CD Ripping software

Alex,

Thanks! I had done some .wav vs. FLAC comparison on my Cowan portable player (a sonically auperior alternative to iPod) a few years ago using several different earphones ranging from Shure SE530 to Sennheiser HD 650. I was trying to determine which format to rip all my CDs into. I ripped a sample of tracks in both formats and put them on shuffle mode. I could always tell which format was playing for each song. The FLAC files sounded bright, lean, edgy, and harsh, in comparison to .WAV files. I did the comparison for a week and had no trouble identifying the format each time a song comes up..

I don't pretend to understand fully the technical part of the lossless format, but I am familiar with the concept as I have been using similar application to reduce large AutoCAD drawing files at work for transferring via discs, emails for years.

I had posted my findings a few years ago, but received the same type of responses that it is not possible to hear any difference between the two formats. But one person had indicated that this might be due to how the particular decoding program or the DAC respond to FLAC files. I see a lot of parallel between this debate and the "a bite is a bite" debate 20 years ago with digital. It turned out that jitter and how the pit is read on a disc impacts greatly on the digital sound quality. So there might be some elements here that is contributing to the sonic differences. It may be the few nanoseconds that the computer needs to reconvert the files?

FrankC

lossless is lossless even if compressed if done correctly. if one hears a difference from one lossless format tomanother, there is a reason other than format. not to y they are guaranteed to sound the same either. some software is better than others just like hardware.

Modern computer processors and motherboards dynamically vary both cpu voltage and cpu clock rate as processing requirements vary from instant to instant. It would seem conceivable, depending on the particular hardware, that noise transients associated with those abrupt changes in voltage and clock rate could contribute to jitter on the computer's digital output that is being used, with those noise transients essentially bypassing intervening circuitry. That kind of effect could conceivably be sensitive to the cpu's involvement in decompressing losslessly compressed audio files.

The fact that the decompression process does not represent a heavy load for the cpu may actually worsen the severity of this effect, because it could result in frequent SWITCHING of cpu voltage and clock rate that would not occur under an essentially continuous heavy load.

It would be interesting if those reporting sonic differences between playback of different lossless formats were to see if those differences persisted when all of the computer's power saving features are disabled. That would include "Intel SpeedStep," which can be disabled in the BIOS of many computers, and, for Windows 7 machines, the settings change I described here (which did in fact resolve the playback problem reported by the OP in that thread).

Regards,
-- Al

"And so is a $49 CD player from Radio Shack "

If I had to guess at what you're trying to say, you seem to feel that FLAC is "cheap" like a Ratshack CDP. This says a lot about your biases, but nothing about FLAC.

Almarg's scenario is as likely as any I suppose for accounting for sonic differences associated with format.

But again, if so, it is not because the flac format looses anyting (when done correctly) but for other reasons associated with the playback.

I really like using network players, especially wireless ones, as the digital source feeding the DAC because a network player like a Squeezebox connected to wireless LAN has no electrical connection to the rest of the computer gear that it sources from. I like that level of isolation from the computer domain as an insurance policy against potential noise introduced by gear that is not designed necessarily for hifi audio.

Of course I have heard some say wireless lan does not sound as good either, however I would disagree from my experience. I have never heard a wireless source in my rig sound anything but spot on regardless of source format.