[Syan25]

Dear All - 
 
A question has entered the building: Is it really worth converting old recordings say before the 80's from CD to FLAC/ALAC files?
 
When I bought my first ipod many years ago - the sound was really not that good and somehow I got bored with using it. After years passing, I have finally bought the latest classical ipod 160GB.
I had also detested using those apple earpads - so I really never bothered to use the ipod until now - I bought myself the SHURE SRH 840s and also the SHURE SE535s. Having decided that I want to increase audio quality to a very high level - I am also obtaining the Ray Samuels SR-71A with LOD cables made by RSA too.  
 
So back to the point of all that - since I am making a real effort this time to enjoy the music, I have been re-copying my music from CD into ALAC on itunes...
 
My music collection is huge - so now at 30GB - I am starting to debate whether or not I ought to re-copy music that was recorded before the 80's into ALAC. My thinking is that if the recording is that old - the audio resolution can't be that high anyway to warrant ALAC conversion. Conversely, if old recordings are already low in resolution, then compressing them into lower resolution( mp3,aac) would totally ruin any decent experience of them. . .
 
By old recordings I mean: remastered Miles Davis - Santana - Grateful Dead - Weather Report etc...
 
Anyway - would like others to leave their wisdom here...
 

 

[jcx]

digital remastering from the original analog master tapes from (mid?) '90s onward should have been done with ADC at higher res (sample rate, bit depth, linearity) than early CD recordings and then decimated/dithered to deliver subjectively more S/N than earlier digital transfers when ADC speed, resolution and digital processing hardware/dither algorithms were all short of delivering the RedBook CD's ultimate possibilities
 
any rips should be done in a lossless format to accomodate lossy codec data compression quality evolution - even MP3 has improved over the last decade

 

[khaos974]

Wow, 30 GB is considered a lot? A recent poll on head-fi has revealed that, amongst those who answered anyway, the majority had between 500-1000 CDs, closely followed by those who owned 1000-2000 CDs. That's between 200GB and 1TB of data in FLAC/ALAC.
 
But for portable use I would say keep the lossless files on your computer and have it transcode to ~300kbps aac directly on you DAP. As for the quality of older recordings, magnetic bands ie. tapes exceed the resolution of a CD (whether that surplus of resolution is audible is another matter), so it's definitely worth it to use a lossless encoding. I would say that from the 60s on, good recordings could use lossless.

 

[Syan25]

Thanks to the both of you!
 
Actually - I own about 1500 CDs and over 2000 in vinyl...the reason I have been trying to keep itunes to no more than 50 GB is that I don't want to take up too much of my hard drive space....I don't want my CPU to start slowing down and acting sluggish because I have too much music on here...
 
The hard drive is 219GB and it is currently at 137 GB used...
 
Maybe I am overly worried - this PC is relatively new - motherboard, CPU, hard drives all new this year...
 
So it should be OK - i hope...
 
Just cautious not the over burden my PC when I am doing other stuff...

 

[khaos974]

Buy an external HDD, they go up to 750 GB if you want a portable one (USB powered), and to 3 TB if you don't mind connecting them t an electric outlet.
A 1 TB external HDD is less than $70 nowadays.

 

[Syan25]

OK - I already have an external HARD DRIVE - but that is for my own music. I can buy a second one but then - once I have copied all the lossless music from my PC onto the external hard drive - how do I get itunes to accept the new location of the files (once I have deleted the files from my PC) - do I have to add all hundreds of files again back into the itunes library??
 

 

[Syan25]

Cheers - I will follow your advice and copy all my stuff onto the lossless format - might as well since I am buying all this hi-end audio gear,,
 
Tks
 
Quote:

Wow, 30 GB is considered a lot? A recent poll on head-fi has revealed that, amongst those who answered anyway, the majority had between 500-1000 CDs, closely followed by those who owned 1000-2000 CDs. That's between 200GB and 1TB of data in FLAC/ALAC.
 
But for portable use I would say keep the lossless files on your computer and have it transcode to ~300kbps aac directly on you DAP. As for the quality of older recordings, magnetic bands ie. tapes exceed the resolution of a CD (whether that surplus of resolution is audible is another matter), so it's definitely worth it to use a lossless encoding. I would say that from the 60s on, good recordings could use lossless.

 

[khaos974]

No idea, I use Foobar, not iTunes. I think that these days storage is cheap compared to audio gear and CDs.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Old CDs from the 80s can have excellent resolution and be well recorded.  CD mastering back then was in some ways better than what we have now.  Some of us hunt the used CD shops for those old CD releases from the 80s rather than buy a modern remastered re-release of the album.  So listen to those old recordings like they're excellent recordings, cause in many cases they are.  And yeah, those old CDs are worthy of ALAC or FLAC.

 

[jcx]

"Loudness Wars" levels of dynamic compression do spoil the higher quality of the better ADC and potential offered by noise shaped dithering in more recent CDs
 
electronic distribution should allow "mastering engineer's cut" and binaural audiophile versions in addtion to the heavily compressed, level boosted car radio optimised versions - when will the industry take advantage of the possibiliies?

 

[aamefford]

My answer is short - yes!  I've listened to old Pink Floyd and others in 128, 192 and 320 as well as ALAC.  ALAC is noticeably better, though the 320 is pretty close.

 

[Proglover]

Quote:

Old CDs from the 80s can have excellent resolution and be well recorded.  CD mastering back then was in some ways better than what we have now.  Some of us hunt the used CD shops for those old CD releases from the 80s rather than buy a modern remastered re-release of the album.  So listen to those old recordings like they're excellent recordings, cause in many cases they are.  And yeah, those old CDs are worthy of ALAC or FLAC.

Yes