any interference. This is why the Chord Qute has a grounding terminal, so it's not a unique problem that I have.
I would use optical, but USB async sounds better from the Dacmagic.
I had a similar problem, but didn't find an issues between optical or USB using the DACmagic Plus (a good DAC by the way).
I had a horrendous experience using a RAID1 setup. One hard disk was 'audiophile' and the other just wasn't. Depending on the most efficient head positioning I'd get a read of 24/192 FLAC data from the "good" drive then some from the "bad" drive. I swapped the "bad" drive and right away the wife came in from the kitchen to ask what had happened to the hi-fi.
awesome. Cheered up my monday morning
It's not from the hard drive.
eh? you just said "simply because the hard drive isn't then whirring away, creating electrical interference that isn't grounded fully via the DAC"? Confused I is....
I would use optical, but USB async sounds better from the Dacmagic.
Is it a laptop or desktop you are using? If it's a desktop you could try a dedicated usb card that may reduce the ground hum from the motherboard. However, if you are getting a ground hum out of your computer via the usb then something is not grounded right, and that can actually be a manufacturing issue, not just a random issue.
hell, if people have money to burn you can purcahase an "audiophile" usb card for 350 dollars http://shop.smallgreencomputer.com/SOtM-tX-USBexp-Audiophile-PCIe-to-USB-Audio-Card-tX-USBexp.htm
or a sata noise power filter http://shop.smallgreencomputer.com/SOtM-In-Line-SATA-Power-Noise-Filter-SOTMSATA.htm
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>I don't know why nobody has developed a CD player that rips the music to internal stored files and then plays them<
The Memory Player 64
http://www.meridian-audio.com/en/collections/products/808v5-signature-re...
Meridian G61R, HD621, G55, MC200, MS600
Pioneer LX5090 Calibrated, Marantz UD7007, HIFi Racks Podium Reference
Monitor Audio GX100, GXC150, Apex A10, BK XLS400 (set with hard knee house curve)
Graham Slee Spatia (SC) Graham Slee Cusat 50 (IC x 5 Analogue,x 4 Digital)