[Blind Tree Frog]

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Originally Posted by memepool /img/forum/go_quote.gif You misunderstand.

No, it does not appear that I do. I'm pretty sure I'm following just fine.

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What we are talking about is transcribing an analogue medium to digital,

Yes I'm aware Quote:

which is not the same as ripping

Pretty sure I can be forgiven for reusing a term in this case, but those who won't forgive won't.

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Although there are hardware recorders available which will encode to MP3 on the fly, these are mostly intended for voice dictation. Other than proprietry codecs like ATRAC, pretty much every recording device on the market uses uncompressed PCM (ie something equivalent to .wav or. aiff).

Not the issue at all. Not what I was questioning.

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In fact I'm pretty sure most computer soundcards will not record real time in a compressed format either, lossy or lossless, because there is little point. The cache files on the harddrive will be uncompressed PCM and when you save then either a header for .wav will be written or else the cache will be re-encoded to whatever codec you have chosen.

Still not the issue at hand

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Lossless encoding is akin to compressing files in a .zip format whereas lossy codecs prioritise what information is stored and how in order to save space, without sacrificing too much of the original, like a Jpeg picture.

Continuing not the be the issue

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Neither of these formats are much use for editing and that's what most people will want to do when transcribing their records.

Arguably back on topic.

He's got a record. He wishes to convert it to a digital file on his PC. The recommendation was FLAC but WAV would be better (see my last post). I asked why WAV would be better. So far I have not yet heard anyone come up with an answer other than you trying to argue that WAV would be higher quality than FLAC and ignoring that, since no data is lost in the compression, they are the exact same quality.


FLAC versus WAV you have the exact same signal taking up less space in memory. Since this tends to rank up there as a "good thing" (TM) I questioned the recommendation and am still waiting on a reasoning.

And yes, ZIP compression is a Lossless encoding.

 

[grawk]

Ok, we get it, you don't see why wav or aiff would be better.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blind Tree Frog /img/forum/go_quote.gif He's got a record. He wishes to convert it to a digital file on his PC. The recommendation was FLAC but WAV would be better (see my last post). I asked why WAV would be better. So far I have not yet heard anyone come up with an answer other than you trying to argue that WAV would be higher quality than FLAC and ignoring that, since no data is lost in the compression, they are the exact same quality.

Have you ever transcribed a record to a digital format? I suspect not because you keep using words like "rip" and "convert" which are most commonly applied to transcoding which is really not the main issue here. If anything it's pretty irrelevant as the sound quality is more determined by the ADC stage. Obfuscating on minor aspects is only going to vex the OP unnecessarily.

I am not arguing anywhere that WAV/AIFF is superior to FLAC/ALAC per se. What I am trying to explain to is the normal workflow for transcribing a record, which is the question the thread posed. In this context it's better to use an uncompressed format to capture and then compress for storage and use on an Ipod or whatever.

 

[Blind Tree Frog]

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Originally Posted by memepool /img/forum/go_quote.gif I am not arguing anywhere that WAV/AIFF is superior to FLAC/ALAC per se.

No you didn't. jp11801 did. In the third post of the thread. The one right before i asked "Why would you say WAV over FLAC?"

Your reply to my question was "You should always be storing in the highest quality format" which was a non issue because there is no loss in quality when converting from WAV to FLAC.

Since the Original Poster came back and asked about playing uncompressed WAV on his iPod, my questioning of jp11801's post is fair. Had someone decided to come back and said "No, flac is fine once you've got it on your computer and ready for your ipod, WAV is just easiest when splitting the signal into files" (like you kind of did later, but I missed that somehow) this thread would have been a whole lot shorter.

As far as the terms "rip" and "convert", yeah, they are appropriate in this case. Ripping refers to the process of pulling media off of a physical format onto your computer. It is not limited to CD's and DVD's. Convert means to change from one format to another. What do you think the C in DAC and ADC stands for? I'm not using any terms in an incorrect fashion. He's ripping the analog signal from the album, converting it to digital and storing it on his hard drive with the intent of playing it on his ipod.

 

[grawk]

So this thread has apparently run it's course.