Continuing with CDs?

So the Yamaha CD player that I bought turned out to be too finicky. Certain CDs will skip slightly in certain passages. Now I have to try to figure it out if I can return it under warranty. Disappointing.

my onkyo did that, stabilized the legs a little more and seemed to clear it up

That might be worth a try. It's a maddening problem. If I could do something short of returning it that solves the issue, that would save a lot of hassle.

Stabilizing didn’t seem to help so in my desperation I decided to try to clean the lens, which seems to be the only possible DIY fix that’s worth a try, although the Yamaha website specifically tells you not to do it. It required a screwdriver and some fairly minor disassembly but I managed to get access to the lens and wipe it gently with some rubbing alcohol. Fingers crossed that it works.

My Oppo BDP-83 still chugs along 14 years from purchase, though the remote and panel buttons can be a little difficult. It's better able to handle discs that are scratched or have bronzing than other players.

For some reason, discs in huge classical sets like the George Szell Columbia Albums collection can be impossible for some players to read, even though they're clean and not especially long. I don't know if it has something to do with the "grooves" printed on the label side or if the discs are manufactured poorly, even though they look fine. But the Oppo can always play them.

Before the Yamaha I had a 90s vintage Sony 5-disc changer that was built like a tank and could play just about anything without skipping, only problem is that sound quality has improved a bit since then, which was nagging at the back of my mind.

I picked up a NAD C 451i from a local record store back at the end of 2015, just before I started on a hi-fi upgrade odyssey, to replace an old listening post CD player that I got for free and never really worked reliably. I got a new NAD amp recently with only one line in so I've switched to using the 541i as a transport via the coax. It sounds good. Don't think I'll be able to replace it for the £40 I paid when it goes - it's got to be over 20 years old now.

if you don't want to spend a lot, it might be cheaper to just get anything that spins a disc (dvd player or whatever) off craigslist for $20 - as long as it has an optical out - and buy an affordable outboard DAC like a Schitt Modi

but the jitter

With these older players the output of the laser drifts down over time to the point where read errors occur. There are usually pots inside the mechanism which allow you to adjust the output power and the gain of the reading circuit - obviously requires measuring equipment to adjust correctly but if you have a dead player it can be worth finding the service manual and cautiously adjusting them.
Many players from niche brands also use quite standard optical reader mechanisms for which replacements can be bought on eBay. More fuss than finding a used player but if you have one that’s special, it can bring it back.
The number one failure culprit is heat: it kills laser diodes. So if you have a stack of components, put the cd player underneath anything which generates warmth such as amplifiers.

I'm replacing my car CD player tomorrow and probably getting the Nakamichi, which is dumb, it's just an imprint and has nothing to do with the legendary Nakamichi Dragon tape deck -- the company has changed ownership at least once since those days -- but, you know, imprimatur & whatnot, evidently the Nakamichi sucks for car phone calls but I will literally never use the car stereo system to take a call so w/e

I bought an 80s Nak CD deck used, to replace a CD changer in an Alfa I bought, and it was an absolute gem soundwise. Probably wouldn't work with current car control bus systems tho.
https://cdn.snsimg.carview.co.jp/carlife/images/UserCarPat/1693781/p1.jpg
Damn, I need to retrieve that player I realise now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGSzvl_F9ag-

A lot came with mp3 decoders, but did any dvd/blu-ray players play FLACs (though I guess at that point they should also accept USB and the game is up)?

I think they play all that stuff now

The USB audio interface in my Prius plays mp3s and good old WMAs

Oppo BDP-103 definitely plays FLAC's. I think the 93 does too. It may not be the most user-friendly interface to do so though.

If I had some painless way to convert all my CDs to FLAC, I would probably go that route. Someone should make a CD player that looks and acts like a regular CD player but in the background it rips every CD you play in it to FLAC, tags it, and stores it in an internal HD. Over time your collection gets digitized and then you can just play from the internal storage using some phone app or something.

that's what I did (ripped them all), it's easy to keep up now

went to Half-Price this past weekend and someone unloaded their entire REM CD collection so I filled in all my gaps (Reckoning, Monster, New Adventures in Hi-Fi)

If I had some painless way to convert all my CDs to FLAC, I would probably go that route.

Can you tell me what's good about FLACs relative to other formats? I download them when there's nothing else available, but I immediately convert them to my preferred everyday-listening format, which is 256 AACs. (Sonically indistinguishable from 320 MP3s.) FLACs are so inconvenient (iTunes won't play them) that I can't understand them being anyone's format of choice, but obviously they are.

what mac are you using that you're still on itunes?

unperson you can use ALAC which is interconvertible with FLAC and also lossless. I just kept a Mac sitting on a side table set to rip-and-eject each time a CD was inserted, I would swap the CD each time I walked past and one had ejected. Took a couple of months for ~2000 discs but that was it, now I just add Bandcamp purchases and rip new discs as they come in.

what mac are you using that you're still on itunes?

I refer to Music as iTunes the same way I refer to X as Twitter.

Many xp's to UMS - my simple back up plan is a cheap DVD player with a coax out. I saw one for £20 in the supermarket before Christmas and was tempted to buy it so the back up was there.

There's a kind of archival/psychological comfort with FLACs that nothing's been lost and you can reconstruct a bit-for-bit perfect copy of the original .wavs ripped from the CD or even better if it came from a higher resolution transfer rather than a CD, but for my ears, yeah I can't tell the difference.

It would be cool to have a hybrid listening format (I think FLACs do support more multitracks) for stems though -- could selectively listen to just the bass track on and justice for all...

I am team FLAC for life, yes I can still hear the difference even though I am an old punk with tinnitus, and you can always convert back to WAV if you wanna burn a CDR for the car or a friend or something

I use Vox as my music player these days, so I just rip every new CD to FLAC and play through that

I thought FLAC’s was primarily about saving space. Like when I traded bootleg CD-R’s in the ‘00s, it was preferred for trees in order to fit multidisc sets into less discs - also to protect the data since it would have to be a CD-ROM and the data correction built into that format was more reliable than a music CD.

Also saves time for downloading music for those with slower connections.

But otherwise no advantage in terms of sound quality.

originally, yes, but you can also tag them and add images, which you can't do with WAV/AIFF

i.e. metadata sorry

FLACs aren't that much smaller than WAVs are they? like 10-20% smaller?

storage is pretty cheap nowadays, 2000 CDs at ~500 megabytes a FLAC rip is about 1 terabyte... you can get a >14TB hard drive for 2-300 bucks these days. that's like a billion CDs!

Depending on the setting and even the music, especially something like a spare spoken word recording, they can be a lot smaller. If it's a mono recording ripped from a CD, right off the bat you know you'll save at least half the data since it's two duplicate channels.

Actually 10-20 is more for zip compression. For FLAC, it can be as much as 70%: https://hbfs.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/looking-at-flac-compression-ratios/

> Someone should make a CD player that looks and acts like a regular CD player but in the background it rips every CD you play in it to FLAC, tags it, and stores it in an internal HD

https://blog.richersounds.com/product-review-bluesound-vault-2i-cd-ripper-and-network-streamer/

there used to be adverts in the papers for such a thing for years. this isn't it, but does the same job. from 2018...

https://luxe.digital/lifestyle/technology/brennan-b2-review/

this is the one from the adverts

I've not so scientifically noticed that ripping to FLAC seems to take way longer than just ripping to wav/aiff, which makes a lot of sense. The last "ripping project" I did I used FLAC and it took forever. Nowadays I only rip here and there, and just do it to aiff.

oh yeah I just rip them to WAV in itunes and then convert to Flac, much faster

I've been using a £30 DVD player into DAC for the last couple of years and it's fine sound-wise, but it takes a while to start actually playing a CD and there's no display (so no track number or time). I thought it wouldn't bother me but it's just annoying enough that I'll probably pick up a dedicated transport (refurb Cambridge Audio cxc seems to be about half price) or basic CD player separate at some point soon.

Maybe the right very cheap DVD player wouldn't have these issues but there are comfort pitfalls on it's-just-bits route.

what do read errors sound like? Is that just skipping?

So my player’s issue usually seems to start towards the middle of the disc, it will start making a faint skipping noise about once a second. If I stop the disc and restart the same track it will play fine. I contacted Yamaha and they said I should update the firmware, which requires downloading a file and putting it on a USB flash drive. So I guess that’s the next step in my adventure.

Fingers crossed, but seems like updating the firmware actually helped. Haven't had the skipping issue since I updated. Seems crazy they would ship a CD player with an issue like that, but I guess at least they can offer a DIY fix.

there's no display (so no track number or time). I thought it wouldn't bother me but it's just annoying enough that I'll probably pick up a dedicated transport (refurb Cambridge Audio cxc seems to be about half price) or basic CD player separate at some point soon.

this would seriously drive me insane

I have ~2400 CDs, many of which I ripped a *long* time ago. I'd love to have them as FLAC or even just higher bitrate MP3s. I must overcome my laziness and just get ripping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiREEdjDX20

One solution for ripping a large number of CDs (or Blu-Rays) is to connect up 4-6 drives via USB and rip simultaneously. I use three at once for ripping Blu-Rays and my computer doesn't break a sweat. Mass FLAC conversion shouldn't be too taxing for a modern multicore/multithreaded CPU.

damn fancy

you can do it Duke! I am so happy that I did, now I can just keep up by ripping new-to-me items

Yeah what sleeve said. I did my massive initial rip back in the late 2000s at 320k mp3s and stayed with that standard for a while for anything new, but as I was able to upgrade my main hard drive over time it got to the point where I could switch to ALAC for both CD rips and Bandcamp downloads and did so, and have in bursts gone back to rerip things as available. Never hurts.

A couple of months ago I started using Soulseek for downloading files of stuff I have on vinyl. It’s been a dream, and it’s fast. Is there any reason to rip your own cds when Soulseek is faster?

if you are anal about ripping things to your own personal specifications, rip your own

otherwise yeah soulseek is faster

I've never thought to rip from multiple drives at once!

Semi-offtopic, but ok, so one sets an external USB drive to a specific DVD region and we have a few chances to switch it before its locked. If I have more than one external drive, can I set one to region 1, another to region 2? or is that locked in the OS for all external drives? I've never owned more than one at a time to try.