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compare rip of dbpoweramp with CD in the drive......should they be the same when played back via...

post #1 of 7
11/8/11 at 7:26pm
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Edited by thelostMIDrange - 12/27/11 at 12:39pm
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post #2 of 7
11/8/11 at 7:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by thelostMIDrange View Post

Can anyone answer this.....If I rip a song with dbpoweramp in flac, this is theoretically an exact copy of the disc. Now if I play the ripped version back via a player like winamp and then play the same song directly from the cd that is still in the drive......should they sound different? 

 

I also notice that the flac is 30% compressed ? how is that an exact copy? does the file get decompressed upon playback maybe?

 



They should sound exactly the same. I have used Audio diffmaker to see if a WAV file, Flac file, or a WMA lossless file were different, and they weren't different. When using this program, and differences show up you hear the differences, and all I got was silence between the 3 of them. 

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post #3 of 7
11/8/11 at 7:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by thelostMIDrange View Post

Can anyone answer this.....If I rip a song with dbpoweramp in flac, this is theoretically an exact copy of the disc. Now if I play the ripped version back via a player like winamp and then play the same song directly from the cd that is still in the drive......should they sound different? 

 

I also notice that the flac is 30% compressed ? how is that an exact copy? does the file get decompressed upon playback maybe?


FLAC files and other lossless compression codecs work like ZIP files. Upon decoding, they're the exact same as the original WAV file, just like when you extract a ZIP file you get a bit-perfect copy of what you put in it.

 

This is unlike MP3 and lossy codecs, which completely remove data from the original file, data which can never be retrieved.

 

The FLAC should sound the same as the CD.

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post #4 of 7
11/8/11 at 8:00pm
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Edited by thelostMIDrange - 12/27/11 at 12:41pm
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post #5 of 7
11/8/11 at 8:02pm
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Edited by thelostMIDrange - 12/27/11 at 12:39pm
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post #6 of 7
11/8/11 at 8:07pm

The WAV files you rip are bit-perfect copies of the CD, provided there's no reading errors (which can be verified with stuff like AccurateRip). The FLAC files you encode are bit-perfect copies of the WAV, and by extension the CD. So there should be no difference. Maybe the CD drive will introduce jitter, if you think that matters (hint: it probably doesn't!)

 

This is provided you're playing the CD with the same software, in this case Winamp. A separate CD player might sound different because of its DAC and amp. Another piece of software might sound different if they're not set up to be bit-perfect.

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post #7 of 7
11/8/11 at 8:08pm
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Edited by thelostMIDrange - 12/27/11 at 12:38pm
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