All rips not equal...?!

[Anonymous]

First I apologize for being a latecomer to this very interesting thread. I read each post and many quite frankly simply prove the saying "a little knowledge is dangerous" to be true indeed. I have great respect for Cyrus and their explanation about the importance of the transport and its technical challenges is absolutely spot on. There are many ways to skin a cat, of course, which explains why you will see several exceptional transports in the market, one is even belt-driven. The transport is the very first point of entry of musical information and even here variables that ultimately affect a faithful read abound e.g. disc's surface integrity, laser focus and servo mechanism accuracy, etc. This stage alone can clearly show that not all rips are equal.

Regarding hearing or not hearing any difference, again, you must consider the plethora of variables at work here. That is, variables in ripping mentioned above, the quality of DAC used, the quality of amp/preamp used, the quality of speakers/headphones used, the quality of cables used, room acoustics if speakers are used, etc. You get the picture. The reason why some people become audiophiles is because some people just need to know and enjoy the whole arduous and expensive process of finding out, With an extremely high resolution audio system even subtle differences are easily heard if they're there.

Peace.

 

[The_Lhc]

musichead:First I apologize for being a latecomer to this very interesting thread. I read each post and many quite frankly simply prove the saying "a little knowledge is dangerous" to be true indeed. I have great respect for Cyrus and their explanation about the importance of the transport and its technical challenges is absolutely spot on. There are many ways to skin a cat, of course, which explains why you will see several exceptional transports in the market, one is even belt-driven. The transport is the very first point of entry of musical information and even here variables that ultimately affect a faithful read abound e.g. disc's surface integrity, laser focus and servo mechanism accuracy, etc. This stage alone can clearly show that not all rips are equal.

(sigh) no, it doesn't. Your points ONLY apply to audio CD players that only have one chance to read a CD. When ripping a CD in a computer, the computer can read and re-read the CD as many times as it likes in order to get the data off accurately.

Take something like dbPowerAmp, when you rip a CD using that the default method of checking is to compare the rip to others of the same disc held in the AccurateRip database online and it tells you how many other people's rips of the same CD match yours. If it's a popular disk this can be hundreds, even thousands of matches. Now, if ever computer was getting slightly different data off of the CD, there would be no matches at all, so to see hundreds of matching rips would suggest that hundreds of computers are randomly getting the same incorrect data from the CD. That simply isn't possible. Any computer is capable of reading the information stored on a CD with 100% accuracy (assuming the disk isn't damaged of course), if they weren't you wouldn't be able to install software from them and we've been doing that for decades.

I read each post and many quite frankly simply prove the saying "a little knowledge is dangerous" to be true indeed.

Isn't it just?

 

[manicm]

the_lhc:juxter1:Perhaps it was, but as it's a service they provide to get you up and running then it can't really be relevant to the ease of set up. HUH? You've NEVER set it up, all you've done is plug it in! You have no idea what setting it up involves, Plug and Play means "get it out of the box, hook it together and it pretty much works", it does not mean "I have a man to do these things for me!". Linn wouldn't offer the service if they thought there was a hope that the average user could do it themselves, ergo, it must be a right royal pain in the bracket!

but if you go over to the Linn forums owners seem happy to go through the initial pain of setting up. But agreed planet Linn and Earth differ on the meaning of 'Plug and Play'

 

[juxter1]

Perhaps you should think about people who don't want to have to mess around with all the network settings, don't know how to or who simply have no interest.

The set up was included in the price so why would I want to not use it.

You seem to be under the illusion that anyone who buys equipment wants to set it all up for themselves yet a lot of hifi shops offer the ability to audition equipment at home and will install said equipment in a system. For Linn the installation is part of the price so who in their right mind would not wish to use it.

Perhaps it's just Linn bashing that motivates some of the postings about supposedly difficult set ups. Lots of people, myself included have used the service and are more than happy with it.

 

[The_Lhc]

juxter1:
Perhaps you should think about people who don't want to have to mess around with all the network settings, don't know how to or who simply have no interest.

The set up was included in the price so why would I want to not use it.

You seem to be under the illusion that anyone who buys equipment wants to set it all up for themselves yet a lot of hifi shops offer the ability to audition equipment at home and will install said equipment in a system. For Linn the installation is part of the price so who in their right mind would not wish to use it.

Perhaps it's just Linn bashing that motivates some of the postings about supposedly difficult set ups. Lots of people, myself included have used the service and are more than happy with it.

You're still missing the point, if people don't want to go through all that hassle, they don't have to, they can buy a Sonos system (for example) and it practically installs itself.

When I first got mine I made a comment along the lines of "it took me longer to get it out of the box than it did to get it working". That wasn't a joke, it wasn't hyperbole, it wasn't the slightest exaggeration, I was telling the truth, it did ACTUALLY take me longer to unbox all the components than it did to get it set up and running. For all those people who "don't want to mess around with network settings", there ARE no network settings to mess around with with the Sonos system (there are but you only need to look at them if you have serious issues with wi-fi congestion, for normal setup and use you can ignore them).

The point is, was and always will be, the ONLY reason Linn include the service in the price is because they KNOW it's too difficult for the average user and that if they didn't offer the service they'd either get a load of system being returned by annoyed users of they'd have to send someone out to set it up later on.

And then there's the inconvenience of having to arrange a time for someone to come and do it, taking the day off to be there (and don't say you work from home, the vast majority of people don't), having to wait to use the gear you've already paid for, any other system you just buy it, take it home and start using it, much more convenient.

And the service isn't free, the cost will have been added to price you paid for the hardware. If it wasn't so complicated to setup they could either sell it cheaper (and thus possibly make more sales) or they could charge the same price and make more money on each sale. I mean seriously, do you honestly think they'd offer that service unless it was absolutely necessary? Of course not, they don't want the expense and the hassle of sending people out to do that, the fact that they have to tells you everything you need to know about the setup difficulty. And it's unnecessary, plenty of other systems do the same thing and are far easier to set up than the Linn one, so there's really no excuse for it.

 

[manicm]

juxter1:

Perhaps you should think about people who don't want to have to mess around with all the network settings, don't know how to or who simply have no interest.

The set up was included in the price so why would I want to not use it.

You seem to be under the illusion that anyone who buys equipment wants to set it all up for themselves yet a lot of hifi shops offer the ability to audition equipment at home and will install said equipment in a system. For Linn the installation is part of the price so who in their right mind would not wish to use it.

Perhaps it's just Linn bashing that motivates some of the postings about supposedly difficult set ups. Lots of people, myself included have used the service and are more than happy with it.

I don't think anybody was Linn bashing. Indeed any streamer like DS needs more-or-less the same attention when setting up.

 

[Andrew Everard]

IME most streaming clients either find the DLNA/UPnP content on the network to which they're connected by Ethernet, then are ready to play, or do so once they have found the wireless network active in the home (where Wi-Fi capability is provided) and any security passwords required are input.

The Linn streaming clients seemed to require rather more faffage than this - and probably I have tested more streaming client units than anyone else on the magazine.