Getting the most from the Logitech Touch

[Deton Nation]

It does! I dont have any reference recordings, but listening to Grateful Dead soundboards, Charlie Miller Mastered are incredible. So much more info spatially and airwise. Things are more real. Sweet!
Yeah you def want a hardware controller. Probably something in the neighborhood of 4 TB. Each 24/96 album takes up a DVD in size. Not that there are that many out there.
M

[richidoo]

That's awesome. I might need to get one to play hirez too.

OSX does have RAID software built in. That would be the fastest performance, all local drives. But you don't need that much speed just for music, even hirez is nothing like video. If you have room inside the box. Maybe it can control a bunch of USB drives as Raid, idunno

[mdconnelly]

I have an SB3, Duet & Touch and what I love about the Squeezebox products is the absolute simplicity and convenience of use.  While I will say that there have been software "challenges" along the way, the lastest version seems rock solid.  The ability to access via iPeng or SqueeMote on my iPhone is near perfect.  I might need to get an iPad for just that purpose. 

I've also discovered a very nice side benefit: when we go on vacation, I take my SB3, a pair of AudioEngine A2s and my computer and I'm golden!   

The sound quality is amazingly good and, yes, like the Transporter, the new Touch can play 24/96 natively.  (the Duet and Sb3 can do 24/48).   The Squeezebox also supports a much broader set of Internet apps now than it did before and Pandora is certainly one of them.  Personally, I really like Last.FM as well.

Yes, ripping all your music can  be a pain, but then, it is a great way to actually catalog all your music - no more trying to find a CD that you "know" you own but damn if you can find it - in the car?  kitchen?  Damn, where'd I put it?"

And while it is totally illegal and something I'd never do , the ability to have music from family & friends, or the occasional Torrent "experimental" download is a great way to hear music you might not ever get exposed to.  Personally, I think I've bought more music since I began ripping than I ever did before.  I find something new I like and jump on it.

The only downside I can see is that it still does require a bit of technical expertise to know how to use the tools to rip music and to have a home network available to optimally use these products.

[mfsoa]

OK this might be a dumb question but I can't find how to make dbpoweramp record directly to my 1TB external drive 

Or is it not possible or desirable to rip from an external USB DVD writer directly to a big external USB hard drive?

Thanks

-Mike

[richidoo]

It should work Mike. I rip to hard drives on my LAN, that's farther away than your local USB drive.

You can't type directly into the Path field. You have to press the little "Set" button at the right side of the Path field in order to edit the value. When you do that, a nice little popup appears to let you find all available locations. Your USB drive should appear as a logical drive (drive letter) under My Computer.

[mfsoa]

 

[richidoo]

yay!  Now you're shittin in high cotton

[mfsoa]

I compared WAV files ripped using EAC and dBpoweramp and thought that the dB version sounded significantly better (I self-blinded by not knowing which was which, and anyway I certainly did not want to hear a differencve...). There was a three-dimensionality present that was truncated w/ EAC. dB had better delineation of the outlines of images both left and right, as well as front to back.  EAc sounded flat and boring by comparison. I have not done any file comparisons to see if the rips were identical.

Has anyone else done a head to head of these programs?  I'm glad I did 'cause I'd have really bummed to hear all of this after ripping my collection w/ EAC!

So, my drives come formatted w/ FAT32 so I reformat each one, which takes ~12 hours. Then a little slip of parep falls out of the drive box that says, Oops, we told you it was FAT32 but really, it's formatted with NTFS!! Oh well, no biggie.

So I ripped ~ 50 GB of WAV this weekend. I think I'll stick w/ WAV for now - The Touch seems to find it just fine and I can always compress later.

Thanks for all the help, guys!

-Mike (the rippin' fool)

[richidoo]

Lookin good! 

You can use Microsoft File Compare to compare the EAC and dbPoweramp WAV files. File compare comes with all windows since 3.0. Go to command line, type "fc /?" to learn how to use it.  It can handle binaries like WAV. It has human readable output. Likely it will only tell you a percentage of difference, not details about air or tonal warmth. haha  But you never know!!

I could hear a difference between flac and WAV played back on SB3. Decode was on SB3, I think.

I find flac to be "good enough" so I rip to flac and covert to mp3 or ALAC as needed. dbPoweramp makes these file conversions very easy, even bulk conversions of directories is possible. I don't know if EAC can do that. Be sure to set your dbPoweramp settings to secure rip. Mine was set to Burst mode by default. AccurateRip is a nice feature, allowing a fast unsecure rip when the CD is in the Accurate Rip database, you know it is perfect, even on fastest rip. Notice the Settings button on the Secure setting. There's more in there to fiddle with. Better to know about these settings before starting your process.

When i used EAC it was unable to rip insecurely, so if a track was hosed, it would not output anything. dbPoweramp has the burstmode to avoid switching to a consumer media player to rip the bum track.
Rich

[Deton Nation]

My ALACs sound wonderfully wonderful. Im on a Mac & will take the hit for lossless compression, if there actually is any. My head exploded twice listening to 24/96 ALAC so it cant be all that bad.
M

[mfsoa]

For the discs that won't rip well w/ dB (too many sectors to re-read) I bring them to EAC. EAC can often slog through these faster than dB, I think, and still give you good rips.

For the discs that would still take too long on EAC, I'll try dB w/ burst mode, but I haven't done any like this yet.

-Mike

[richidoo]

My db usually can't fight its way through a bad track. Even if it rerips the bad sectors it still fails insecure at the end. But the track still plays. If I can hear any dropouts I try to fix them in Soundforge audio editor.  Usually this only happens on very scratched disks that I buy used.

[mdconnelly]

If EAC and dbPowerAmp both complete clean rips without error and with AccurateRip confirmation, then you should have totally identical WAV files.   There is only ONE clean rip.  Anything else is not a lossless, clean rip.  So, if you have two identical WAV files - one from EAC and one from dbPoweramp, I cannot fathom how they could sound different.  Not saying they don't, just can't see how.  And if they two files are not identical, at least one of the two rips was not clean (my money is on EAC, but admittedly, getting it configured correctly can be a bit of a bear).

I've played with lots of different ripping software and there is no question that some do better than others but, IMHO, EAC and dbPoweramp are the best.  In my experience, a clean CD will provide a perfect rip with EAC or dbPowerAmp as along as they're configured correctly.

I want to say your mileage may vary - but it shouldn't

[mfsoa]

Yep, I agree, they should sound the same, but they didn't, to me.

Kinda like burning CDRs - I believe that the data is identical yet the MAM-A Gold CDRs sound much better than the Taiyo Yudins (which are a well regarded brand) and wierdly enough, better than the original itself.

Or USB or digital cables making a difference (haven't tried myself, yet)

This may be due to jitter, which I wouldn't expect to be an issue for the ripping software.

Got me on this one.

-Mike

[Deton Nation]

Dammit, it probably does make a difference. Hopefully not a huge one. I just dont want to suck up so much space... though I did just buy a 6 Terrabyte Raid server. Will be doing Raid 5 on a 4 Bay esata setup. Chip is Oxford 963, a goodie.  So actual space will be 4.5 TB since its about 1 drive less.