Does a high end CD player provide better sound than a lossless rip?

Is it just the same recording or actually the same mastering?

 

^ THIS

The real comparison is when you feed the same thing to the same DAC (as a CD and its FLAC rip) . In theory, it's the same 0s and 1s to the same converter. In practice, I've read enough problems can arise to make CD or FLAC sound worse. And I have no intention to go down that route

 

A good and valid point; I have no idea. But I have yet to make the comparison where the Tidal stream sounds better than the CD copy, maybe I’m lucky in owning CDs which have been mastered well.

 

So Tidal/streaming has nothing to do with it, then.

 

There is jitter and noise both in cd and computet, in the end if the cd have good 16 bit dac and analogue part the cd would be constructed to makes parts inside the cd player to mach,

Ps. There is cd that takes hand of jitter before the sound goes to the dac!

 

I have fairly good, albeit not as advanced rig as some on this board.
I actually tried to experiment and compared CD with rip on my AYON-5 CD player, which also happened to have build-in DAC.
The player is highly regarded.
I used Auralic Femto streamer with AES/EBU and no processing/oversampling, etc.
For whatever reason I liked CD sound more, then a rip.
I am not discounting "placebo" effect, but it also may be peculiarity of this player.
I enjoyed, however, hi-rez versions of the same mastering more, then standard CD.

 

I've found the same thing with my Oppo 105. I also no difference in sound when I played CDs on my Cambridge Audio 840CDP transport or when I played files through my Logitec Squeezebox, which is hooked up to the digital input of the 840. I have most of my CDs ripped to my computer and/or hard drive and rarely play CDs themselves anymore. It saves the lazars on both players.

 

I have my Oppo set up to play either through the HDMI input from my PC, through the LAN, from same PC with a simple server installed, through the USB with an attached drive, and of course the disc drive of the Oppo. They all sound excellent! It's the mix that matters! Funny that people get caught up in this today, in 2018.

 

I also have Oppo 105, and it wonderful universal machine, a swiss knife really. Love it for many of it's virtues! But top of the line CD player it is not.

 

Spinning a disc isn't going to magically make the bits sound better. That was my point that flew over your head.

An expensive CD player, if the analog section is top notch can be an upgrade in SQ, but so can a quality DAC with a quality analog stage.

No where in my post did I say an Oppo is top of the line.

 

With my oppo 105 the sound quality from playing a CD was always noticeably worse than playing through the oppo's usb dac input, a lossless computer file downloaded from the same CD. As a result of this discovery I've never played a CD for years now. (loudspeakers: pair of Geithain RL906)

 

Interesting. What do you use as a source for playing ripped files?

 

I've noticed the same with my 3-year-old OPPO BDP-105D. At first I thought the sound from a CD was anemic compared to the USB input, but I realized the sound from the CD DACs was much more rounded, 3D and realistic, like the players were right there in the room. The sound from the USB ports (front or back) was more detailed but very flat and in-your-face, with little ambient information.

I rip CDs to WAV files using Exact Audio Copy, so I would think the WAV files would be as close to the CDs as they could be. The WAV files are stored on a 1 TB external SSD. I wonder if EAC has better jitter correction than the OPPO CD DACs, and that could be it. But if so, then why does the depth and air disappear with the WAV files/USB DAC(s)?

Does anyone have any idea why this would be? I guess the CD DACs and the USB DAC(s) are different. I can't find any info about this issue.

 

The USB DAC may have extra filtering to help keep the electrical noise from the USB data lines out of the audio.

 

These PS Audio videos are always objective and informative

 

As I understand, EAC has no "jitter correction" because jitter happens only if playback is linear. EAC is not linear. It reads chunks of data, then does it again; if they match, it means the extraction is right and it moves to the next chunk.
Unless specified differently in the settings.


BUT

Modern players should have a buffering section good enough to prevent jitter problems at all.

 

I play most of my CD's and all my SACD's from a SSD USB connected to a Sony UBP X-800 UHD BD (that also plays SACD and several flavours of Hi Res digital files including DSD) and this connected to a Topping D50 D/A converter via coaxial SPDIF. CD's are ripped to FLAC with dBPoweramp that has Accurate Rip, it does exactely the same as EAC but its interface is more intuitive. At the end of the rip it tells track by track if the rip is accurate or not. For SACD's I rip them first to ISO, I then extract its individual tracks with ISO2DSD and to finish I convert the resulting DSD files (only for stereo, multichannel is left as dsf) to DSD over PCM that makes a simple process, puts a DSD data stream in a 176.4/24 PCM container than it's recognized as DSD 64 by the Topping D50.
What do I prefer, play the disc, either a CD or a SACD directly or the ripped files from the SSD which is a non-mechanical media storage (can a SSD induce jitter?) via USB? I DO prefer the sound of the rips played from the SSD, maybe because it's a less jittery data storage,maybe it's just a placebo effect, the fact is that I haven't played a ripped CD or a SACD in maybe two years. And it's also a very convenient way to make my music easily available to play.

 

I have a Luxman CD player that has digital inputs that I use as a DAC. I will have to listen to a CD and then the same ripped CD and compare. Usually for critical listening play CD's ir vinyl. I stream just for background music if I'm Woking around the house.

 

Same DAC will provide the same sound with the exception of jitter or the player missing/not reading a pit on a disk. In this case the source with the better clock will sound better OR if the DAC re-clocks it is not an issue. But when a file is played back ALL “data” will be played. For a CD player it is possible that a pit on the disk is not read and causes an error that the CD system fixes with error correction. This is why many swear by the practice of ripping CD to hard disk for file playback sounds better. But we are definitely splitting hairs.

 

The problem is if the music was downloaded you never know exactly where and how the file you are downloading is coming from or was processed. The rare times I've bought or sampled music from I-tunes a lot of the time they have a variety of problems including distortions or unacceptable sound quality. 24 bit data downloaded can be a lot worse than 16 bits on a CD.

 

True but that goes beyond the point of comparing hardware performance though. Which was the topic discussed here.

Btw, the opposite can be true, the HD download being more Dynamic than the CD.

Still apples and oranges.

Totally, considering that one pit or two missing now and then ad not discernibile by ear.

 

True, I've got distracted because many people kept mentioning downloads and streaming. In that case the DAC used by the OP is an entry level DAC, if we compare that to a truly "High End" CD player then there is no point in discuss it. The CD player will win but that brings a lot of other questions as, will he connect it to a "High End" equipment or will he waste the extra sound by connecting to a less capable system?

He should have specified what he calls "High End" or at least put a price tag otherwise this discussion is interesting but pointless as in the end unless we know that, there is no correct reply. I haven't read the whole thread but those very important details were not provided originally.

I surely hope an HD download is better than a CD but in real life there is no guarantee it will be so.

 

Yes, a good CD player sounds better.

iPods are not the same as a god disc player.

Test yourself.
CDs will always sound better

 

I’d say entertaining and informative - not so sure they are completely objective. Avuncular as Paul appears, primarily, the videos exist to promote the interests of PS Audio.