[TAF94]

I'm currently on the fence between getting an X5L or new pcdp and was wondering if anyone can tell me how wav,flac, and ape compare soundwise played on the X5L? How close do they sound to the original cd?

Also I read a review that stated the joystick makes an annoying loud clicking sound, is this true?

 

[Chri5peed]

Yeah, that damn joystick, its clicks along in time to the music.

 

[The D]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TAF94 I'm currently on the fence between getting an X5L or new pcdp and was wondering if anyone can tell me how wav,flac, and ape compare soundwise played on the X5L? How close do they sound to the original cd? Also I read a review that stated the joystick makes an annoying loud clicking sound, is this true?

There all lossless, FLAC and APE can have tags (wav can not) and take up less room.

BTW The X5 does not support APE.

 

[Chri5peed]

Technically WAV is not lossless.

Your FLACs, APEs & ALACs are encoded files.

 

[TAF94]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chri5peed Yeah, that damn joystick, its clicks along in time to the music.

LOL

How do any of these codecs sound on the X5 compared to a straight cd or pcdp? Anyone?

 

[rsabo]

They should sound exactly the same, barring differences in equipment.

 

[slag]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chri5peed Technically WAV is not lossless.

So is FLAC lossless? Isn't FLAC just a compressed WAV file?

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing lossless <algorithm, compression> A term describing a data compression algorithm which retains all the information in the data, allowing it to be recovered perfectly by decompression.

I assume you're talking about WAV being the digitization of the original recording as the "loss" of information - we always lose some information when digitizing a source. So you're right, WAV and the rest of "lossless" codecs aren't actually perfectly FLAWLESS, but they're as good as CDs, which also contain the digitized version of the recording. When we talk about "lossless" here, we're generally referring to the loss of information from the original digitized file.

 

[Chri5peed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by slag So is FLAC lossless? Isn't FLAC just a compressed WAV file?

WAV is an exact copy of a CD track. Audio CDs don't use WAV to store audio, but they both use Pulse-code modulation(PCM) encoding. WAV is a data file for use only on a computer, so WAVs on a CDR as a data-disc wouldn't play on a standard CD player.

A lossless file like a FLAC, WMA lossless, ALAC...is a compressed/encoded version of a WAV. These lossless files are a lot more efficient which is why they are smaller than the original WAVs.

So these lossless files are basically Mk.II WAV files.

Quote:

Originally Posted by slag When we talk about "lossless" here, we're generally referring to the loss of information from the original digitized file.

The term lossless was created to differentiate between mp3s, AAC, Ogg Vorbis...