mblssmp2

Interesting what you say about the CD-Rs. The shop where I bought my DP-560 from, the only Accuphase dealer in the UK, told me that I am likely to find that if I burn downloads I will notice a slight improvement compared to playing it from the Melco and through the DAC of the DP-560. However, if I buy a CD, it will still sound better. I have not really explored this as I have only received the DP-560 a few weeks ago and just want to listen to many of my CDs and enjoy the music.

I have no answer to the 'why'.It is interesting that some of the high-end manufacturers such as Accuphase do not build streamers yet. I would have thought that with their expertise in CD-players, they should have the right knowledge. I read that they are looking at it but there is something holding them back. But they don't go into what exactly that is.

Don't disagree at all. It is all about the digital noise and this is why there is a difference between £500 and £5000 or even more for a CD player or a streamer plus a low noise storage device. I just have not come across anything on the streaming side that is comparable with current Accuphase CD players even when the streaming side was more expensive. But I am also not aware of a physical reason why a streamer + storage should not be able to achieve the same.

I have ATC SCM40 speakers, which go very well with Accuphase. They are very neutral and time coherent. I also very much like the tight bass. I have also heard Accuphase with some American speakers called NSMT. I don't think this brand is widely known and their website looks quite poor but the ones I listened to were wonderful

After a long search for the right source, I did indeed very recently buy the DP-560. It all started a while ago with buying some good speakers and realising after a short while that my all-in-one streaming/amp unit, while super convenient, did not get me even near what the speakers are capable of. This is despite this all-in-one unit costing quite a lot of money and I had even bought a Melco NAS to feed the music into the streamer in a very good way. So I auditioned Accuphase amps with the idea to get a DAC card that you can insert into the amp and then connect the Melco. I was even considering buying the top end Accuphase integrated amp but then my dealer suggested that I first listen to an Accuphase CD player with the entry-level Accuphase, which is the same as buying the top end integrated amp. My dealer was aware that I was very focused on using a streamer for ripped CDs or high res audio files but he thought I should at least give it a try. And yes, there was a very noticeable advantage in terms of musicality when using the DP-430 CD player even though the Melco was connected to the same DAC as this is something you can do with Accuphase CD players. I even tried the top end Melco and it came very close but I started to realise how much I have to pay for convenience as I would have to pay also for a very high-end DAC. There were a few more twists and turns, a few more of my preconceptions had to go overboard once I had listened rather than just read in forums or in reviews and I have now ended up with a wonderful Accuphase amp and the DP-560 and nothing else. Well, I still have the Melco and use it when I want to explore if I want to buy a certain album. Then I use Tidal and the DAC of the DP-560, which gives me very good quality, but not comparable with an actual CD inserted into the DP-560. But yes, this is all not standard setup. The investment has been immense. But when I now start to listen to a CD I don't want to stop it anymore. I have no desire to jump to the next CD. In fact I get completely lost in the music and before long the CD is finished. Hmmm, I did not really want to go into this. Just wanted to know about a good software for creating a library of my CDs because I did enjoy having such a library when I got into streaming. That answer has been provided and many thanks for that. At the moment I am trying out CD Pedia. Just need to find out how to best import the information of my entire ripped CD collection.

I have tried out streaming setups more than twice the price of an Accuphase CD player and the CD player gave me more music. The comparison was done on a highly time coherent system, which is also something that is usually not discussed anywhere but is key to having the most natural presentation of music. But there is really no point in having such a discussion. Streaming is immensely convenient. There is no doubt about that. Eventually, very good streaming setups will give the same level of musicality as a very good CD player, because, yes, it should be possible. I have no idea why it is not already achieved but I suspect that companies such as Accuphase have spent decades on developing world-leading CD players and there is not the same level of experience yet with streaming and storage devices. It was the same when CDs started. At the beginning, they sounded awful compared to Vinyl and it took the industry a while to master things. One peculiar aspect of the whole streaming setup is though that in order to get to the top quality of streaming, one probably has to look at very expensive SSD drives specifically developed for music streaming. I think the Melco with SSD is around £8k. When I buy a CD, I get the storage device for free.

Looks very interesting. I think I will try it. The JRiver option suggested earlier also works but this here looks a bit more sophisticated and also seems to be built for exactly what I want., just a CD library, not for streaming music. My new CD player has arrived and I now have a very time coherent system, which gives me immense pleasure as the music sounds incredibly natural. My use of streaming music has dropped very dramatically.

I have not tried the Aurender devices yet but I have tried the mid range MELCO, which is similar price to the Accuphase DP-430 and the Accuphase CD player was significantly more musical, engaging and detailed. I have used the new Chord Qutest and the DAC built into the DP-430. I have to say that I am hugely impressed with the Accuphase products. they seem to have got the issue with digital noise right. I only discovered them recently as Accuphase is not well known in the UK (where I live) for some strange reason. I am sure that eventually, already now, there are streaming devices with DACs that can compete with Accuphase CD players but I have yet to come across one. Maybe it is the Aurender products but for the moment I am quite happy to go back to CDs.

I actually still have JRiver from the time when I was using my Mac Mini as my digital source. I tried it last night and indeed it works. I should have probably tried it first before bothering people but it just did not occur to me that this would work. Thanks for your advice.

This is great to know. Many thanks. I will then use JRiver.

Yes,, the MELCO certainly improves sound quality over a Mac but it still does not compete with high end CD players such as an Accuphase player. In the future I will probably still use the MELCO I have, which I can connect to the DAC of the Accuphase CD player, for when I want to listen to something on Tidal or certain music I don't have on CD but only as a download. However, I would also like to turn it off when I use my CD player as this also improves what I can get from the CD playeras I end up with less digital noise. So in the end I expect to only turn on the MELCO when I really use it. This is where my difficulty comes from in respect of being able to see my library at all time when the MELCO will be switched off more than it will be switched on. One possible solution is trying to catalogue everything on Discogs and use their app. It is a bit laborious but not too bad as you can scan in the bar code you find on the case for CDs using the camera on the phone.

Yes, I have JRiver and I was thinking of using it but I assume I would have to import all music files to my Mac Mini if I want to see the library without turning on my MELCO? It is a rather big library and it would use up much of the file space if imported at full resolution. I guess I could convert then everything on the Mac Mini to MP3. Hope this would not take too much effort.

For two years I have enjoyed the convenience of music streaming. I even invested in a MELCO and I have made sure that I rip my CDs to the highest possible quality using a Buffalo CD drive. However, I have an amazing audio dealer near me and he has demonstrated to me what a good CD player can sound like compared to very good streaming devices and I have decided to buy a high-end CD player. One aspect I really enjoy about streaming is that I can nicely see my entire CD library on my iPad or iPhone when I turn on the MELCO. I have spent plenty of time getting the metadata correct, not having too many genres and the right CD cover for each album. I am now looking for a software that I could use on a Mac that just grabs all the metadata and creates the same library but without all the actual music files. Ideally, I could put this metadata library into the cloud and it could be synched with an IPad and IPhone. In other words, I would like to keep the ability to look at my music library and then decide which CD I want to play. Does anybody know if there is such software ?