APPLE LOSSLESS VS WAV. which is better?

gooner26

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i recently transfered a single song from my cd collection to do a comparison between apple lossless and wav. the wav version came in at a higher bitrate than the apple lossless version , but i could'nt tell that much of a difference between the two for sound quality. so which is better? cheers.
 
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Anonymous

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In audio terms, there should be no difference as a file compressed with Apple Lossless, once uncompressed, should be identical to the equivalent WAV file. The benefits of ALE is that the file size is around half of the WAV equivalent, meaning you can get more on your iPod. The disadvantage is that only iPods (not including the Shuffle) play Apple Lossless, although there are numerous players and converters for Windows.

FWIW I have my high quality music encoded in ALE and it works fine for me but then I only have iPods. If you want to use other MP3 players your options will be different and/or limited.
 
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Anonymous

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If you cannot tell the difference, then bully for you - you've saved half the file space. I played ALC files on my iPod on my hifi and my son, who plays MP3s on his nano, coud clearly hear how flat , washed out and unmusical the ALC file sounded compared to a CD player. All my stuff on an 80gb iPod is in WAV, and it's vastly better in my opinion. But I've been listening to great hifi for 40 years now, so my ear is trained to hear such differences. You might try listening to more of your recordings through a decent system, comparing to a CD player, and see what you hear then. To me, ALC is just not musical enough, and WAV is pretty much like listening to a CD - although it does even then sound different to a good deck.
 
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Anonymous

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>> APPLE LOSSLESS VS WAV. which is better?

Of course, that has to be .wav

.WAV is an uncompressed format, .i.e. contains all information (theoretically, save for read errors) that was burnt onto the media (CD, SACD, DHCD, DVD-Audio). ALE is a compressed format. Theoretically, there shouldn't be a difference at all in the wave and ale versions of the same track, but you may notice a thing or two if you listen really carefully. And yes, like kingsley said, trained ears will notice them sooner.

But, if you can't tell a difference, good for you. Go encode all your music in ALE.

But wait, what do you use to listen to music? An iPod? Then okay. But if you use a PC (OS doesn't matter), I'd suggest go with Monkey or FLAC. I'd specially recommend FLAC, as I see FLAC becoming what MP3 today is, in next 2-3 years.
 

Mr.H

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[quote user="Kingsleyflint"]I played ALC files on my iPod on my hifi and my son ... coud clearly hear how flat , washed out and unmusical the ALC file sounded compared to a CD[/quote]

But here, you are comparing an iPod analogue output stage to that of a CD player. The CD player's will be much better. Also, did you use a sound-pressure meter to ensure that the volume from the CD player and the iPod were matched? And did you do the test double-blind, where neither of you knew whether you were listening to CD or iPod?

[quote user="ranjeetrain"]
>> APPLE LOSSLESS VS WAV. which is better?

Of course, that has to be .wav

.WAV is an uncompressed format, .i.e. contains all information (theoretically, save for read errors) that was burnt onto the media (CD, SACD, DHCD, DVD-Audio). ALE is a compressed format. Theoretically, there shouldn't be a difference at all in the wave and ale versions of the same track, but you may notice a thing or two if you listen really carefully. And yes, like kingsley said, trained ears will notice them sooner.
But, if you can't tell a difference, good for you.[/quote]

Total nonsense. Theoretically there is no difference, and actually, there is no difference. The music you ultimately hear is analogue. To get the music into an analogue format, a digital to analogue converter is used. In the case of Apple Lossless and WAV, *exactly the same* digital bit stream is sent to the DAC, so the DAC delivers *exactly the same* analogue waveform out under both circumstances.

Perhaps one of you would like to take me up on the challenge I set Dominic Dawes? Find it in this thread.
 
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Anonymous

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The Mr's are in agreement here.

Lossless is lossless is lossless and if it sounds worse than another lossless format (or just different) then somebody has been telling lies about whether it is lossless or not. Don't compare a CD in you £xxx CD player to a losslessly compressed file played on your... other device though. That'd be like saying cassette tapes are better than CD's because you played your CD's through a *insert generic crappy make* mini system and it sounded worse than when you were at the show and they let you put you tapes through a 5 grand demo system.
 

Anton90125

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A lossless Compression when reversed (Decompressed/Unzipped ) should yield an identical file to the original. If you compare bit for bit and find they are identical then as far as any DAC is concerned the stream are identical therefore the D to A will be identical (assuming the same DAC) and the sound will be identical. If they don't sound identical then something has gone wrong in this chain.

I have compared Flac through my Roku M2000 /Ethernet/Maxtor NAS with a CD ( where the Flac file was taken from) played through a Sony SCP 777ED.Both digital outputs were feed into input 1 and 2 on my Cyrus Dac X. The CD (Sony) was sync up with the Roku. If there was a difference, AB switching would have revelled it. I found none. I fact because they were identical and my friend did the switching (pushing the selector arrow buttons on the fount) I quickly lost track which was which.

I am afraid I am with the Mister Men here.
 
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Anonymous

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Hello...

sorry for my english...

APPLE LOSSLESS VS WAV. which is better?

Here is a objective way to know if there is a difference between 2 audio formats...

You need one thing : pro tools or cubase or nuendo or ...

Let's say it's pro tools...

Create a Session (wave 44100 Khz, 16 bit)

import a CD track on your computer (in wave).

Convert the file in what format you want to compare. (i've done this with apple lossless.)

Import the wave file on audio track of the pro tools session.

Import the lossless file on audio track of protools (it will be converted in wave 44Khz 16bit)

Now you have 2 tracks in your pro tools session....

Use a plugin like "trim" to invert the phase (180ø) on one of the 2 files

press play...

As the two files are out of phase, all the identical sounds will be canceled.

If you don't ear anything.... there is no loss with the lossless....
emotion-5.gif


That's way to know.
emotion-15.gif


Cheers !
 
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Anonymous

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As has been said time and time again here and in other threads lossless formats should (nearly) always uncompress back to the origianl wav file, so any difference you here is probably due to the equipment playing back the file being different. Try playing both through the same amplifier from the same PC for example, and there should be no difference assuming that the lossless format was created from the same wav that you are comparing it to (I.e. they were not ripped separately).

The other thing that could be making a difference (although I would be suprised if even a trained listener could hear it) is that although Apple lossless is indeed a lossless format, it does not have very much in the way of error resistance. Small errors commonly occur in the transmission and storage of all digital information, and many formats have some form of error correction built in. With a wav file (which has no error resitance), if an error occurs, it is only likely to distort a single sample of the music (so the error should last only a fraction of a second) and is therefore unlikely to be heard in most circumstances. With Apple lossless, there is some error correction, but it is not very strong, and since it is a compressed format, a single small unrecoverable error could potentially distort an entire section of audio (known as a frame), lasting up to a second or more, which you could indeed notice if listening carefully.

FLAC lossless would not suffer from this weakness since it has very strong error resilience, and the amount audio that a single error could effect is much smaller than in apple lossless. Also since FLAC is very simple to decode, it takes very little processing power compared to many other lossless and lossy formats, and so is less likely to experience computational errors introduced by the decoding electronics.

It can easilly be demonstrated that an error free lossless file contains the exact same audio data as the original (error free) .wav file. Any difference that you think you can hear is completely imaginary and the higher bitrate needed for .wav is simply having a placebo effect on you I am affraid (assuming the same equipment is used to play back both formats, and both are from the same rip of the CD of course!)
 

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