Lossless Files Vs CD's

07-11-12: Dhl93449
Well, if that were completely true, tweaks like Lightstop (green dye around outer edge) would have no impact on sound quality. But many have observed they do impact sound (including myself).

All of the references that I have seen over the years that I consider to be credible, including among many others the ones I quoted and linked to earlier and Steve's comment above, are consistent with the conclusion that any benefits those kinds of tweaks might provide result from improvements in trackability, resulting in less noise being coupled from the servo mechanisms into other circuitry in the player. Not from a reduction in uncorrectable errors.

Best regards,
-- Al

"in the direction that is followed by the spiral track"

Al, that's what I meant by "along the disk". I'm still amazed that it works that well. Once external DAC is involved the choice of transports opens to DVD or Bluray players that have very good tracking and usually (at least with dedicated DVD players) poor analog outputs. Hidden benefit of using DVD player is inherent support for MP3 playback.

My attempts to create separate network failed since OSX allows one wireless infrastructure network at the time while Airport Express does not work ad-hock. I ended up with dual band router (Mac has dual band adapter) serving music at 5GHz and other computer at 2.4GHz. Ralink utility scan shows no networks other than mine on 5GHz. I'm not surprised since 5GHz routers are not common. Also 5GHz propagates poorly thru the walls (blessing). No dropouts ever !!!

Jwm - Amarra and PM use the CODECS that are the problem. They work with Apple Mac. You have to turn off itunes and use the playlist function to play FLAC in Amarra.

I prefer a particular version of Amarra, not 2.4, over PM. I have compared it to PM. If you have Amarra, you can download this version here:

www.sonicstudio.com/releases/Amarra_233_Release_4319.zip

They are evidently working on a version of 2.4 that has similar sound quality, but I have not heard it yet. If we can get the stability of 2.4 with the SQ of the older version above, this will be the one to get IMO.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Almarg - there is really easy jitter test for CD transports. Just rewrite a commercial CD track with a CDROM drive from a .wav file on a computer. Use a good disk like Mitsui Audio Master.

If you hear any difference between the commmercial disk and the copy when played on the CD transport, then you are hearing jitter artifacts.

I have yet to play a CDP that does not show this effect.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Steve, Have you tried Windows 8 on a PC with wave files? I know that you've been a Mac Proponent, but Win 8 is very audibly better than Win 7. I'd like to hear your impressions. Being a guy with a big family, i'm on a budget and can't go out and grab a Mac.
Any comments would be appreciated... Tim