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Saving CDs on PC

something to think about...

Consider the possibility that audible differrences may be due to the playback conditions..... perhaps even a less than perfect codec.

Personally I don't think there is much room for debate on the lossless compression issue.... from a data standpoint, WAV = FLAC = lossless.

However, I don't deny the possibility that somewhere in the playback process, an error or artefact of some kind may be introduced.... I suspect a buggy codec could be the most likely culprit, but there may be other factors to consider as well. This could be true of WAV as well as FLAC, just that FLAC is newer and less mature, so one might expect it to be more prone to bugs. Note that this is pure speculation on my part.. I don't have an example of a specific error or bug of this kind... just logically concluding that this may be a possibility.

Lossy compression is an entirely differrent beast.
 
Vintagenut,

Sorry that your post got sidetracked.

I use a Chaintech AV-710 soundcard on one of secondary PCs for playback on one of my secondary stereo rigs. It is fairly easy to set it up for bit-perfect playback. This applies to both the digital and anlong outputs. Remeber the better DAC on this card is tied to channel 7 and 8 (the jack nearest the digital out). PM me if you have any questions about it.

When I first started messing with PC audio. I ripped everything to MP3. As I learned more, I started ripping to lossless and I choose FLAC. Just ripping to WAV does not allow for tagging of files.

If you have the hard drive space to rip to lossless, do it. If space is an issue go lossy, but keep your CDs around in case you do decide on a lossless format. You can also PM for advice on which lossy format to use and when endcoders to try.

Good luck and have fun with whatever you choose.

John
 
JimmyNeutron said:
You know it's not all that hard to download the codecs and rip some music and then play the files back on your computer for comparison. I have done just that - many times over. I NEVER said that FLAC was a bad codec, or that it sounds inferior (like mp3). I have always only stated that, to my ears, it does not sound EXACTLY like the original. Even though the bits are "rearranged" into smaller packages, and then reassembles back to their original bit structure - as FLAC claims to do, there is a "quality and air" that gets lost in that conversion. It is very evident in doing A/B comparisons on your system. Don't give me this crap about "strict A/B/X comparisons using HP measureing equipment to match levels within .00000000% tolerance for fair consideration, blah, blah, blah"!!! We don't have that kind of equipment, or the expense to get it. How do they compare, in real world computers connected to real world stereo's playing real world music? DO it yourself (If you have a critical ear as most of us audiophile do). There is something lost in the conversion - period. Maybe you can't hear it, but that's not to say that someone else can't. I can hear it, as well as other members of this board. Chaulk it up to a more revealing system, or better trained ears, but the difference is there. CD playback has been claimed to have "perfect sound" since it's inception back in 1982. Guess what - it's still being improved to this day. But how could the math be wrong? All CD's were bit for bit perfect copies. Bottom line - digital, in any form - lossless or compressed, still isin't perfect. Anything introduced into the playback chain, or the decoding chain, can have audible effects on the final sound. I'm not saying FLAC is bad, never have, but I'm saying that it's not, at least in the world of audio playback, the same as the original. Been there, tried it, heard it.

This thread has gone a different path since it started out. I'm not hear to convince anyone of my points, only to offer my opinion. You can take it any way you want. I think, for the sake of everyone watching this pissing contest, that I'll just bow out and let this thread run it's close. :rant:
Click to expand...

No you cannot hear a difference because there is no difference you ****ing moron. I have never seen a more ignorant, full of himself asshole on any fora. You are a total fool. ****ing loser.
 
there is a "quality and air" that gets lost in that conversion
Click to expand...

So what you're saying is that conversion to FLAC looses things that never existed in the first place, also known as "Figments of your imagination".

You're getting the placebo affect - the knowledge that it is a CD means that you prefer it - simply knowing that it is FLAC affects the way you hear it and what you think of it. That is fair enough, many people like just the assurance. But you shouldn't claim that FLACed audio is any different from the original CD.

A FLAC rip of a CD is no different to the original CD as the original CD is the master CD. All that is on a CD is data, and every level of that data is copied and put on the PC. Don't tell me that HDDs or digital storage has loss, because that's bullshit.

Nothing gets lost. At all. Not "air and quality" because they don't exist.

And to those that joined to troll - you are helping noone. Calling him a moron is not helping him realise his error.
 
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tool++ said:
So what you're saying is that conversion to FLAC looses things that never existed in the first place, also known as "Figments of your imagination".

You're getting the placebo affect - the knowledge that it is a CD means that you prefer it - simply knowing that it is FLAC affects the way you hear it and what you think of it. That is fair enough, many people like just the assurance. But you shouldn't claim that FLACed audio is any different from the original CD.

A FLAC rip of a CD is no different to the original CD as the original CD is the master CD. All that is on a CD is data, and every level of that data is copied and put on the PC. Don't tell me that HDDs or digital storage has loss, because that's bullshit.

Nothing gets lost. At all. Not "air and quality" because they don't exist.

And to those that joined to troll - you are helping noone. Calling him a moron is not helping him realise his error.
Click to expand...

To someone as clueless and close mided as he is calling him a moron is a compliment.
 
Easy to do when you sit behind a computer screen in your parents basement. But you know you'd never tell me that in person. Still, troll, you managed to alienate yourself on your first post here, and will be recieveing a permanent ban real soon for breaking rules of conduct. Of course, this is what you wanted to do in the first place as you have no knowledge of audio and less of conducting yourself in a respectable manner. But then again trolls don't have much respect anyway, as evidenced by their flaming and baiting posts. Have a good ban, troll. The only thing you proved is that you don't belong in this forum and you can't have decent discussions (regardless of anyones differeing opinions).

Who's the moron now??? :lmao:
 
A CD is recorded using 16 bits of data recorded 44,100 times every second. When it's ripped to .wav, or to .FLAC, every single of these bits is kept - this can be demonstrated by the .wav file also having 16 bits of data 44,100 times a second - The CD drive doesn't have the imagination to fabricate new data (in .FLAC it's represented by fewer bits because it's compressed, but it's still lossless). There is nothing relevant recorded on the disc apart from these bits, and they're all transferred across to the .wav. If you think there's loss from CD -> .wav, does that mean you also think there's a loss from one .wav to another? If so it'd be simple enough to set up a loop to re-encode a .wav file 100,000 times, each from the copy. Any differences would thus be amplified so much they'd be clearly audible to anyone.

edit: Argh, I've made a hugely stupid gaffe in this post, I'll correct it later: there is more data than what's transferred on the disc, but it's error-correction, not audio.
 
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JimmyNeutron said:
Easy to do when you sit behind a computer screen in your parents basement. But you know you'd never tell me that in person. Still, troll, you managed to alienate yourself on your first post here, and will be recieveing a permanent ban real soon for breaking rules of conduct. Of course, this is what you wanted to do in the first place as you have no knowledge of audio and less of conducting yourself in a respectable manner. But then again trolls don't have much respect anyway, as evidenced by their flaming and baiting posts. Have a good ban, troll. The only thing you proved is that you don't belong in this forum and you can't have decent discussions (regardless of anyones differeing opinions).

Who's the moron now??? :lmao:
Click to expand...

*BUMPED* for complete ignorant behaviour and trolling. You may be thinking to be a complete smartass doing AV-installations over the years, but I cannot see your point: Either you just want to p*** out somewhere, because of something we don't know of or you lost ANY relation to current technology. I'm clueless.
 
Now that everybody has shared their feelings, doesn't everybody feel better?

This thread was discovered on HydrogenAudio, so that's where all the new posts are coming from (myself included).

I think people are reading too closely into JimmyNeutron's comments to adequately comment on them. His main point isn't that FLAC is losing bits, it's that it sounds different. It's an observation that has nothing to do with the explanation. People are talking about losing bits because the compression is the only difference that they understand, but in reality, there are a lot of things across the entire system that change (disk reading behavior, CPU usage, RAM usage, player-dependent API changes across formats..) It's just that all of these things simply should not matter on a nondefective sound card with properly functioning hardware and good power supply filtering. The placebo effect thus becomes a lot more plausible than the alternatives. I touch on this a bit in the HA thread above.

This issue is compounded by the fact that no ABX software exists to truly blind-test this.

JimmyNeutron: Perchance have you tried different lossless formats, most specifically AIFF, AU, and ALAC?
 
critical guys like JimmyNeutron should really conduct, what I described before in my 1st post on this forum:

1. get a wave *wav.file
2. compress to Loslsess flac *.flac
3. decompress *.flac to *.wav again
4. burn the (wav->flac->wav)*.wav file to CD, maybe in random order several times together with the original wave file.

5. listen to the original wav and the "converted" wav files on CD, blind, so that no placebo effect can take place.

6. Nevertheless of the listening, a simple bit-to-bit-comparison amongst those 2 wav files will show and prove, even to JimmyNeutron, that Lossless is without any losses.

7. By burning to CD & listening from CD-player, the (theoretical possible, and practical possible like shitty soundcard like Audigy Soundblaster with internal upsampling to 48 kHz) PC effects are sorted out.
 
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Axon, finally a member with smarts! :thmbsp: You understood EXACTLY what I have been saying all along.

I am not too big on mp3 and such (computer music). I store all my CD's onto my computer for pure convenience only, as I can access that music in my workshop, garage, backyard, kitchen, etc. For critical listening I always use the original CD for playback. So to answer your question about using different format of lossless compression: I have only used FLAC. As a matter of fact, almost half of my 40 gigs of music is FLAC encoded (I never said I was anti-FLAC). My soundcard is an Audigy 3 (soon to be Audigy 4). I've tried various players too. But there has always been a "difference" to the sound. I can easily switch inputs on my stereo from AUX (computer playing the FLAC song) and CD (playing the CD direct song). A/B, it don't matter, it still sounds different. But like I've said, the difference is so small it could easily be masked by different types of playback equipment.

In the end I really don't care about any of this mp3/FLAC/lossless/compressed business, and I am not the last word on the science behind it. I tend to lean towards more the audio purist side - I don't want anything coming into contact with the music. The less the better. Others are not so critical about the music they hear (which may explain why they don't hear the nuances that music has). Fine with me. We all hear differently anyway, so who am I to tell someone that there IS a difference if he CAN'T hear it? :yes:

Peace out-------- :thmbsp:
 
Hi JimmyNeutron,
now it seems clear to me, why you find a fault in your PC music, especially in the normally error-free Lossless flac music.
The Audigy is Soundblaster, and upsamples 44.1 kHZ music to 48 kHz.
By this step, the original data gets corrupted !
The fault in your system is the Audigy, which destroys every 44.1 kHz music, even if you pass through digitally to your amp or external DAC.
I have Terratec EWX 2496, which handles every audio stream as it is, without internal up/downsampling.
 
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user said:
Hi JimmyNeutron,
now it seems clear to me, why you find a fault in your PC music, especially in the normally error-free Lossless flac music.
The Audigy is Soundblaster, and upsamples 44.1 kHZ music to 48 kHz.
By this step, the original data gets corrupted !
The fault in your system is the Audigy, which destroys every 44.1 kHz music.
I have Terratec EWX 2496, which handles every audio stream as it is, without internal up/downsampling.
Click to expand...


Problem solved! Thanks! :cool:
 
JimmyNeutron said:
Who's the moron now??? :lmao:
Click to expand...


You are little toad by your acrimonious and total ignorance of the facts. Get yourself in too deep and afraing your "friends" here will laugh? They're already larfing at you you imbecile.
:thumbsdn: :thumbsdn: :thumbsdn:
 
electric said:
*BUMPED* for complete ignorant behaviour and trolling. You may be thinking to be a complete smartass doing AV-installations over the years, but I cannot see your point: Either you just want to p*** out somewhere, because of something we don't know of or you lost ANY relation to current technology. I'm clueless.
Click to expand...
No JIMMYNEUTRON defender of all that is wrong is the clueless luddite.
 
You beat me to it

user said:
Hi JimmyNeutron,
now it seems clear to me, why you find a fault in your PC music, especially in the normally error-free Lossless flac music.
The Audigy is Soundblaster, and upsamples 44.1 kHZ music to 48 kHz.
By this step, the original data gets corrupted !
The fault in your system is the Audigy, which destroys every 44.1 kHz music, even if you pass through digitally to your amp or external DAC.
I have Terratec EWX 2496, which handles every audio stream as it is, without internal up/downsampling.
Click to expand...

You beat me to posting that the Soundblaster upsamples the music.
 
JimmyNeutron said:
Axon, finally a member with smarts! :thmbsp: You understood EXACTLY what I have been saying all along.

I am not too big on mp3 and such (computer music). I store all my CD's onto my computer for pure convenience only, as I can access that music in my workshop, garage, backyard, kitchen, etc. For critical listening I always use the original CD for playback. So to answer your question about using different format of lossless compression: I have only used FLAC. As a matter of fact, almost half of my 40 gigs of music is FLAC encoded (I never said I was anti-FLAC). My soundcard is an Audigy 3 (soon to be Audigy 4). I've tried various players too. But there has always been a "difference" to the sound. I can easily switch inputs on my stereo from AUX (computer playing the FLAC song) and CD (playing the CD direct song). A/B, it don't matter, it still sounds different. But like I've said, the difference is so small it could easily be masked by different types of playback equipment.

In the end I really don't care about any of this mp3/FLAC/lossless/compressed business, and I am not the last word on the science behind it. I tend to lean towards more the audio purist side - I don't want anything coming into contact with the music. The less the better. Others are not so critical about the music they hear (which may explain why they don't hear the nuances that music has). Fine with me. We all hear differently anyway, so who am I to tell someone that there IS a difference if he CAN'T hear it? :yes:

Peace out-------- :thmbsp:
Click to expand...

I just checked your gear out. Not only is your hearing lacking but if you think the garage sale rejects you use are high end you really do need help son.
What a waste of space on earth you are. You don't even have the intelligence to timbre match anything.
Whatta loser.

My main speakers are from Carver Corp. They are 6 feet high, and are ribbon speakers. They have no tweeter, midrange, and have no x-overs. They are full range ribbons, augmented in the very low end by a 10" woofer. These are about as close to the perfect speaker as you can get. Because of their height, they produce a sound that is not only wide and deep, but tall as well. Listening to music takes on a 3-dimensional sound. They have the same characteristics of a "real" music source. Sound radiates out the rear as well as the front, and have no phase shifts due to the lack of separate speaker cones and x-overs. These speakers convey a "texture" of musical fidelity that simply cannot be reproduced by most cone speakers. If a blind person can "read" printed words by the texture of the Braille word, then these speakers can sound "real" by the texture they convey about the recording. These are all the speaker you will ever need.

My center speaker is a Boston Acoustics VR12. It's a massive center speaker that sonically matches the Carvers.

The rear speakers are Infinity Modulas 2-ways. This is a 2-way speaker with a ribbon tweeter! These speakers are no longer made by Infinity because a ribbon tweeter is very difficult to manufacture. These speakers were Infinity's answer to "The best bookshelf speaker money can buy". Obviously that was a bold claim, but ribbon speakers do have a special quality about them. Being that these are ribbons, they sonically match my Carver main speakers. On there own, I have never heard a more lifelike sounding bookshelf speaker. Ribbon speakers rule!

You think the centers match the mains????????? Boy you have more problems than terrible hearing you ****ing lunatic.
 
JimmyNeutron said:
Axon, finally a member with smarts! :thmbsp: You understood EXACTLY what I have been saying all along.

I am not too big on mp3 and such (computer music). I store all my CD's onto my computer for pure convenience only, as I can access that music in my workshop, garage, backyard, kitchen, etc. For critical listening I always use the original CD for playback. So to answer your question about using different format of lossless compression: I have only used FLAC. As a matter of fact, almost half of my 40 gigs of music is FLAC encoded (I never said I was anti-FLAC). My soundcard is an Audigy 3 (soon to be Audigy 4). I've tried various players too. But there has always been a "difference" to the sound. I can easily switch inputs on my stereo from AUX (computer playing the FLAC song) and CD (playing the CD direct song). A/B, it don't matter, it still sounds different. But like I've said, the difference is so small it could easily be masked by different types of playback equipment.

In the end I really don't care about any of this mp3/FLAC/lossless/compressed business, and I am not the last word on the science behind it. I tend to lean towards more the audio purist side - I don't want anything coming into contact with the music. The less the better. Others are not so critical about the music they hear (which may explain why they don't hear the nuances that music has). Fine with me. We all hear differently anyway, so who am I to tell someone that there IS a difference if he CAN'T hear it? :yes:

Peace out-------- :thmbsp:
Click to expand...
I wouldn't say I'm smart about this - I've just been involved in way too many ABX debates to get caught in the same traps again.

From a materialistic point of view, the only thing people are going to miss out on by believing that FLAC is inferior to WAV is disk space. It's their loss. From a more philosophical point of view, once you admit that, you can admit just about anything could cause a difference, and at that point you've stepped into flamewar territory.

Moreover, you can't claim you hear something then declare that some wild-ass theoretical explanation is what the problem is, without some logically valid evidence - a common fault with audiophiles. (See more under "jitter".) Let's face it, saying that the bits changed without evidence of changed bits was an invitation to get smaxed :no: Even what I was saying about power supply/CPU usage is purely theoretical at this point, although I have plenty of ideas on how to implement the test. There are literally dozens of theoretical ways that the linearity or cleanliness of an audio signal can be degraded, but only a few actually matter. Understanding what is wrong, as well as engaging in good engineering, means knowing what is and isn't relevant.

I was curious about different lossless formats because your response would be distinctly different if you heard differences in some formats as opposed to differences in other formats. Of course, if I told you which ones, the power of suggestion might kick in and the results would be munged :)

Besides that, I think there isn't much else to say. Everybody uses FLAC already, if you don't like it, use WAV. Move along, nothing to see here.
 
You did say burning a CD from .wavs ripped from a CD sounds different from the original as well, though. After my bungled last attempt at a post I'm not going to try again, since everyone seems settled, so there it is.
 
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