WAV or Apple Lossless Encoder?

First answer - Marco, the file that you preferred was indeed the one prepared in EAC by ripping to wave, and then transported over to itunes and converted to Apple Lossless (ALAC). I detect a "significant" difference as well - maybe 10-20% improvement in sound quality, and I consider that to be a lot. What about your findings surprised me even more was that you found the itunes ripped WAV file of the same song similar to the (inferior) itunes ripped ALAC file, compared to the EAC ripped (and itunes converted) ALAC file. This suggests that itunes rips with both the WAV and the ALAC format are inferior. The third file I gave you would have lost its Tag information, but I believe was still imported to itunes. It is an EAC ripped WAV file. If you can find it (using "modification date" field) and rename it, you can directly compare your itunes ripped WAV file to the EAC ripped WAV file, and confirm that itunes seems to be producing an inferior rip on the WAV format, as your initial results already suggest.

Marco - I think Steve was saying that this problem is noted EVEN with these apple devices, not ONLY with them.

DTC - I spoke with Steve about this, and he mentioned that an ALAC file contains more than just the music bits, it also contains information on how the music bits should be played. Steve had suggested to me that the problem may reside there.

ANY ONE ELSE UP TO MAKE THE COMPARISON? IT REALLY IS EASY TO DO - THOUGH MOST OF US WOULD LIKELY RATHER NOT KNOW SUCH BAD NEWS!

Peter - You'll have to come by and listen on my system. I confess that once I detected a significant difference in the single file I spent more time and attention comparing that file to the other two. Though I felt the other two sounded much more similar to each other I don't think I spent nearly as much time comparing those two to each other. The difference was far more obvious in that one file.

Dtc - how do you compare bits in the files? What software (Mac) would one use to do that?

I am going to experiment with Peter's suggestion but I have a question. I downloaded EAC today and copied a couple music files. When I insert a CD, EAC lists all the tracks but no information, no album name, artist name, track names, etc. Do I have something set wrong? This would be VERY tedious if I had to type this all in myself.

Brian - when you set up EAC you specify a database for it to check (online) to identify well song names. When you insert your CD, atleast for me, the songlist did not have the information, and I had to push a button to "get information" to fill in the list. That said, if you rip a WAV file in EAC, it does not have tag information that carries with it to itunes. When you import it into itunes, the song name will be retained (it will be the same as the file name), but all other tag information will be lost.

Clearly, this is not a conveniant way to import music to itunes. You've identified the next question - and the very important question - how do you get the best quality while still working within an itunes environment. If Marco's observation that the itunes ripped WAV file didn't sound as good as the EAC sourced ALAC file, then itunes is not a preferred ripping program!

Anyhow - please do the experiment anyway. The goal is to confirm that itunes ripping is not as good as other methods. Once that is confirmed, we can look for work arounds. Even though those who have listened so far all hear this, the number is few, and it would help to have more confirmation. Thanks, Peter

Peter_s and Steve - I would like to understand just what extra information is in an ALAC file that degrades its sound. Any explanation or references to this? I know that this is a proprietary format, but if the claim is that there is some extra data in it, it would be great to have some idea or what that is and how it is used. References?

Jax2 - I am not a MAC user, sorry. But EAC and foobar both have comparison routines in them for wave files. Do I read your post correctly that you are using a MAC to stream to a Transporter? The Transporter is yet another wrinkle in the comparison - not sure exactly what it uses for ALAC decoding.

I really think that concluding that iTunes is inferior for ripping files (at least from relatively clean disk) based on these observations is premature. I, and others, have ripped files with iTunes, converted them to wave and they are EXACTLY identical to wave files produced from EAC - every bit is the same. And a 50 MB wave file has a lot of bits! Two wave files with exactly the same bits cannot sound different when played by the same player. If somehow they do sound different, then something else has happened in the process. I just do not see how iTunes ripping can be inferior when it produces exactly the the WAVE file as EAC? Incidently, I do believe that EAC can do a better job on a damaged disk - but of course none of us has those :)

If a given player playing an ALAC file and playing a WAVE file produce different sounds, it is a big leap to believe that the only cause of this could be the ripping process. It may well be how the player somehow handles the different formats.

My background is scientific research and in computer science. So, when I hear that there are differences in 2 approaches I want to know why. And I tend to get picky about experimental design. In looking at the results that people are reporting I see lots of unaccounted for variables. The experiments need to be designed to eliminate those variables. My suggestions, although it will take time, is to

1) Compare the sound of ALAC files ripped with iTunes (using the error correction mode) and ALAC files that were ripped to WAVE by EAC and converted to ALAC by iTunes - both played with iTunes (or your favorate player). If you are using something other than iTunes, you should probably use the same conversion software as your player uses. It is hard to do bit compares on these ALAC files, unfortunately. Waves are much easier.

2) Compare the sound of WAVE files ripped with iTunes (directly to WAVE) and WAVE files ripped with EAC. This should probably be done with iTunes as well as with some other player like foobar or J River. Foobar is a good choice since it has a ABX comparison function to allow for blind testing. When I have done the ABX comparisons with foobar with EAC and iTunes produced wave files, I cannot reliably tell the differences - although I admit I have not done it a lot of times and blinding test is an art unto itself. If you have not done it, give it a try. It is a interesting experiment.

3) Repeat 2) with files ripped with iTunes into ALAC and then converted to WAVE by iTunes (rather than ripped to WAVE directly).

Its important to compare apples and oranges and to be sure to eliminate outside influences on what is being tested - in this case ripping accuracy.

Now off to listen to some music.