[Music Alchemist]

  When I A/B'ed them with my FiiO X3 with Audio Technica ATH-M50 headphones, I didn't hear a difference between the same CD ripped to FLAC 1.3.1 by EAC and dBpoweramp.  At least for me, the issue has been laid to rest as I hear no difference.  Both were verified accurate and as far as I have read, this is exactly the result I should come up with.

 
Yeah...I tried to bury this thread long ago. hehe
 
So I haven't talked to ya in awhile! Check my profile for lots of updates.

 

[hogger129]

Returning to this thread again.  I had a CD that I did with EAC > FLAC and then again with dBpoweramp > FLAC.  The CD was Daft Punk - Random Access Memories and the track was #13 - Contact.  If you listen to the beginning of the song where there is crackling, the EAC rip sounds like it is bringing out these fine details, whereas dBpoweramp sounds like it dulls them.  Does anyone else have this CD that they could test this and see what they find?  Maybe something wonky is going on in my system, or I'm just hearing something that isn't there.

 

[A_Man_Eating_Duck]

Have you checked the checksum of each file, are they the same.

 

[hogger129]

Have you checked the checksum of each file, are they the same.

How exactly can I check this?  Is there a free program I can pull the checksum with?
 
Could it have to do with the speed of the rip?  EAC seems to rip slower, while dBpoweramp goes faster.  By the way, the sound differences go away if I rip to .wav with each program rather than .flac.  Maybe something in my .flac encoding or decoding is broken?
 
I'm going to run a proper ABX test and report back.

 

[A_Man_Eating_Duck]

You can use the Binary Comparator plugin for foobar2000.

Once the plugin is installed, add both files in to the playlist, select both, right click > utilities > bit compare tracks.

If the results come back as a no differences found check for a replaygain or soundcheck tag that might alter the volume (or strip all the tags to make sure).

If you still hearing a difference it's something to do with your playback chain The source files, rippers or ripping speed are not the cause.

 

[hogger129]

You can use the Binary Comparator plugin for foobar2000.

Once the plugin is installed, add both files in to the playlist, select both, right click > utilities > bit compare tracks.

If the results come back as a no differences found check for a replaygain or soundcheck tag that might alter the volume (or strip all the tags to make sure).

If you still hearing a difference it's something to do with your playback chain The source files, rippers or ripping speed are not the cause.

 
So I checked the checksum, which was exactly the same with foobar2000's binary comparison tool.  I ripped one of the CDs where I thought I could hear the difference - Daft Punk Random Access Memories, track #13.  I did copy/paste a few times, threw them on my microSD card, mixed them all up so I didn't remember the order.  I had a friend play the tracks off my FiiO X3 while I sat and listened, not looking at the player.  Turns out I guessed correctly 3 out of 20 times which pretty much tells me I couldn't tell the difference.  I could have swore the EAC rips sounded like they were more transparent to playing the CD in a CD player compared to the rips produced by dBpoweramp.  For the record, I ensured that both FLAC encoders were exactly the same as well (v 1.3.1).  I have also read on other sites where they said fast rips almost always resulted in ripping errors.  FWIW, I used the slowest ripping speed for this test as well.  Everything checked out as good through AccurateRip.