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Uncompressed v. Lossless Compression


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Rick - I can't thank you enough for the detailed description your experience with lossless and AIFF. I agree with you on your findings. It really helps that you use a system capable of reproducing the little differences in sound. Have you tried using the Toslink out from the MacBook into another DAC? I am just curious. I think USB is the better method, but I'd be interested to hear your results.

 

I can't wait for you to get one of Gordon's new DACs and report back on the differences between that and the Benchmark. In your system it is logical that the DAC1 is the weak link. In many people's systems the DAC1 would be a great fit because of the reasonable price and high performance. I think the DAC1 outperforms most everything in its class.

 

If only ARC would release their new DAC soon!

 

Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems AudiophileStyleStickerWhite2.0.png AudiophileStyleStickerWhite7.1.4.png

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Our new Brick from Gordon should be here next week. I am really anxious to hear the new Cosecant, which will be next month.

 

Audio Research DAC8, Mac mini w/8g ram, SSD, Amarra full version, Audio Research REF 5SE Preamp, Sutherland Phd, Ayre V-5, Vandersteen 5A\'s, Audioquest Wild and Redwood cabling, VPI Classic 3 w/Dynavector XX2MkII

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After multiple aborted attempts with other file formats I settled on wav. It is simple, works great, sounds great with my Squeezebox 3. I have the data on an HP MediaVault NAS device with 2 internal 500GB drives and another USB external 500GB drive. The SB3 connected via toslink to my Integra RDC7.1 playing these wav files sounds amazing, the files I've downloaded from Linn and Music Giants online services are also great. Seems line the Music Giants Super HD had to be written to a CD and then ripped to wav to get it to a format compatible with my SB3.

 

So I am a devotee of the uncompressed music file with the 80 and 160 GB iPods I can even carry around my collection of ~400 CD's + online LPs, great for the long flights.

 

 

Miller

 

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I find .wav and .aif to be equivalent formats. No difference in converting sound to either format on either the PC or Mac platform. No difference in sound either. The only difference is that they are each native to different computer operating systems. - that is: an .aif sounds the same as a .wav on either a Mac or PC. What sort of computer are you using (sorry I missed that info if you posted it here before..)? Is it a Mac, PC, or an alternate OS?

 

markr

I REALLY like being able to 'carry it with me' too. One of these days I'll tell a story here about how I started doing that. In the 1960's....

 

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I am always enjoying the music. HD580s are, as they say, eminently "scale-able." Which means they sound really good with mediocre sources and just get better, the better you feed them. The innards of an Apple is a remarkable quiet environment compared to its computer siblings, and the sonics are respectable, so I'm getting pretty good results plugging in directly. But I can't wait to get a really good dac in the signal chain. I stare, longingly, at the Apogee Duet. A small trail of drool runs from the corner of my mouth and dampens my beard...

 

Tim

 

I confess. I\'m an audiophool.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi I am new here and saying hello I am ripping 600 cd's to my media center PC and I guess by reading his forum using wave is a good format except it takes up lots of HD space. I have tried EAC for ripping and dbpoweramp and WMP11 and Creative 5 Media organizer but WMP!! works good as the other I think. I have it going through a HT Striker 7.1 into a Pioneer AV receiver with Polk Monitor 10B's for front Bose 301 for rear and JBL center channel plus an Impact box for rear surround. Thanks for this Forum so far i like what I read.

 

Just Visiting This Planet

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I am using internal SE 16 SATA WD250YS drives plus two more in the 160 gig flavor. I am about half way through with the process, and want to make sure I get good rips.T he CD's are in great shape and I do not expect any errors from scratches and I am using Samsung 203N and the B version for the optical drives. I have been using the WMP11 and Creative Media Source 5 Organizer but I think I am going to use the dbpoweramp cd ripper for the rest a little slower but it has the accuracy checking.

 

Just Visiting This Planet

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I just wanted to stop by this thread for a moment to say that while "Apple Lossless file" has a distinguished and respectable ring to it, "Mac FLAC" sounds like something off of Sesame Street. Technically speaking. Carry on...

 

Tim

 

I confess. I\'m an audiophool.

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When I finally started my journey into PC Audio, I went FLAC, because I wanted to save drive space (otherwise I would have needed 1TB drives.) I used Foobar for playback. This, after all, is the preferred playback option for the "Audiophile Gang", at least for Windows users. It was OK.

 

On a whim, I tried iTunes. I liked the Radio function, much to my wife's chagrin. Ask her about the "Beatlerama" channel- all things Beatle, all the time. Better yet, don't ask her. :)

 

So I grabbed a couple of discs and did the A/B thing. Damn if I didn't prefer iTunes for that as well. ITunes is warmer, less sterile, and more lifelike, at least to my ears. But iTunes won't read FLAC, so I re-ripped everything (900 plus discs.)

 

I also tried JRiver Media Center, which I intially thought was an improvement playing ALAC files, but I found that I was experiencing listening fatigue, something that never happens with iTunes.

 

In the end, I believe there is far more difference between playback programs than between WAV/AIFF vs. ALAC/FLAC.

 

Reviewer- Enjoythemusic.com

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I wish I had all the Albums I had years ago before i went to CD's. I am sticking with the WAVE using the dbpoweramp i just purchased for ripping and converting to MP3 to play with my Creative Zen V Plus just because it will fit more mp3's than wave on the 3 gig player can't wait for the new 250 gig to come Monday. Thanks for the warm welcome to the forums. Albums and tube amp is sweet.

 

Just Visiting This Planet

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I can relate. When I started ripping to hard drive, I started in iTunes, but I started ripping at 320kbps. About halfway through, I changed my mind and started ripping lossless. I still wouldn't swear I can hear the difference, not with my current setup. But I'm re-ripping the first half anyway. There's a reason I sign "audiophool" instead of audiophile.

 

Tim

 

I confess. I\'m an audiophool.

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Fortunately this is a laid back site. Whatever sounds good to you is the right way to go.

 

Thanks for posting that, "[You] still wouldn't swear [you] can hear the difference" between 320kbps and lossless in your current system. We all benefit from the honesty.

 

I prefer AIFF uncompressed. What that means to other people is up to them.

 

Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems AudiophileStyleStickerWhite2.0.png AudiophileStyleStickerWhite7.1.4.png

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There is an interesting article up on Stereophile right now. In it John Atkinson states the following.

 

"Something I have rarely seen discussed is the fact is that because all compressed file formats, both lossless and lossy, effectively have zero data redundancy, they are much more vulnerable than uncompressed files to bit errors in transmission."

 

Interesting piece of information.

 

Here is a link to the complete article.

 

Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems AudiophileStyleStickerWhite2.0.png AudiophileStyleStickerWhite7.1.4.png

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That's a very interesting article. I'm able to hear the difference between MP3 and lossless, but I've still been very curious as to how lossless compression of audio works. The article shows that lossless compression is lossless. It's a mystery to me because computer-file compression takes advantage of redundancy, but I don't know where they find redundancy in music.

 

Still, I'm not sure I understand his statement about "data redundancy in the transmission." Transmission from what to what? There's redundancy in how the CD stores its information, but no redundancy on a hard disk no matter what kind of file you store. So, what redundancy is he talking about?

 

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Not having spent much time trying to understand MP3 codecs, I am nevertheless going to hazard a somewhat educated guess on this. Some more knowledgeable than I will hopefully follow with some fine tuning to this posit. First what was said in the article was a 'two parter' - that is, it was a statement with a footnote. Here:

 

"And while lossy codecs differ in the assumptions made by their designers, all of them discard—permanently—real musical information that would have been audible to some listeners with some kinds of music played through some systems. These codecs are not, in the jargon, "transparent," as can be demonstrated in listening tests (footnote 1).

 

Footnote 1: Something I have rarely seen discussed is the fact that because all compressed file formats, both lossless and lossy, effectively have zero data redundancy, they are much more vulnerable than uncompressed files to bit errors in transmission."

 

If you assume that by "transmission", he means to play the file through the playback system, I then think that broken down, what he is saying here is that

(1) uncompressed digital audio is similar to its analog relative, in that it is audio information that changes in tone and volume over time - from one instant to the next, continuously throughout the file. If you miss just one instant, the next instant (data redundancy) comes along immediately to 'mask' that small gap in time that was missed. ALMOST no problem.

(2) compressed digital audio is not similar to its analog relative, in that it is a *representation* of uncompressed audio that compresses sometimes as much as a few seconds of audio into one instant in the playback (transmission) of the file. Not all of that audio is really there anymore though. That 'representation' of music that is compressed audio, is a series of instructions for the audio equipment to play the changes in tone and volume of the audio file in a particular sequence. Sometimes a few seconds of time can be represented by just one compressed 'statement' point. If one of those points of 'representation' are not transmitted flawlessly, there IS no data redundancy (the next instant, in an uncompressed audio file) available to continue the audio playback for that instant in time. You then get a very audible moment - or more - of silence, or something worse, that was not in the original audio file. PROBLEM.

 

Whew. I hope that still makes sense in the morning....

 

markr

 

 

 

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Some years back, compression was quite popular for data backup on computers. There was always the caveat that if something went wrong, recovering the data would be nearly impossible because of non-standard structures. A problem with the disk would knock out a larger piece of the data.

 

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