Speaking of ripping, this might not be that important but just for fun I compared rips of the same CD’s in AIFF, WAV, and FLAC extensively and found that FLAC loses a bit of “presence” when compared to AIFF and WAV. I couldn’t tell much difference between AIFF and WAV though, but if you put a gun to my head I would give the nod to AIFF to have the edge on being a little better. FLAC saves you on storage space though. Anyway, not a whole lot of difference.
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With dbPoweramp you can rip to DSD. I tried ripping a CD to 64k, 128k, and higher I believe. I couldn’t hear any difference between FLAC and DSD when doing this. But ripping to DSD creates huge files so it has that going for it.
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“…which is nice.”
— Bill Murray, “Caddy Shack”
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Will the new streamer have a linear power supply? Not sure if I had missed this in a previous post (Comments)
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On 20 May, Paul wrote: “It will have AC in so it will not benefit from a DC converter.” He described the benefits of galvanic isolation in a few posts as well.
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Thank you for the reply (info)
^^^ Yes
Also, Roon radio is completely worth any microscopic differences in sound quality. Roon Radio does a brilliant job of “DJ-ing” your library. I get stuck in a rut sometimes, and Roon Radio has helped me discover and rediscover material. Both JRiver and Roon are available on my system. It’s a struggle to hear the difference. The joy my family gets by navigating Roon’s interface to find material and the Cross-reference materials for that material is highly additive to the experience.
Maybe there is a difference where music is rendered and the impact of the Bridge II interface. I prefer USB with all rendering on a Mac with Roon in exclusive mode and buffers set to 2x.
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The Roon radio feature is fantastic!
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Great tip! I gave it a go and I’m not too sure if it’s the AIFF of itself, the fact that I’m now ripping @1024kBit/s for AIFF (it had been @128kBit/s for FLAC) or a combo of the two… but I like the results!! I’ve redone a couple of live concerts and they’ve got a nice bit of extra depth. Thank you!! 
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I now do everything in AIFF. I rip and purchase files in AIFF simply because it sounds better. WAV is good too but does not hold the meta data I want.
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Anything ripped into 128kBit/s will lose “presence”. I was going to ask how to quantify that comment with data. Now I know! Don’t think AIFF sounds any better than FLAC based on that! A different thread, like “Can you hear the difference between lossy and lossless audio?” might be more suitable for further discussion of this. Even the coming mighty Octave streamer probably cannot solve for 128kBit/s source data!
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+1, RE: Roon’s impact on my finding new music. I mentioned this before somewhere – since I became a lifetime Roon subscriber a couple of years ago, I have purchased more CDs and SACDs than I had purchased in the previous 10 years. (Participating in this forum has also helped me expand my musical horizons.)
However, in my system, JRMC generally outperforms Roon in terms of consistently better sound quality (both music management/play systems get my files and stream web content from Qobuz and Tidal to my DSD DAC via the Bridge II Ethernet card). YMMV.
Best regards.
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After a lot of research (reading about the plusses and minuses of formats, mostly) I also settled on AIFF as my standard format. I made the decision so long ago that I don’t recall my being able to objectively declare it be superior, sonically, to other lossless formats.
FWIW.
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I also settled on AIFF. This format is superior than WAV and FLAC that I have tried.
If you’re burning DVD discs like I do, make sure you use DVD-R, not DVD-RW. The RW sounded way worse than R on PST and often stopped in the middle of playing.
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A Grimm MU1 makes the gap between Roon and JRiver too small to hear. Just sayin……
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Good to know…
So the MU1 is a keeper, then.
What became of your PinkFaun magic box? I have a PinkFaun I2S cable that is looking for a mate. Maybe I should abandon my B-II love affair and sink the Pink…Faun that is…
via AES or via Network connection to a DAC?
If AES, does that include using the MU1’s upscaling?
The Pink Faun is where it always has been in my setup. Just unpowered. I think I’d be willing to find a new home/owner for it.
The MU1 requires use of AES/EBU or you miss the magic. It isn’t merely upsampling, it goes deeper than that. But it is both server and endpoint so for some it replaces some expensive and loved gear. It delivers though!
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I have read several good reviews about the MU-1 upsampling, but I have yet to read comments on the downsampling of DSD. The MU1 downsamples DSD64, DSD128, and DSD256 data to 24/176.4k PCM for streaming from AES. How does that sound?
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It sounds brilliant. Eelco Grimm believes removing Jitter is more important and the results prove it. It’s a wonderful piece. I should mention I have a lot of DSD music and some nights I listen to nothing but DSD for hours on end.
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