[pablobaluba]

a question came in my mind today. i had a sony cd-mp3 player for 3 years...i broke it and now i think i'll buy a cowon d2, clix2 or sony nwz-a818...i don't know yet.
i read so many great reviews about all of them, but i was wondering if the sound quality will drop? because the cds have the best quality right? flac/ogg/320 mp3s are good, but theoreticaly are all worse than the cd's sound quality.
any opinions on this?

 

[Jimbo3b]

All of these players are digital-to-analog devices. They turn electronic ones and zeroes into waves of sound in the air. An unscratched CD direct from the store should sound the same as a flac file taken from the same CD if run through the same DAC (digital-analog convertor), because flac is lossless. On the other hand, ogg and mp3 are lossy. At high bit rates lossy compression sounds very good to most people, and it comes down to individual choice and preference.

 

[Sparda]

The SQ is determined by not only the type of codec on your DAP, but the DAP itself too. For example you take any stock iPod and put it up against a Cowon use the exact same files the Cowon would sound better. Why, because of the dac and internal amp used. A CD player does not necessary sound better than a mp3 player just because the format is .wav. A lossy mp3 at 192kbps played through a decent DAP could very well sound better than a cheapo 20$ CD player.

 

[Febs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pablobaluba /img/forum/go_quote.gif because the cds have the best quality right? flac/ogg/320 mp3s are good, but theoreticaly are all worse than the cd's sound quality.

No. FLAC is a lossless format. It contains exactly the same PCM data as is contained on the CD.