EAC and FLAC and WAV

[manicm]

PJPro:manicm:

Here's one to really ruffle the feathers, and I understand I'm setting myself up for ridicule, but I believe 192k MP3s sound better than 320k MP3s. Just as I believe for compressed WMAs where I think 160k sounds better than 192k.

AAC is the only format where higher bit rates really do sound better.

OK. What's the logic behind this statement?

Just my ears, look I understand I'm not testing in an ideal environment, I will get a DAC shortly, which I'm sure will make a world of difference.

 

[Anonymous]

manicm:
Grimaldi:Manicm, PJPro is correct. The way that EAC works makes the quality of a CD much less relevant than for a CD player. EAC will reread the data on a CD multiple times to ensure it gets a perfect read. A CD player cannot do that as it has to do everything in real time, it only gets one chance to do it right. Also EAC allows you to compare your read outcome with that of others on the internet to ensure that your read is 100.00000000% accurate (its unlikely that others will get the same read errors as you so it can generally be relied upon). In any case, I am surprised you can hear any difference between the formats on a laptop. My dad has an XPS 1330 and its definitely not the last word in hifi. I cannot tell the difference between a Cyrus CD8X and an ALAC file (via Apple Airport Express) playing through my DAC XP and Mono-Xs so I am shocked that you can apparently tell the difference between one lossless format and another on a laptop using an internal sound card.

1. I do have a proper hifi system, but have been using my lappie for ripping experimention. Yes the XPS is not hifi by any means but I am using it to differentiate between different digital formats - even with the admittedly crappy sound card, is this so absurd?

2. In my mind, and I acknowledge many will disagree here, EAC is only as good as the drive. Let's for argument sake you have a dodgy drive which misreads sometimes EAC is going to fix this even with countless re-sampling? I don't think so. Like CD players sound different, I believe CD drives in PCs do make a difference. In another post you mentioned that some drives have different lasers for CD and DVD playing, well I would hazard these are few and far between in PCs, even a laptop as relatively expensive as an XPS.

3. I have used EAC to both rip to WAV and burn my original CDs for the car, and I can tell you the sound still sucks - and I put this down to the CD drive - so things like EAC and AccurateRip can only do so much for me.

4. To repeat, all of the above leads me to believe that the quality of a drive is important to start off with, much like a CD player.

So I will agree to disagree with many others here, but all in the spirit of music.

Your logic is totally flawed!

1. You are trying to test the difference in the sound of different lossless formats which should sound exactly the same (as they have the same data when decompressed) using something as awful for music reproduction as a laptop sound card and speakers. No wonder you are confused!

2. So your argument is that if a CD drive is broken then its not good enough. If I try to read a CD with my eyes through a magnifying glass I am sure that will be less than perfect too. If a CD drive can read a CD and the correct offset has been set up then it will read it. Remember, at the end of the day AccurateRip is there to check accuracy ... and it doesn't lie and is not subject to subjective testing via a laptop sound card as a source. Also, if the CD could not be read correctly then you could not install any software on your PC in the first place. The lasers for CD and DVD reading have to be different wave length because of the different specification so if a drive can read both discs it will have the ability to generate both wave lengths ... there is nothing special about it.

3. Burning a CD is a completely different kettle of fish. You have to write it sequentially on first pass so again its like reading a CD in a CD player ... the quality of the drive increases in importance.

4. So again, the above proves that the quality of the drive is pretty much irrelevant. If it can read it will generally do as well as another for CD ripping.

If you prefer the sound of a low bit rate mp3 (a pretty poor compression method in the first place compared to AAC) then it suggests that there is something very wrong with the way your laptop soundcard and speakers reproduce sound. Something in the compression artefact is compensating for the shortcoming of your laptop and making it sound better to you.

Please don't make such sweeping statements about various formats (particularly lossless ones) when all you have to go on is your laptop and PC speakers. A laptop is full of all sorts of interference, the components are generally poor and sound is an afterthought. How you can make any conclusions based on that is beyond me.

 

[manicm]

I downloaded a WMA Lossless decoder from Microsoft (actually dates back to 2003 and decompresses into a new WAV file) and decoded a WMA Lossless file I purchased from Linn and I to my ears the decoded WAV did not sound *quite* as good as the original WMA Lossless.

I'm beginning to think there are some holes in accepted lossless theories.

 

[Anonymous]

manicm:
I downloaded a WMA Lossless decoder from Microsoft (actually dates back to 2003 and decompresses into a new WAV file) and decoded a WMA Lossless file I purchased from Linn and I to my ears the decoded WAV did not sound *quite* as good as the original WMA Lossless.

I'm beginning to think there are some holes in accepted lossless theories.

With all due respect LOL!

Is this a wind-up? Surely.

How do you think the PC plays the WMA Lossless? Well, first it will decompress it on the fly into a WAV equivalent PCM, which will then be converted to analogue. So how can this sound better than converting the whole file first to WAV (and then playing it without additional conversion)?

So now WMA lossless > WAV, and mp3 128kbps > mp3 320kbps?

 

[manicm]

Grimaldi:manicm:

I downloaded a WMA Lossless decoder from Microsoft (actually dates back to 2003 and decompresses into a new WAV file) and decoded a WMA Lossless file I purchased from Linn and I to my ears the decoded WAV did not sound *quite* as good as the original WMA Lossless.

I'm beginning to think there are some holes in accepted lossless theories.

With all due respect LOL! Is this a wind-up? Surely. How do you think the PC plays the WMA Lossless? Well, first it will decompress it on the fly into a WAV equivalent PCM, which will then be converted to analogue. So how can this sound better than converting the whole file first to WAV (and then playing it without additional conversion)? So now WMA lossless > WAV, and mp3 128kbps > mp3 320kbps?

1. You're obviously not a very good reader are you? I never said WMA Lossless > WAV. I just said decoding a song from a purchased WMA Lossless album from Linn into WAV did not sound as good as the original WMAL file that's all. I used a free decoder from Microsoft. I am not talking about a WMAL rip from my own CDs.

2. How sure are you that when playing WMAL through WMP it is 'getting decoded into WAV'. This is the first I've ever heard of this. This is simply an assumption on your part and may not be true. WMP could be playing WMAL directly as a valid audio format, WITHOUT decoding into WAV.

I want confirmation from Microsoft that WMP decodes WMAL into WAV when playing. I haven't read anywhere about this.

 

[manicm]

Octopo:

Hmmm. Let's start from the beginning and take it from there.

1. wav and aiff are the largest types of high quality file. They are merely containers for the raw audio and will reproduce the audio exactly how it was on the CD. You will not hear a difference between the two.

2. FLAC and Apple lossless use compression algorithms which reduce the size of the file by around 30%. These files can then be decoded back to their raw state i.e. wav or aiff. You will not hear a difference between the two or the raw audio.

3. WMA is a lossy filetype like mp3. You prefer this one?

I was talking about WMA Lossless, and never did I say it sounds better than WAV. I was talking about a WMA Lossless album I purchased and for kicks decoded a song to WAV using a free, unsupported decoder from Microsoft.

 

[Anonymous]

manicm:Grimaldi:manicm:

I downloaded a WMA Lossless decoder from Microsoft (actually dates back to 2003 and decompresses into a new WAV file) and decoded a WMA Lossless file I purchased from Linn and I to my ears the decoded WAV did not sound *quite* as good as the original WMA Lossless.

I'm beginning to think there are some holes in accepted lossless theories.

With all due respect LOL! Is this a wind-up? Surely. How do you think the PC plays the WMA Lossless? Well, first it will decompress it on the fly into a WAV equivalent PCM, which will then be converted to analogue. So how can this sound better than converting the whole file first to WAV (and then playing it without additional conversion)? So now WMA lossless > WAV, and mp3 128kbps > mp3 320kbps?

1. You're obviously not a very good reader are you? I never said WMA Lossless > WAV. I just said decoding a song from a purchased WMA Lossless album from Linn into WAV did not sound as good as the original WMAL file that's all. I used a free decoder from Microsoft. I am not talking about a WMAL rip from my own CDs.

2. How sure are you that when playing WMAL through WMP it is 'getting decoded into WAV'. This is the first I've ever heard of this. This is simply an assumption on your part and may not be true. WMP could be playing WMAL directly as a valid audio format, WITHOUT decoding into WAV.

I want confirmation from Microsoft that WMP decodes WMAL into WAV when playing. I haven't read anywhere about this.

1. You said that a WMA lossless file converted to WAV sounded better. It should sound the same unless you actually turned it to a compressed WAV file using a compressor. The decoding should have just decoded the file to a WAV without any compression. I can only go on what you said and you didn't say that you managed to mess up the decoding. The age of the decoder should not have an impact on this as its not rocket science. The technology has been around for years. So yes WMA lossless > WAV is rediculous as both will result in the same PCM data stream feeding your DAC.

2. I said it was getting decoded to a WAV like PCM. The DAC in your laptop will convert a PCM bitstream to an analogue signal. No DAC I know of will be converting a format such as WMA lossless directly. This means that any player will first extract the PCM bitstream. A WAV file basically contains a PCM bitstream. Check it out on wikipedia if you want to know more.

In any case you seem to be really poorly informed. If you want proof then do some reading rather than just making authoritative posts on things you seem to know much less about than most. You only seem to support your arguments with subjective preferences based on reproduction on a very poor quality setup. Some people struggle to detect the difference between a compressed audio file and an uncompressed one on very expensive setups, using external DACs, quality amps and speakers, yet you somehow manage to detect differences between lossless formats (which have been proven to decode to the same PCM stream) on a laptop. Honestly ....

 

[Alec]

Grimaldi:manicm:Grimaldi:manicm:

I downloaded a WMA Lossless decoder from Microsoft (actually dates back to 2003 and decompresses into a new WAV file) and decoded a WMA Lossless file I purchased from Linn and I to my ears the decoded WAV did not sound *quite* as good as the original WMA Lossless.

I'm beginning to think there are some holes in accepted lossless theories.

With all due respect LOL! Is this a wind-up? Surely. How do you think the PC plays the WMA Lossless? Well, first it will decompress it on the fly into a WAV equivalent PCM, which will then be converted to analogue. So how can this sound better than converting the whole file first to WAV (and then playing it without additional conversion)? So now WMA lossless > WAV, and mp3 128kbps > mp3 320kbps?

1. You're obviously not a very good reader are you? I never said WMA Lossless > WAV. I just said decoding a song from a purchased WMA Lossless album from Linn into WAV did not sound as good as the original WMAL file that's all. I used a free decoder from Microsoft. I am not talking about a WMAL rip from my own CDs.

2. How sure are you that when playing WMAL through WMP it is 'getting decoded into WAV'. This is the first I've ever heard of this. This is simply an assumption on your part and may not be true. WMP could be playing WMAL directly as a valid audio format, WITHOUT decoding into WAV.

I want confirmation from Microsoft that WMP decodes WMAL into WAV when playing. I haven't read anywhere about this.

1. You said that a WMA lossless file converted to WAV sounded better. It should sound the same unless you actually turned it to a compressed WAV file using a compressor. The decoding should have just decoded the file to a WAV without any compression. I can only go on what you said and you didn't say that you managed to mess up the decoding. The age of the decoder should not have an impact on this as its not rocket science. The technology has been around for years. So yes WMA lossless > WAV is rediculous as both will result in the same PCM data stream feeding your DAC.

2. I said it was getting decoded to a WAV like PCM. The DAC in your laptop will convert a PCM bitstream to an analogue signal. No DAC I know of will be converting a format such as WMA lossless directly. This means that any player will first extract the PCM bitstream. A WAV file basically contains a PCM bitstream. Check it out on wikipedia if you want to know more.

In any case you seem to be really poorly informed. If you want proof then do some reading rather than just making authoritative posts on things you seem to know much less about than most. You only seem to support your arguments with subjective preferences based on reproduction on a very poor quality setup. Some people struggle to detect the difference between a compressed audio file and an uncompressed one on very expensive setups, using external DACs, quality amps and speakers, yet you somehow manage to detect differences between lossless formats (which have been proven to decode to the same PCM stream) on a laptop. Honestly ....

I composed a reply to manicm. Then decided it wasnt good enough to post.

I'm glad i did.

My hat is off sir.

 

[manicm]

To Grimaldi:

'Some people struggle to detect the difference between a compressed audio file and an uncompressed one on very expensive setups, using external DACs, quality amps and speakers.'

Ha ha ha ha, where did you get this from???? This is categorically rubbish. So now you're telling me on very high-end systems compressed audio will sound as good as uncompressed??? Nice one. You've just done what you've accused me of - MP3 > WAV?? Ring any bells???!!!!!!!

I'm sure many will have much to say on this, especially Linn DS owners. Your statement is obviously not one of experience or knowledge.

Wikipedia on the topic of compression, lossless and otherwise, is extremely limited on the subject and is just regurgitation of other sites, with no real explanations. It sheds no real light on this subject.

And, again you don't read properly, I did not decode to a compressed WAV file, I used a Microsoft decoder, go and get it, so please stop putting words in my mouth.

And I am certainly not the only who thinks that the various lossless formats do not all sound the same.

 

[Alec]

manicm:
To Grimaldi:

'Some people struggle to detect the difference between a compressed audio file and an uncompressed one on very expensive setups, using external DACs, quality amps and speakers.'

Ha ha ha ha, where did you get this from???? This is categorically rubbish. So now you're telling me on very high-end systems compressed audio will sound as good as uncompressed??? Nice one. You've just done what you've accused me of - MP3 > WAV?? Ring any bells???!!!!!!!

I'm sure many will have much to say on this, especially Linn DS owners. Your statement is obviously not one of experience or knowledge.

Wikipedia on the topic of compression, lossless and otherwise, is extremely limited on the subject and is just regurgitation of other sites, with no real explanations. It sheds no real light on this subject.

And, again you don't read properly, I did not decode to a compressed WAV file, I used a Microsoft decoder, go and get it, so please stop putting words in my mouth.

And I am certainly not the only who thinks that the various lossless formats do not all sound the same.

What? WAV is not compressed, so we know you didnt transcode to a compressed WAV file and no one is saying you did.

'Some people struggle to detect the difference between a compressed audio file and an uncompressed one on very expensive setups, using external DACs, quality amps and speakers.'

is true, like it or not. pay particular attention to the word "SOME" here, tho imo, its quite a few.

Probably about time you gave this one up.

 

[Anonymous]

Al7478 I am surprised your patience has held so long (no offence manicm though you have been battling the odds for a while now?).

 

[Alec]

Octopo:Al7478 I am surprised your patience has held so long (no offence manicm though you have been battling the odds for a while now?).

Im done now. you cant even have a row with someone who cant be consistent, let alone a civil exchange of information and views.

 

[manicm]

'What? WAV is not compressed, so we know you didnt transcode to a compressed WAV file and no one is saying you did.'

Well Grimaldi guessed I did.

And I haven't insulted anyone here, as you insult me right now.

And as to the 'Some' who can't tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed on a high-end system, well Grimaldi should have some serious beef with them, as much as with me.

And yes, I won't have more to say on this topic, so again I politely agree to disagree without insulting anyone, I however find your approach incredibly arrogant.

I now put my hat back on and leave through the door.

 

[manicm]

Octopo:Al7478 I am surprised your patience has held so long (no offence manicm though you have been battling the odds for a while now?).

Octopo, I take great offence to this comment, what was a technical argument has now become personal, and I do not appreciate your two worthless cents...

 

[manicm]

Oh God, I can't believe I'm taking myself so seriously here

 

[Anonymous]

I've no problem with manicm, if anything I've been a bit sharp with him.

 

[Anonymous]

manicm:
Octopo:Al7478 I am surprised your patience has held so long (no offence manicm though you have been battling the odds for a while now?).

Octopo, I take great offence to this comment, what was a technical argument has now become personal, and I do not appreciate your two worthless cents...

manicm, as is the nature of looking at a forum I cannot see if you are being serious though I apologise if you took offence at my comment. In much the same way looking back over the thread it seems to me that some of your comments seemed unsupported by any reasonable logic and were written in a way to incite an argument.

 

[Anonymous]

Before this thread degenerates even further may I suggest this...Get a good CD drive. Rip using EAC or dbPowerAmp to WAV. Then convert these WAV to ALAC, FLAC, and WMA Lossless. Pick a song and and to a playlist a copy of the song in each of these formats. Set the playlist/program to shuffle. Then play the first little of bit of each one and hit the skip track button. Do this as a BLIND TEST. Also use a DAC with good speakers. Then see if they sound any different.

 

[manicm]

Beta4Me:Before this thread degenerates even further may I suggest this...Get a good CD drive. Rip using EAC or dbPowerAmp to WAV. Then convert these WAV to ALAC, FLAC, and WMA Lossless. Pick a song and and to a playlist a copy of the song in each of these formats. Set the playlist/program to shuffle. Then play the first little of bit of each one and hit the skip track button. Do this as a BLIND TEST. Also use a DAC with good speakers. Then see if they sound any different.

Look, I wasn't gonna post on this topic anymore, but 'Get a good CD drive' seemed fundamental to me even for ripping but others here and elsewhere outside WHF, well everywhere else, seem to think that it not matters a toss. But I'm not gonna set myself up for ridicule a second time...

Anyway, why not take your own advice and post your listening results? Well I would test differently. I would rip to each of the formats from the original CD, not one to another. So CD->WAV, CD->FLAC, CD-> ALAC etc etc.

 

[manicm]

Beta4me, here's an interesting article from Linn, make of it what you will.

http://docs.linn.co.uk/wiki/index.php/CD...erminology

 

[Anonymous]

Well I would test differently. I would rip to each of the formats from
the original CD, not one to another. So CD->WAV, CD->FLAC,
CD-> ALAC etc etc.

You realise that you are not really ripping directly to that format. You are ripping to WAV and then it is silently converting it to your desired format.

Also get a good CD drive is fundamental. If you have an old or rubbish one then EAC/dbpoweramp may not be able to utilise all it's features e.g. advanced error checking. It may also not be able to properly detect the read/write offeset. Anyone else that thinks different can go jump...

 

[PJPro]

Caaalm dowwn! Caaalm dowwn!

 

[Alec]

manicm:
Look, I wasn't gonna post on this topic anymore, but 'Get a good CD drive' seemed fundamental to me even for ripping but others here and elsewhere outside WHF, well everywhere else, seem to think that it not matters a toss. But I'm not gonna set myself up for ridicule a second time....

Well, you have. You would think the fact that no one anywhere, by your own admission, agrees with you, would tell you something.

And theres really no need to tell people who havent done owt yet to "go jump" folks.

 

[manicm]

al7478:manicm:

Look, I wasn't gonna post on this topic anymore, but 'Get a good CD drive' seemed fundamental to me even for ripping but others here and elsewhere outside WHF, well everywhere else, seem to think that it not matters a toss. But I'm not gonna set myself up for ridicule a second time.... Well, you have. You would think the fact that no one anywhere, by your own admission, agrees with you, would tell you something. And theres really no need to tell people who havent done owt yet to "go jump" folks.

1stly, I did not say I'm absolutely right about the CD or DVD drive (whatever the case may be). However the Linn link I gave may prove enlightening to one even as arrogant as yourself.

2ndly - I did not make the 'jump off' remark.

3rdly - I would take PJPro's advice above.

Now I truly leave this topic (but I'm sure you won't).

 

[manicm]

PJPro: