Ripping CD's to SSD?
OK, so be patient here with me, I am an "old" 68 year old audiophile from the 1980’s dealing with new technology. I was away from the Audio Scene for 20 years until I came back in 2021. SO I’ve updated most of my equipment. One of those updates is an Aurender N200, which I got this April. I added a Samsung SSD drive to it and was thinking I may like to rip a few CD’s to it for the sake of comparison vs streaming Qobuz.
Please understand when ya all start mentioning file types and all that I am in the weeds. I am behind the tiems.
What I can tell you is i have a 10 year old Macbook Pro running OS 10.14.6 Mojave. I have the external Apple CD drive. How do i go about placing the CD into the drive, attaching a USB cable to the Aurender and getting the file loaded onto the Aurender Samsung drive? Do I need any special software? Dom i just stick the CD into the drive and the Aurender is found on my laptop and i select it as the location for the file. Like I said this is all so new to me, I want to learn. I’d like to see how i like this compared to listening through my CEC Tl1x. If the explanation gets technical you will lose me, go slow and walk me through it if you are willing. And thank you!
You can see my system in my profile. New speakers are on order to arrive soon!
While I can't tell you how to rip your cds to your N200 here are a couple of How To Guides from the Aurender website; Connect or "Mount" Aurender to a Mac Computer – Aurender Transferring Content From a Mac Over a LAN – Aurender You can find the How To Guides on the Aurender website by clicking on the Support link. I guess the South Koreans aren't familiar with the meaning the work "Mount" has in American slang. The Aurender is a nice streamer/server. Enjoy! |
There are two ways to do this but firstly you need to rip your CDs to your computer using DB Poweramp or Exact Audio Copy. Then copy those files to a clean USB stick and stick it into your Aurender. Then go into your Conductor app and select Library and then USB and then select which files you want to copy from the USB directory. Otherwise use the method above. |
They are not iTune apps, they are computer programs, "better" than iTunes. The external drive only works when it’s told to and Aiurrender does not posses this skill set. If a streamer is not configured as a ripper you pretty much have to rip into a computer, the exception being HiFi Rose, with their transport. |
Hi @fthompson251 , one solution is to enlist @lalitk' s kind help. The other is to download a program that rips CDs, one of the best - if not the best - being EAC mentioned above. Click on the link to go to their site. Following their instructions you will end up with the music file (.WAV, unless you decide otherwise) on your mac. Copy this file to a folder on your SSD. Connect your streamer & update -- and you're done.
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What I use, after ripping CD's for several years, is XLD. I've never tried EAC because as far as I know there is no version for Mac. XLD is a nice and light program that provides you with "accurate ripping" and that you can also use to transcode your audio files if that is what you want (up sampling, down sampling, bit depth, etc.) Depending on how much of a stickler you are for this issue and if you want to have a perfect tagging of your files, you can use a tagging app. In my case, I use Tag Editor, a paid and very nice one. |
My setup isn't up to the full audiophile standard, but I continue to use iTunes (actually called Music now) and have it rip my Applelossless files to a NAS that can be accessed by my streamer. There may be a better way, but I also have a Tidal account and really can't tell much if any difference when streaming CD quality files. If there is a difference I prefer the sound from my NAS but that could simply because it's what I'm used to hearing. |
I did this within the last year. You should download DB Poweramp from their website. It works with High Sierra and after, so you should be ok. You might need to ok downloading from a third party source when downloading. Make sure that your computer and your Aurender are on the same network. You should be able to format the SSD from inside of Conductor. I ripped and downloaded all of my CDs previously to a network server, but you can rip directly to the Aurender. It should show up on your network. Go through the conductor ‘Settings” menus in order to understand how network/storage..etc… all works. It isn’t that difficult. I’m older than you and just got back to two channel equipment/listening last year. It isn’t that complicated. In general you can make mistakes along the way and learn. That is what I did. If you find it easier, you can rip to a local computer drive and then just copy and paste the ripped files to the Aurender’s SSD. |
OP,
I will be interested in hearing your findings. I own two Aurrender streamers, N100, and W20SE. In both cases I cannot hear a difference between a stored file and the streamed (same master / file). Often streaming sounds better because Qobuz has much of what I listen to in higher resolution files. |
Good advice here. Not sure why the OP is ripping to a usb flash drive when his stated intent was to rip to a Samsung HD. The first step to is to just rip to the Samsung HD. Just put a disc in the Apple Optical Drive and have both that and the Samsung attached via usb to the computer. The Aurender doesn’t need to be involved at this point. In system preferences for laptops there is a place to pick where you want the rips to end up, and designate the Samsung. The software package will ask you what file type-just pick FLAC. EAC and dbPoweramp both work well. Once the files are on the Samsung then connect that to the streamer. |
I am expecting that finding, I didn't buy a big SSD, only 2T. One thing I wanted to understand is if the ripped version sounds different will it be because of anything I have in my network? If so I can work further to improve it, if not then my network is up to snuff. Secondly I wanted to have the option to store some of my favorite music so no need to pull out the CD's and stick them in the transport. And I guess I'd like to learn more of this as digital playback is continuing to progress. I gave up on vinyl and sold all of it a few months ago. I am all digital now. For better or worse, it has always pleased me. Thank you every one.
@mahler123 I will give that a try, I will connect USB to my N200 from Macbook and see if the the SSD is recognized. My laptop doesn't have a ethernet connection, wi fi only so it's not discovering the N200. |
The Samsung drive referred here is an internal drive housed inside Aurender. So it does not have USB port. I would rip CD’s in WAV format. All other formats use some form of compression during ripping process. Once you have ripped files in your MAC hard drive, transfer them to Aurender folder, Music1. As long as your Aurender is on the same network, you can directly transfer files onto Music1 folder. That’s how I manage my downloads, they go straight to my Aurender Music1 folder from NativeDSD downloader. |
Welcome to digital world. To combat Wi-Fi, you need USB C to Ethernet dongle. This will speed up large file transfer. My laptop doesn’t have Ethernet port either, I use this dongle during my DSD downloads. Your ripped version may sound better possibly because of different master used on CD vs one being streamed and vice versa. I buy lot of Japanese XRCD’s and found them to be superior than most other versions including streaming. |
@fthompson251 I would also consider the transport and digital cable you are using to contribute to the quality of the digital file. Just as an audiophile transport can improve the sound of a CD by delivering less noise and vibration that translates to jitter, the same applies to cd ripping. I myself just used a basic external with methods discussed on this chain and have been very happy, until Aurender sent me an A30 on my request to evaluate and review. I have been using the built in ripper in that unit and the tracks I’m ripping with it sound better than the ones I ripped years ago with the external PC drive. The tracks deliver a slightly lower noise floor, larger soundstage, and a bit more tonal density. Add it all up and it’s noticeable. This shouldn’t dissuade you from ripping using an external CD drive, but just wanted to share my recent learnings. |
+1, @blisshifi One of the reason why I chose to invest in Aurender ACS100. Prior to acquiring ACS100, I used different methods to rip my CD’s and none of them were quite satisfactory in terms of ease, curation, playback and managing a large library of rips and downloads as ACS100. Since I continue to collect CD’s, ACS100 became essential to my system. Prior to ACS100, I owned Vault 2, while it ripped CD’s; the quality of metadata and playback was nowhere near the level of ACS100. The ACS100 may be considered a luxury component for ripping and for those savvy with laptops and ripping but it does so much more, all from its superb ACS Manager iOS app. It is a must own component for those who wants no intervention with laptop, wants to rip on the fly and appreciates SOTA file management system and already own another Aurender.
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OP,
Sounds like you are well set up to perform your comparisons. I have done a lot of that over my time as an audiophile.it is the only way to be sure that the findings conform to your own hearing and values. Enjoy. It is also good to have a few CDs on your streamer in case there is a problem with your network and great way to evaluate futzing with your network. |
@fthompson251 You only need ethernet for your Aurender to function. You connect to your Aurender using WIFI so you need your Aurender’s MAC address, can’t help you there I only use Windows. It’s important to connect using WIFI so you can re-name and organise folders and name tags. I like to change double and triple album CDs to a single CD. Just rip your CDs directly to your 512GB thumb drive then put it in the rear USB slot of the Aurender and use the Conductor app to copy to your 2TB SSD. 2TB is 2 Million GB, a CD is around 650GB so 2T divided by 650GB equals 3000 CDs. If you need more storage buy another 2TB or 4TB and put it in the second Aurender slot. You can copy from Slot1 to Slot2 BUT these SSDs are formatted using Aurender’s software so you can’t take them out and play them someplace else. I’d keep your 512GB thumbdrive as a backup, buy another when it’s full. |
OP I am not sure that you understood my last post. To repeat, the first step is to record the files to the Samsung Hard Drive. The Aurender doesn’t even have to be turned on for this. Then attach the HD to the Aurender. The MacBook doesn’t need to be turned on for this step. As long as the Streamer can then play the files from the HD you are then set |
What a PITA! I remember when I had to do this before I got rid of my unit. You don’t need the usb stick, point XLD to your linked network drive which is the aurender disk. BTW: how many of you aurender users backup your aurender disk drives that contain music data? Aurender is clueless about hardware when they claim they are “not content creators” so your drives are safe. Drives fail, no matter if they are HDD or SSD. Also, what happens when a drive fails and has to be replaced in the aurender server? Dealer fix or ship to aurender! No thanks |
Yesterday I tried ripping a CD to a random thumb drive to see if I could do it. I used Exact Audio Copy soft ware "ripper" and it ripped the CD. My problem is in the software I cannot figure how to tell it to rip to USB thumb drive. The folder labeled "Alice in Chains" is somewhere on the laptop in the EAC software , I just have to find it so I can send it to my thumb drive, once it’s there I can stick that in the N200. So it’s a process, I will get it figured out. My son will be here next weekend and I am sure he can help me too. Thanks guys! (I wanted to add I am recovering from back surgery so I’m a little slow in getting after things, secondly my pre amp is back at VAC for repairs so i am not in a hurry because of that. So this is delaying things too. ) |
@fthompson251 I would prefer to rip to my local hard drive and then copy direct to the Aurender unit or to the thumb drive anyways. The reason for this is that the internal disk’s writing speed is much faster and reliable to ripping direct to a thumb drive or network drive. I may be superstitious but it might be a way of ensuring a slightly lower noise floor in the ripping process, and I don’t mind copying the files to their destination after. |
Careful to have backups of the music if using SSD drives. They have a limited number of read / writes before they stop working. No recovery. The best is to have a backup and also use a severe use drive. A 5100rpm drive made to last. The mechanical drives at that speed are quiet, made for longevity. The same drive used in cars that last 10 years in sub zero weather and high car heat. |
