Reviewer:
Marja & Henk
Financial Interests: click here
Sources: PS Audio PWT; Dr. Feickert Blackbird MKII/DFA 1o5/Zu DL-103; Phasure XX-PC
DAC: Phasure NOS1 DAC; T+A DAC8 [loaner]; Mytek Brooklyn [in for review]
Streaming sources: XXHighEnd; iTunes; Devialet AIR; La Rosita Beta; Qobuz Desktop, Tidal Desktop; Sound Galleries SGM 2015 [loaner]
Preamp/integrated/power: Audio Note Meishu with WE 300B (or AVVT, JJ, KR Audio 300B output tubes); dual Devialet D-Premier; PTP Audio Blok 20; Hypex Ncore 1200 based monoblocks; Trafomatic Kaivalya; Trafomatic Reference One; Trafomatic Reference Phono One; Music First Passive Magnetic
Speakers: Avantgarde Acoustic Duo Omega; Arcadian Audio Pnoe; Podium Sound One; WLM Sub 12; Sounddeco Alpha F3; dual Zu Submisson MKI; Soltanus Virtuoso ESL
Cables: complete loom of ASI LiveLine cables; full loom of Crystal Cable cables; full loom of Nanotec Golden Strada; Audiomica Pearl Consequence interconnect; Audiomica Pebble Consequence
Power line conditioning: PS Audio Powerplant Premier; PS Audio Humbuster III; IsoTek Evo 3 Syncro; AudioMica Allbit Consequence
Equipment racks: Solid Tech and ASI amplifier and TT shelf
Indispensable accessories: Furutech DeMag; ClearAudio Double Matrix; Franc Audio Ceramic Disc Classic; Shakti Stones;; Kemp polarity checker; Akiko Audio Corelli
Online Music purveyors: qobuz.com, tidal.com, bandcamp.com, amazon.co.uk 
Room treatment: Acoustic System International resonators, sugar cubes, diffusers
Room size: ca. 14.50 x 7.50m with a ceiling height of 3.50m, brick walls, wooden flooring upstairs, ca 7 x 5m with a ceiling height of 3.50m, brick walls and concrete floor downstairs
Price: €49


Music lovers come in various shades.
There are omnivores who play anything on hand, be it CD, vinyl, the odd iTunes and other streaming content. At the other end of the spectrum are the very picky music lovers. They want to know everything about their music; all the nitty grit with all the numbers behind the decimal point. The information on the record sleeve or in the CD booklet isn't enough. To go further, they take things into their own hands.


We know a few of them. Many years ago, in the early days of ripping, an acquaintance digitized his entire predominantly classical music collection. A programmer himself, he wrote code to add appropriate tags to his digitized tracks spread out across multiple hard disks. It took him very serious time to not only rip his vinyl and CD collection but add the correct tags to the tracks in his library. Before digitizing his collection, he kept multiple ledgers containing all the info he found necessary for his musical affections. With his new software program, those ledgers were replaced by a database. Today ripping your collection is made easier. There are many online databases which automatically add tag information while you rip. FreeDB and Amazon are the most used but there are many more. Apple's iTunes is a completely different story and very much proprietary.


Philip Watel, MusiCHI's developer and front man, wanted to add another great source for tagging information: GD3. In his opinion it is the currently best option because it is more complete and accurate most of the time and offers better cover art. GD3 is not freeware but integrated into MusiCHI so there are no extra costs involved. Using these tools in combination with Exact Audio Copy—EAC—or equivalent gets you a library with your favorite music and basic tag information. For most music lovers, this will be sufficient. As long as artist, album name, track names and some cover art is logged, they are happy. Just hit play in some music player like JRiver and off you go.