AIFF Vs. WAV

[Teresa]

You nailed the objectivist mind set. You might enjoy my blog http://audioiconoclast.blogspot.com/

 

[thesurfingalien]

Gregor,

 

I appreciate it when people can hear better than I can. I have no problem with that at all & say "good for them" as it probably enriches their listening experiences!

 

I (depending on the music) find it quite difficult to distinguish 320kbps MP3 from WAV, while others can hear the difference more easily.

 

As for DBT/ABX, I believe it to work just as it promises. However, concluding that "all sounds the same" does not sound right to me at all. For my part it just demonstrates that the test-results are relevant to the equipment and the people who did the test as it tests the capabilities of both humans and gear.

 

I also believe there are things that can go wrong in digital audio, although nowadays we partly are able to avoid and/or correct these. Clock-jitter at the DAC (unfortunately) can not be eliminated totally, but we can minimize it. I doubt that I can hear jitter at all but again, people that have better hearing capabilities probably can.

 

However, when people start talking about two file-formats that are uncompressed and, according to specs, have the same digital data that represents music and hear differences between them, I start to wonder. This also applies to losslessly compressed audio.

 

In this case it is not about arguing hearing differences, it is about differences that do (or at least should) not exists!

 

Regards,

Peter

 

 

 

[Paul R]

(soapbox)

 

Nobody here has every seriously decried that there are no audible differences between AIFF and WAV files, nor said that all amps sound the same.

 

Nobody with any experience or cred has ever said that what we hear cannot be measured, analyzed, and explained either.

 

But, some people are here not to enjoy discussion with their peers, but rather to gain a measure of notoriety.

 

Unfortunately, in our society today, it is possible to gain a measure of notoriety though nothing more than persistently and loudly declaiming outrageous opinions.

 

Let me point out there is another side though.

 

Through rational and respectful discussion, we learn a lot of new things, and some of it gets back to the people who make the products we listen to.

 

Maybe not a lot. Maybe not even the parts some of us consider important, but some does. And it makes a difference.

 

To you, to me, to all of us in the hobby. Maybe not a large difference, but just the same. What you say here can wind up being listened to by the movers and shakers in the industry.

 

Those "movers and shakers" are the exact opposite of those seeking notoriety the way I described above.

 

Consider that please when making comments, and make sure your jokes are recognized as jokes, and not taken a serious comments, or worse, used against you as way for one of those people looking for notoriety to gain advantage.

 

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the humor as much as anyone, perhaps more than most even. But it can quickly descend or be twisted into something unpleasant, and not at all what was intended.

 

(/soapbox)

 

-Paul

 

 

 

 

 

[ted_b]

"Nobody here has every seriously decried that there are no audible differences between AIFF and WAV files"

 

You're kidding, right? We wav lovers have to fight this issue every thread. The bits-is-bits gang is a strong lobby here.

 

[4est]

"Nobody here has every seriously decried that there are no audible differences between AIFF and WAV files"

 

They have said there cannot be a difference and it is all in our minds...

 

[Sik_Lescinovid]

Soooo, I did a bit of testing myself, mostly because I'm procrastinating anyways...

I took an album (Miles David - Kind Of Blue (Legacy Edition)) and ripped it perfectly (according to test-and-copy hashes as well as AR hashes) to FLAC as a single file. I converted this file using XLD to WAV and to AIFF (not at the same time as XLD would allow). After connecting the built-in output of my iMac using a cheapo 3.5mm-TRS to 3.5mm-TRS cable to the buil-in line input, I loaded both files into Fidelia and and played first the WAV file then the AIFF file and finally the WAV file again while recording everything going into the line input using Audacity. After aligning the three files sample accurately in Pro Tools 9 I compared them all against each other using a null test (separate channels on both files --> invert both channels on one of the files --> mix together to form a new stereo file). Obviously I could only null each file with itself perfectly, but what's more interesting is that the difference between the two different WAVs was basically the same (in terms of a spectrum analysis) as the difference between either of the WAV files and the AIFF file. The reason I say this is that the amplitude of any difference was never above -100db and was following a normal distribution with the same parameters in both cases (I checked the numbers with MATLAB). It seems that apart from the random minute differences you get from D/A/D conversion my iMac doesn't behave differently for AIFF or WAV. So either I'm really lucky with my iMac that reproduces AIFF as well as WAV or maybe you all should run a similar test on your setups and have more trust in science.

 

[Paul R]

Rather, are you saying WAV lovers say there is no difference between AIFF and WAV files? (grin)

 

There are folks, like me, who cannot hear the difference, but I think pretty much everyone agrees that some of us hear a difference in them when they are played back.

 

Bits is Bits is valid too. There is no difference in the audio data contained in a WAV or AIFF file. That is an easily proven fact.

 

Ergo, if there is a difference, and I think all of us agree that at least in some systems there is an audible difference, it is caused by something other than the data and ripping, and is most likely in the analog realm. (shurg)

 

You do, justifiably, see resistance to any kind of mysticism around why that difference might exist. It's smoke and mirrors to say "we can't measure it" or "we are ignorant" - same kind of hoodoo politicians use to frighten voters into believing silly stuff. And like any other hoodoo, it shrivels rapidly under the glare of rational examination and discussion.

 

Fact is though, at the end of the day, the only reason there is any kind of discussion at all, much less interested and sometimes intense discussion, is because everyone is interested in it. Also note, that if respect and belief were not accorded, on all sides, then there would be no interest and no discussion. (grin)

 

-Paul

 

 

[Paul R]

That is what you may have "heard", but it isn't what was actually "said" Forrest.

 

I doubt anyone here is stupid enough to doubt that you, or Barrows, or Barry, or {fill in about 100 or so other names} hears what you say you hear.

 

Heck, I might question you, but that's just to be sure I understand what you are saying. Big difference between that and being an ass. Well, maybe not so much a difference but, at least, a lot different intention!

 

Yours,

-Paul

 

 

[Paul R]

to devise a way to do this on a large number of systems, and in particular, the systems that produce a difference.

 

Personally, I am compelled to believe there is some kind of system configuration that creates the difference.

 

-Paul

 

P.S.

 

Believe in science? Who fed you that hokey line from the 1950s?

 

Believe in what you determine for yourself, from facts you can verify, personal experience, and to a lesser extent perhaps, the experiences and opinions shared by others.

 

Hell of a lot harder than "believing" in something all ready made and easily digestible, but it gets you a lot farther.

 

 

-Paul

 

 

[goldsdad]

"They have said there cannot be a difference and it is all in our minds..."

 

Hi Forrest,

 

I hope you don't mind me borrowing your words and changing a few to present my own point of view.

 

There should not be an audible difference so it could be all in their minds...

 

...or it could be physical reality. Nobody knows yet.

 

 

[Sik_Lescinovid]

Paul,

 

the line was obviously supposed to be tongue-in-cheek.

 

[Paul R]

I wasn't sure.

 

-Paul

 

 

[Sik_Lescinovid]

Anyways, there is an easy way to do this on a large number of systems including those that supposedly do make a difference: everyone in this thread try for themselves, it's precisely what I suggested in my original post. I doubt that anyone here will have trouble ripping a few albums perfectly, taking any 3.5mm-to-3.5mm and performing what I did. Or if it's the digital domain you're interested in you could use a Halide bridge connected to the USB port of whatever server you're using and output the optical signal into an interface connected to another computer and record that. You can already I guess what my bets are on the results, but the point is to do this since it's so little work.

 

(Except for the sample accurate aligning in the analog case, can be a bit cumbersome if you intend on doing it with more than a hundred albums...)

 

[Sik_Lescinovid]

Paul,

 

you will also note that the original line said "trust in science". Now that is not as hokey as you claim. It's quite common nowadays to find people that have no trust whatsoever in natural science but use its fruits everyday. Kinda the height of hypocrisy if you ask me. I'm not explicitly saying that anyone here holds this position but I was implicitly trying to communicate my concern at some of the behavior I have seen on this board.

 

[Paul R]

Need to do things exactly the same way on each machine, with the same RIPs and so forth. Otherwise, we wind up with a mishmash similar to what we have now, where results can be questioned whether they should be or not.

 

Nor am I am at all sure you are testing for the right thing.

 

By the way, it is poor science indeed to jump to conclusions based upon inadequate and incomplete data, and only the most minimal of tests. In all probability, the difference in the playback does exist. What it is I do not know.

 

I think there is something in particular configurations that is generating the difference in sound. Proving or disproving that idea is something else altogether.

 

-Paul

 

 

[4est]

Paul- I was never bothered by jokes or comments. Forgive me if I insinuated otherwise.

 

Goldsdad- We're cool as per our off thread communication.

 

The OP asked:"Would love to hear your opinions and experiences between WAV and AIFF"

 

I have stated mine, and suggest others do so as well in hopes that others try .wav. Regardless of what is at work here, for some of us using .wav produces noticeably better sound. Of course it shouldn't matter as the files are (essentially) the same. Then again, a year ago people were having the same discussions about whether player programs could/should sound different if they were bit perfect. Integer, memory play, and HOG mode/exclusive access shouldn't make any difference what so ever, and yet they seem to. If we are to get anywhere with this issue, we would all be served by assuming that there is something at work here-even if it is hardware as there are too many individuals that do notice!

 

FWIW, I got interested in this from the opposite side. Someone was running FLAC on a Mac and having issues. Smart ass that I am suggested that it was silly to persist attempting to run FLAC when ALAC was well supported and the same thing, blah blah. Well, I had to eat my words when I tested it. Put simply, I was biased against my present view.

 

One thing for sure though, I am not golden eared.

 

[Paul R]

I have no trust whatsoever in "science" - if you mean "science: the philosophy."

 

Like everything else ever thought up by humans, "science, the philosophy" has been twisted and used to browbeat and try to control the dear peepul. IMNSHO, of course.

 

In fact, I would easily trust my ears over a "scientific" report that told me a Mark Levinson amp sounded exactly like a $99 Insignia amp. Without hesitation.

 

Like everything else, scientific results have to be studied, reviewed, and validated. That's one of the values of peer reviewed journals. Of course, they have their downsides too, as in sometimes the peers doing the reviewing have their own agendas and resist any challenge to those ideas.

 

So no, I don't "trust" in science, not per say. You can replace "science" with almost any other word you choose, and that would be true too.

 

-Paul

 

 

 

[Sik_Lescinovid]

Paul,

 

I never concluded from my test that there is no difference between AIFF and WAV but rather that my iMac's built-in analog output and Fidelia treated both AIFF and WAV practically the same for the duration of about an hour. All I am claiming is that this is better heuristic evidence for the non-existence of a difference than anecdotal hearing is heuristic evidence for the existence of a difference. Truth of the matter though is that this doesn't matter much at this point since the original idea was to strengthen these results (or at least endow them with more purpose) by performing the test multiple times in the exact same way describe by multiple members. The only two points at which someone might mess up is by performing gymnastics with the involved cable during recording (leading potentially to artifacts) or by not aligning accurately enough the re-recorded versions. The former can be avoided by not being too dense and the later can be avoided by nulling one of the re-recorded versions against itself to see if it does null perfectly (which is what I also wrote in my original post). Now, either what I said is true and the tests are repeatable without much hassle or I'm heavily overestimating the abilities of my fellow audiophiles. Finally, as far as I can tell such an undergoing is the only way to move forward and discover something potentially important. Sitting around all day commenting how mysteriously all these devices behave is not going to help anybody and has never in the history of humans benefited anyone other than the participants of the discussion by heightening their self-esteem temporarily (or lowering it, depending on the participants rhetoric proficiency). As someone who was convinced from the start that there is no difference (remember, everyone is entitled to their precious opinion, and so am I) I have chosen to do the test (as well as the ripping test I mentioned above) to set an example for others so they temporarily abandon their opinion and just do such a simple test already so that we can move on. If on the other hand you are still convinced that this is not doable I suggest you post a fairly detailed explanation as to why exactly (I'm looking at you Paul).

 

[Paul R]

I just said it would be less than useful unless the same RIPS are provided to everyone, and those RIPs are all done in an agreed upon fashion.

 

I also noted that using different cables and machines would be a factor that would slew the results, and pretty much asked you how you would account for that.

 

I'm not opposed to your idea, I just think it needs to be refined a little more.

 

As to:

 

this is better heuristic evidence for the non-existence of a difference than anecdotal hearing is heuristic evidence for the existence of a difference.

 

Well, human first person evidence is notoriously fraught with issues, yes. But so are tests like this.

 

I have been working to design a distributed test to determine if people can hear the difference between two sets of speaker cables, and there are a lot - I mean a whole lot, of factors to consider.

 

I think the same kind of issues appear if you change that to "hear the difference between AIFF and WAV files." More even, since you are running something that needs to compare digital files turned into analog signals on multi-variant equipment with little or no control. My Mac gave a positive result - is it just my Mac? Cable? Something else I did? Or is is real? Same would apply to a negative result of course.

 

Large scale testing is damnably difficult compared to running one off tests.

 

-Paul

 

 

 

 

[dbbloke]

Used to use mp3 (many years ago) then the aforementioned amiga/apple and microsoft aiff/wav formats and then decided to use EAC and rip to FLAC / mp3 which was ok for a while, BUT ...

 

Found these somehow never sounded as good as discs on my CDP. So now I extract to an image file.

I then mount on a pc or use a dedicated media player. Also, makes burning back to a CD real easy as no conversion needed.

 

Has anyone read about sound quality comparisons with image vs other formats?

 

Seem to have a number of installed programs - MagicIso, Deamon Tools, PowerISO etc..

 

[Sik_Lescinovid]

I don't think it's particularly hard to agree upon a ripping standard. If anyone is interested I will gladly share the optimal settings for XLD and all you have to do is rip as many albums as you like to test and post all the ripping logs. I have automated software that checks if the logs are up to standard (or I tell quickly what to look for and we all post our logs here). The cables might be an issue though I mentioned that I was using a cheapo cable and that the differences were never above -100db. If someone were to check the same album using a more advanced cable they might get explicit differences between WAV and AIFF, but these would then have to be below -100db likely and that would be invisible to the human ear; if not we have learned something new. I'll also gladly share the settings for the Audacity spectrogram so as to get standardized reports. Considering that the test is relatively easy to pull off and that we have quite reliable ripping logs I don't see much harm in giving it a try. As for the analysis of the spectrogram reports we will either have to do a short crash course on statistical computing (e.g. with R, since MATLAB is too huge) or we trust in my "expertise" with that. Though I can already tell you that it won't be hard to use R for a quick analysis, as long as you plot the different results (which is an easy thing to do) you can practically visually check if the results are different in a WAV-WAV comparison versus a WAV-AIFF comparison.

 

The fact that we might all be using different albums for testing is kinda the intention. We always report which albums we use so that others might compare as well (in the worst case scenario we can always exchange a few rips for research purposes). In regards to different machines I don't see how this could actually be a problem since we are using Macs and everyone will have to state what Mac specifically he is using. If nobody finds a difference in the analysis' we have strong heuristic evidence that all Macintosh computers reproduce AIFF and WAV in the same way through the built-in output, and if we find differences then we might find out that certain Mac models in fact do introduce difference and we have yet again concluded something useful. Either way we profit.

 

[thesurfingalien]

Forrest,

 

As prior posts might indicate, I am rather intrigued by this subject. Would you mind describing what the difference sounds like, possibly in some detail?

 

What also would help is the "route" you follow to create the WAV and AIFF files.

 

Thanks,

Peter

 

[4est]

I described earlier my route. It was quick and basic as were my tests at the time. I used iTunes to AIFF>WAV>AIFF, and then I compared the three files. The original AIFF seemed the same as the ones I converted from the WAV. The WAV files on the other hand seemed to just sound more natural- more space but mostly more delicate micro dynamic shading. It has been months, and remember that I do not use WAV files normally. I'd do it abgain, but my system is in a state of flux at the moment as I have built a DAC and and fooling around attempting to get i2s to work with it. As it is, it appears that I have a defective device that will need to be returned. I wish I could be of more help at the moment...

 

The original files were ripped with iTunes, and so I do not feel that using iTunes to make the other two files was out of place. Yes, I know that there are better rippers too, but I haven't the time to re rip 2k CDs. I darn near ruined my drive the second time I ripped everything. If I do it again it will be using an external, or maybe even a PC. That is a project for a later date when I have researched and experimented more with file types and ripping programs.

 

[goldsdad]

Hi Sik,

 

A thought occurs. For the sake of argument, let's say that your testing procedure (involving loopback or transmission between computers) results in a conclusion that all tested Macs give the same output (above -100dB) when comparing AIFF with WAVE playback. There will still be the possibility of a difference to be occurring in audio equipment outside of computers, such as DAC and amplification.

 

How so? Well, ideas have been presented in this forum regarding the different sets of software instructions required for the computer's processing of different audio file formats may be causing different electrical noise patterns to which various brands and models of audio equipment are sensitive in varying degrees. The noise may be transmitted through the household wiring, or through the connections between computer and audio equipment, or radiated through the air.

 

Measures could be taken to prevent this noise pollution from reaching the audio equipment (like battery powering the computer, optically connecting computer to external DAC and some kind of shield enclosing the computer) but then that would be an artificial testing situation. It wouldn't be revealing of what is happening in people's own preferred system setups.

 

Another approach to eliminating format-dependent noise would be not to use an artificial hardware setup, but instead ensure that the computer is executing exactly the same instructions during playback of a recording, regardless of file format. That can be achieved by using Audirvana memory player. I've harped on about why it is different to other memory players several times in this thread. Basically, it extracts and decodes an entire file's audio samples into an absolutely format-independent series of numbers in memory before playback begins. When Audirvana is actually playing the samples, there is no simultaneous format-dependent processing, and therefore no format-dependent noise.

 

Again though, this would be an artificial situation for those people who normally do not use Audirvana.

 

Since testing people instead of equipment seems likely to be abhorrent or insulting (or threatening, in some cases, perhaps) to the very people who hear WAVE versus AIFF differences, I can offer no realistic solution to solving the WAVE/AIFF mystery.

 

 

[Sik_Lescinovid]

I should've made it more clear that the original idea was for everyone to use whatever setup they have and simply record the output at a feasible stage (say that DAC's analog output, since recording speakers using a mic involves to many unknowns). Essentially the idea is to play a WAV twice and a corresponding AIFF once through whatever setup you have and record its output sensibly (i.e. don't record your speakers with a mic). But considering that this whole discussion is based (amongst other things) on 4est's hearing a difference with Audirvana I strongly suggest he repeat the test but double-blindly. On the topic of different computer behavior interfering with the audio equipment through the mains or even by electromagnetic induction: highly unlikely, I am really sorry but any physics undergrad could tell you this. The iPhone or iPad you're holding in your hands or the Wi-Fi in your room cause much more disturbance than the slightly different behavior of a computer ever could (especially through electromagnetic induction). And for the case of disturbances through mains I suggest testing by making the computer do completely different things (say nothing but play music and then play a movie while downloading and playing music). Do a double-blind test to tell us if you hear a difference and report back.