Minimal XP OS with dBpoweramp for ripping

[rickmcinnis]

Well,

I thought I would venture into discussing this again.

Things are slow at TIR NA so no time like the present.

I had sent a disk to a fellow who also used the SDTrans about six weeks ago. This is the only disk I have sent for appraisal, but not for trying. If any of you had read the nonsense posts on the SDTrans thread at DIYaudio you would know I was trying to be the miracle man and get Julf and his comrade marce to consider the possibility that CD ripping is not as settled as their non-scientific minds (though they would protest they are the most scientific minds in all of audio) have convinced them it is.

I told Julf I would send him a disk but as I thought about how much time would be required to compile it (he wanted old and "new" rips on the disk) and to mail it as I realized he would just run check sums on the rips and tell me they are the same I thought I had better things to do. Like yardwork ... Offered to send marce a battery but no reposnse. marce is OK, julf is just a provocateur. I do not find either one of them obnoxious but they are not worth the words I wasted in my futile attempt to get them to just try something different. I wanted Julf to LISTEN to the disk but I know he would not listen carefully and since he would not give me any direction on his taste in music I could very well have sent music he has no interest in whatsoever.

One side of me thinks that what I am hearing might not even be audible without the quiet environment of SDTrans. He uses
the CLASS D amps and digital crossovers from HYPEX along with vintage LINN ISOBARIK loudspeakers, I bet that system is lots of fun at parties but I cannot imagine it being resolving enough to even detect the presence of what we call digital noise.

I wonder if "computer audio" would notice the difference? I have no idea since my old music computer is now my ripping computer and I sold the expensive doo-dads for USB.

So the fellow who got the disk gets back to me and says he hears a worthwhile difference and wants to make a ripper which is gratifying.

Randy has a copy of the OS but I am not sure if he has done anything with it, yet.

I figure the biggest problem most will have is that no one wants to do this over again. I do not have that many CDs, maybe 800 at most and half of those I doubt I will ever want to listen to them again. If I do, I will rip them then.

So if there is anyone interested I would be glad to supply the OS. I would prefer to think you have a dBpoweramp license. The thing is small enough to attach to an email.

This is my ripper hardware:

MSI H81 P33 - chosen for it SATA jack arrangement - one jack is not close to the others so the SATADOM fits without interfering with the other jacks.
INTEL i3 4130t CPU
MUSHKIN 2 gB low latency memory (cheap and available)
LITE-ON CD-rom - was using ASUS and this one reads disks the ASUS had trouble with. I do not hear any sound quality differences between them.

Before I go on - all of this is placed on a slab of the material they make lab countertops with. So the drive is able to be weighted down on a very steady surface. The big brass block is again used for CPU cooling.

SATADOM is sued for the OS drive. Music is collected on WESTERN DIGITAL 320 gB laptop drives.
All drives are powered by a pair A123's float charged.

The CPU and the video card are powered by the OPTIMA Red Top battery also float charged. The video card removes video duty from the CPU and allows lowest voltage and speed with no glitches.

No fancy cables - using those blue shielded ones.

In BIOS everything is turned off. With XP one must set SATA to IDE.

For writing to the disk I am using SLITAZ in CORE mode. This is a LIVE CD. One must set SATA to AHCI before running SLITAZ I have numerous SATA SD writers. I do not hear any differences with them. The one I got that can hold four disks is always recognized, the others were a little dicey so that is the one I use.

I use the SATA 2 jacks for the CDROM and the collecting drive. When going back and forth between XP and SLITAZ I move the cables. The CDROM drive will be connected to a SATA 3 jack which is where the SATADOM resides when in RIP mode to leave room for the SD writer which is disconnected when not in use. Only four jacks, two of each SATA 2 and 3.

So that is it. Not terribly complicated. I will eventually try linear supplies for P24 but at the moment I use the POWERFLOWER ATX.

I do think the 4130t is important. Randy has a fancier CPU but it will not allow much in the way of BIOS adjustment for speed and voltage and I fear that is a problem.

If there is any interest I would appreciate hearing of other's assessments.

All I can say is that the sound I hear with the SDTrans and these rips is the best sound I have heard in my house.

[randytsuch]

So an update on my status.

I lost my audio room for the summer. Oldest is back from college, and she's taken over the room. sigh, my fault for having kids :\

So there hasn't been any progress for a while, between basketball playoffs, and basically losing my room a few weeks ago, well that's life.

With Rick's help, I was able to make his ripper OS run on my machine. I have the same motherboard, but different everything else. And no idea if I had to have the same motherboard, but by coincidence we did. It did take a little while, had to load a special program to copy the OS, and then burn it to DVD to install from.

I installed it to a spare SSD I had, and after a little help from Rick, worked fine.

It installs on a 2gb partition, so it doesn't hold that many CD's.
(note to Rick, 3 or 4 gb partition would be nice so you could rip more CD's before you have to copy to the SD card)

Used a program called drivesnapshot to transfer Rick's OS image to make a bootable SSD (this took a while, but Rick figured out how to get this to work).

Once it works, it boots up into a VERY basic version of dbpoweramp's ripper. No ethernet, so no automatic titles. The only trick I figured out here is you need to set the destination drive to D:, didn't work until I did that.

And then I ran Slitaz to copy from the ripper SSD to my SD card. I had to use a version the xvesa of slitaz, I think because of my graphics interface.

So I'm able to burn CD's with his OS, and copy to SD with Slitaz. Slitaz is linux, but it has a GUI to make it easier to use.

And it does sound good. But I was never able to get to the next step so far. I wanted to burn a CD in a standard windows 7, and also in a server2012/AO environment, and see how those burns compare to Rick's OS burns.

At some point, I'll get my room back for a bit, and do this, just not sure when.

Randy

[tony]

I thought Julf had disappeared but he has just migrated to diyaudio. So funny really different forum same crusade:)

[Octagon]

Hi Rick,

followed your approach already on a different forum, sounds quite interesting to me. I did some serious testing about ripping within different scenarios quite some time ago. Not sure if I posted here in Tir Na about it, I just remember a discussion with Gordon because I am looking for a scenario explaining the audible differences in rewrite as used with MQn or BHE. Therefore I documented the approach in detail with pics etc. for later use.

I am busy in the next two weeks but would be very interested to give your minimal approach a try and verify it using the testing scenario. Would be great if we can find in between a way how that could work.

Take care
Thomas

[rickmcinnis]

I would be honored to send my OS to anyone associated with TIR NA. Again, I wold like to think you already have a copy of dBpoweramp.

Julf never changes his tune. He should be a US politician with his rock steady ability to stay "on message". Not to say he is a bully or unpleasant he just doesn't seem to think there is any possibility that there is mystery in the world. I wish everything could be reduced to numbers, even imaginary ones, but that is not always the case.

The moderators give him free rein at DIYAudio. I wonder how many threads he has discouraged with his relentless questions and his unfathomable intentions. I think he spends lots of time at the ncore thread there.

I think I am confused by Randy's desire to burn CDs. You will have to enlighten me!

The OS contains a very stripped down version of dBpoweramp - there is nothing there that is not needed to simply rip a .wav file. Throughout the OS, including dBpoweramp, the vast majority of icons, bitmaps, effluvia of any kind, have been removed. The control panel has been simplified to make it as small a file as possible. There is only one font installed, which is the font needed to allow the system to boot. This made a big difference in the look of the control panel. It is not pretty but easy to use. Nothing tricky.

No way the thing can connect to the internet, nor should you want it to. So no convenience of having the titles of the album and tracks supplied. Since this was made with use of the SDTrans in mind, and with its little LED display you cannot read this stuff easily, anyway, so I do not miss it. If you want to know more about the record in question you can use a computer that is connected to the internet or rely on the CD case.

I would greatly appreciate it being tried to get other's perceptions. It is as small as it can be so it will not be changed by me. I have no idea what else I could do so if someone found something to improve it that would be welcomed. My idea was that the smaller the OS the better.

Concerning disk usage: Randy are you collecting music onto the same disk as the OS? If so, you should not. I have four identical WESTERN DIGITAL laptop HDDs. Two of them are recognized as drive c: and two as drive e:. This is probably the trickiest part of the thing. You cannot know where the file is actually being sent until you leave the ripper and use SLITAZ. Then you will see where the file was sent. I would highly recommend not sending the file to the OS disk just for aesthetic reasons - I never listened to a file that was sent to the OS drive. Deleted them and started over. But it seems to be one of those things that are agreed upon to keep the OS drive for the OS alone.

dBpoweramp can no longer write to the registry which also stops lots of unneeded activity. This is why you will have to manually insert the collection disk each time you start the program. If you want to make a permanent change you will need to connect the disk to another WINDOWS machine loading the hive into that machine's REGISTRY EDITOR.

I doubt this will be needed for anyone using it. With one exception, if you know the offset/etc of your drive I would be glad to insert them into the copy before I send it.

[randytsuch]

I think I am confused by Randy's desire to burn CDs. You will have to enlighten me!

Concerning disk usage: Randy are you collecting music onto the same disk as the OS? If so, you should not. I have four identical WESTERN DIGITAL laptop HDDs. Two of them are recognized as drive c: and two as drive e:. This is probably the trickiest part of the thing. You cannot know where the file is actually being sent until you leave the ripper and use SLITAZ. Then you will see where the file was sent. I would highly recommend not sending the file to the OS disk just for aesthetic reasons - I never listened to a file that was sent to the OS drive. Deleted them and started over. But it seems to be one of those things that are agreed upon to keep the OS drive for the OS alone.

Burning ripping whatever :)
You know what I meant

I couldn't get another drive recognized, that why I thought I had to save to the same drive.
Guess I need to play with it some more.

Randy

[rickmcinnis]

Someone posted about this device at AA: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cocktail-Audio ... B00O44L502

Does seem interesting other than being .flac only.

Not willing to buy one, though.