Lossless Files Vs CD's

Interesting responses and a lot more controversial as to what if any the audible differences are. It seems clear enough that there are likely other more limiting factors for perfect reproduction than the two mediums would present. I have been playing with a hardware wav file player (eliminates the computer in the middle) straight to DAC set up and comparing it to a CD transport connected to the same DAC. There are a few differences but I would not call them significant. I give a small edge in resolution to the Wav player but an equal edge in overall musicality and high end reproduction (seems clearer or perhaps just more there) to the CD player.

Digitalaudio - the jitter of the clock in your "hardware .wav file player" is critical. If it uses a common crystal oscillator, it will not show you what this medium is capable of. The Master Clock is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing in ANY digital audio system.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

I have been privy to some listening tests where a battery powered Hi Face via I2S was compared to any transport we could get a hold of - Wadia, Stello I2S, heavily modified battery powered Marantz and other stuff I can't recall off the top of my head. They are fell. For example on Dianna Krall Case Of You you could hear the foot pedals on the piano and its timbre was correct - on the transports it had TIM. Before this many people had tried to take on the Marantz mentioned previously with various transports and computer audio. They left humbled - I know I was one of them. But the Hi Face bested it - and easily so.

The system was extremely revealing - speakers - ML3 Reference - they are lined with steel and fully tricked out with Duelund VSF Copper capacitors, the DAC a PDX Level 2 and amps MAC 501's.

Thanks
Bill

But of course ripped files are sound inferior compared to it's sourced CD. I'm talking full WAV, of course, not even mentioning other, space saving, formats. There are allot of confusion and misunderstanding in these discussions because people either do not compare apples to apples, or they biased due to their involvement with the industry. However, I do agree with Audiogoner that playback from ripped files might sound coloured, but I believe that mostly due to the playback software “audio effects”.
Let's do very simple test and compare apples to apples, that you can witness said difference for yourself. Let’s forget about all your DACs, preamps, amps, speakers etc., you don’t need it because it just confusing the issue. All you need is a computer with CD ROM (might be USB CD ROM) and a pair of headphones.
Now, using any software of your choice, let’s rip any file(s) from any CD (your choice) to the HDD or SSD of said computer (BTW, SSD do sound better than HDD, but it doesn’t matter for this test). When rip is done, insert headphones directly in to the computer audio out jack, on the back of the comp and compare the sound of CD played back from the same CD ROM and ripped file(s), played trough the same computer playback/rip software. Don’t use different softs for playing back file(s) and CD, because different softs will sound differently. If your comp doesn’t have headphone jack (don’t use the one which is on CD ROM), then you’ll obviously need some receiver or something with headphone jack. BTW, guys, make treble sure that you are indeed comparing sound of CD to the sound of files, and not CD to CD and/or files to files, it gets very tricky when you playing back over and over again, same piece of music. Very easy to mess it up. If CD and files sounds identical then most likely you do compare CD to CD and/or files to files.)))
If you done everything right, you should easily hear that ripped files have a little bit less of everything i.e. less micro musical nuances, less airiness, different voice tembres, etc., compared to CD. It is similar to Xerox copy, i.e. everything looks the same (the writing is still there :~)) but a little bit less of everything, less clarity, less contrast etc. I wish I knew what causing it and how to fix it, but unfortunately I don't. (((

Xerox copy might be good analogy, but it is different with CDs. I cannot find any difference with headphones or the speakers between original CD and the CD-R copy. If anything, copy SHOULD sound better than original because ripping program, I use, reads CD as data - meaning it will go many times to the same sector until it gets proper checksum while CDP cannot do that, working in real time (most of them), and at certain point it will interpolate missing data. Of course it doesn't make much difference when CD is brand new but it might when CD has scratches. There is so many other thing involved including ambient electrical noise, that affect playback quality that in each setup you might get different results. Again, IN MY setup I don't hear any difference between CD and CD-R.