WAV or FLAC

[GUTB]

10 minutes ago, diecaster said:

 

FLAC is absolutely lossless. 

 

Yes, that’s true. I’m aware that my statement was pedantic.

 

But it’s true that many people report WAVs sound better than FLACs. I don’t claim to know the reason. I don’t even claim to have tested it myself — part of the reason why I haven’t is because I don’t even trust my rips which were done from a cheesy USB powered portable CD drive. I’m looking for a high end disc transport that won’t destroy me financially. It’s frustrating the people with EE skills only mess with ultra low-end consumer shovelware junk.

[beerandmusic]

2 minutes ago, Archimago said:

 

Never said I was a pure "objectivist" .

 

But 2 is not correct. WAV does not measure better.

 

what "precisely" (in measurements) was meant by your statement " All the lossless formats scored within a narrow range "

 

[kumakuma]

13 minutes ago, GUTB said:

...I don’t even trust my rips which were done from a cheesy USB powered portable CD drive...

 

The quality of CD rips is binary. The resulting data either matches what's on the CD or it doesn't. A good drive may be faster, more accurate (less retries), or last longer but accurately ripped CDs will be the same regardless of the drive they were ripped on.

 

If you use a program that checks the rip against the AccurateRip database (http://www.accuraterip.com/software.htm), you can cross this one off your list.

[GUTB]

2 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

The quality of CD rips is binary. The resulting data either matches what's on the CD or it doesn't. A good drive may be faster, more accurate (less retries), or last longer but accurately ripped CDs will be the same regardless of the drive they were ripped on.

 

If you use a program that checks the rip against the AccurateRip database (http://www.accuraterip.com/software.htm), you can cross this one off your list.

 

Is that all that matters though?

[beerandmusic]

27 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

Yes, that’s true. I’m aware that my statement was pedantic.

 

But it’s true that many people report WAVs sound better than FLACs. I don’t claim to know the reason. I don’t even claim to have tested it myself — part of the reason why I haven’t is because I don’t even trust my rips which were done from a cheesy USB powered portable CD drive. I’m looking for a high end disc transport that won’t destroy me financially. It’s frustrating the people with EE skills only mess with ultra low-end consumer shovelware junk.

 

I bought a cheap internal ASUS CD/DVD R/W for about $30, because it measured at near the top of all drives for rip accuracy.

I don't even have a desktop...i just use a usb -> sata adapter to the internal CD drive (making it a cheap $30 reliable external cdrw-grin).  The cdrw is about the same size as my pc.

[kumakuma]

1 minute ago, GUTB said:

 

Is that all that matters though?

 

Yes. Ripping a CD is basically just copying data from one digital medium to another. The copy either matches the original or it doesn't.

[Archimago]

3 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

 

what "precisely" (in measurements) was meant by your statement " All the lossless formats scored within a narrow range "

 

 

With analogue measurements using the methodology employed in that test, there will be variability in the results. For example, as devices warm up slight variation in noise level will be seen, also microscopic temporal drift can be detected.

 

This is why when I did the 'DiffMaker Audio Composite' Test, using the standard signal, I also run it multiple times to get a sense of the variance I can see using the gear (see that post under "Reliability" to show the potential range I got over 24 hours with purposeful exposure to temperature variation). 

 

Notice that the range could be between low 70dB to 90dB even with the same test signal over the course of that 24 hours. Since I ran the lossless tests within a shorter timeframe, I didn't see as much variability (they all stayed between 80-90dB correlated null depth as per Audio DiffMaker). And notice that the MP3 and AAC results were all <70dB.

 

Bottom line is that all lossless file formats played back the test audio which included actual music with extremely high correlated null depth well within my expectations of the limits of the methodology. And all lossy compressed results clearly fell outside the "range".

 

My suspicion is that if I ran the test today, I would see lower inter-test variance as I have since upgraded the ADC used.

[beerandmusic]

3 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

Is that all that matters though?

 

 

https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?37706-CD-DVD-Drive-Accuracy-List-2016

[Archimago]

14 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

 

 

https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?37706-CD-DVD-Drive-Accuracy-List-2016

 

Something that data doesn't tell us is what rip speed is being used. Typically, with the higher read speeds (like 52X), there will be more errors than say a 16X speed.

 

If the AccurateRip database has numerous identical CRC32 results from around the world and your rip matches, there's nothing to worry about with something like 99.99999+% certainty. I'll likely win the lottery jackpot before I run into an inaccurate rip with identical match on AccurateRip!

 

[jabbr]

45 minutes ago, GUTB said:

It’s frustrating the people with EE skills only mess with ultra low-end consumer shovelware junk.

 

 

Why would you expect EEs to know anything about electronic hardware? ... oh wait....

[Archimago]

23 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

 

I bought a cheap internal ASUS CD/DVD R/W for about $30, because it measured at near the top of all drives for rip accuracy.

I don't even have a desktop...i just use a usb -> sata adapter to the internal CD drive (making it a cheap $30 reliable external cdrw-grin).  The cdrw is about the same size as my pc.

 

Good job @beerandmusic!

 

Now that's what I call function over form .

[jabbr]

48 minutes ago, GUTB said:

I don’t even trust my rips which were done from a cheesy USB powered portable CD drive. I’m looking for a high end disc transport that won’t destroy me financially.

 

This sums up the "audiophilia nervosa" phenomenon... living in fear that a single bit may be out of place, entirely destroying not only a listening experience, but the entire structure of ones internal universe.

 

You have a choice:

1) trust your ears

2) trust the AccurateRip database

 

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-uber-self-driving-20160913-snap-story.html

https://becominghuman.ai/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-error-c9b47bac9bad

[Archimago]

49 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

This sums up the "audiophilia nervosa" phenomenon... living in fear that a single bit may be out of place, entirely destroying not only a listening experience, but the entire structure of ones internal universe.

 

You have a choice:

1) trust your ears

2) trust the AccurateRip database

 

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-uber-self-driving-20160913-snap-story.html

https://becominghuman.ai/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-error-c9b47bac9bad

 

The options are not mutually exclusive.

 

3) All of the above

 

Trust you ears achieves one level of subjective "sounds great". Trust AccurateRip achieves another level of objective "certainty".

[GUTB]

8 minutes ago, Archimago said:

 

The options are not mutually exclusive.

 

3) All of the above

 

Trust you ears achieves one level of subjective "sounds great". Trust AccurateRip achieves another level of objective "certainty".

 

But all of those rips are conducted with $15 or less CD transports.

[jhwalker]

6 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

But all of those rips are conducted with $15 or less CD transports.

 

And . . . ?

[STC]

11 hours ago, mansr said:

FLAC has metadata tags and WAV doesn't. FLAC also includes a checksum making it possible to detect file corruption.

 

9 hours ago, jabbr said:

Sure! The issue with WAV is lack of metadata which sucks.

 

11 hours ago, ted_b said:

Flac is compatible with ID3Vx tagging, and wav is not

 

Is this true?

 

I have editing tags with JRiver for years and never thought it was an issue until reading about in forums.

 

Quote from JRiver. "Media Center has the ability to tag WAV & AIFF files. These tags include all metadata and cover art."

 

[Archimago]

48 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

But all of those rips are conducted with $15 or less CD transports.

 

Digital bitperfect accuracy is the same whether from a $15 transport or a $500 one (? what's the most expensive one out there?).

 

What difference do you suppose there is?

[PeterSt]

42 minutes ago, STC said:

Quote from JRiver. "Media Center has the ability to tag WAV & AIFF files. These tags include all metadata and cover art."

 

Yes. And I already blamed those guys ever back NOT to do so ignorantly stupid.

So what do you think will happen ? They add tagging, and next you (the consumer) will call out for me that my software is buggy because it doesn't support tags in WAV.

Deliberately not complying to standards is the most stupid thing to do in any world. Not only in audio ...

[lateboomer]

I just installed and tried dbpoweramp last month as I used EAC all this while ripping. I didn't know 0 compression still got compression. But to my brother's ear and Could be our bias we taught the wav sounded better. I commented they supposed to be the same. I will try again next time.

[STC]

16 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

Yes. And I already blamed those guys ever back NOT to do so ignorantly stupid.

So what do you think will happen ? They add tagging, and next you (the consumer) will call out for me that my software is buggy because it doesn't support tags in WAV.

Deliberately not complying to standards is the most stupid thing to do in any world. Not only in audio ...

 

Mmmm....so ID3v2 is not the standard? 

[Archimago]

22 minutes ago, lateboomer said:

I just installed and tried dbpoweramp last month as I used EAC all this while ripping. I didn't know 0 compression still got compression. But to my brother's ear and Could be our bias we taught the wav sounded better. I commented they supposed to be the same. I will try again next time.

 

Have your brother cue up WAV and FLAC versions (max compression) and see if you can accurately tell a difference. Make sure things like ReplayGain aren't active of course...

 

Have fun. Enjoy some music. Ask yourself whether you thought the magnitude of the difference if there is one is significant to one's enjoyment.

[ted_b]

2 hours ago, STC said:

Is this true?

 

I have editing tags with JRiver for years and never thought it was an issue until reading about in forums.

 

Quote from JRiver. "Media Center has the ability to tag WAV & AIFF files. These tags include all metadata and cover art."

You misquoted me.  I went on to clearly say that some players support wav tagging !!  And my JRiver video tutorials explain it too.

[STC]

13 minutes ago, ted_b said:

You misquoted me.  I went on to clearly say that some players support wav tagging !!  And my JRiver video tutorials explain it too.

 

My apologies. I was confused when you said that ID3vx tagging wasn't possible for WAV.

[tims]

Any simpleton's guide to ripping using a laptop with no cd/dvd drive out there?  i.e. using an external drive connected to the laptop to read the cd being ripped.

[Paul R]

LOL!  Is this subject  still going on, after all these years?

 

My $0.02 - use DSD format if you want the most excellent playback.  High sample rate AIFF next, then high sample rate FLAC.  IF you are a die hard Windows guy, reverse those last two. If a Linux/Unix guy, just go with Flac and avoid the ornery comments from your peers. Yep, it matters just *that* much - essentially, not at all. 

 

In the actual real world of course, there may be some small playback differences in the formats, depending upon your system, software, configuration, and operational choices. So just choose a player than plays all the formats you are likely to find, including streaming and MQA, then isolate it electrically by using a network connection, pick the format you like this week, and enjoy. 

 

(Says the guy with fibre connected servers and a VPN in the house that prioritizes music playback over Netflix.  )