Which Format should I rip to ?

[manicm]

Fulmer - it's plain and simple - yes CD audio and rips thereof both use PCM, but the format on a physical CD is categorically not WAV or any other computer based format.

You do realise WAV was a computer audio format developed by Microsoft in the early 90s??

 

[Anonymous]

Therefore the point is that it is not bit-for-bit accurate which is always the point of compression in the first place; it's a compromise.

FLAC is bit for bit accurate, 100% of the time. Part of the process of testing FLAC is to generate test streams and compare what comes out, AFAIK in a release version of FLAC it has never failed to 100% accurate.

 

[AnotherJoe]

CD is only as good as the digital encoding laid on to the storage medium.

If you have a analog source then as soon as you encode into digital using LPCM some detail is lost.

The term 'lossless' only applies when compared to the digital encoding - not the original source.

In terms of audio quality any lossless codec will be comparable to another (and the CD) - provided the players implementation of said codec is up to the spec.

 

[Anonymous]

The term 'lossless' only applies when compared to the digital encoding - not the original source.

Hear hear. Although you should write "original analog source" because the "original" recording could be a MIDI track combined with some VST plugins.

Thinking about it, the term 'lossless' only ever applies to digital. Lossless doesn't exist in the analog world.

 

[soulsonic34]

I notice that you a MAC Mini like myself --- which software for the MAC do you use to encode/rip CD's to FLAC?