[Anaxilus]

Quote:

If you agree that audio files on your computer do not degrade at all when transferred around your computer digitally and over time, then we have no disagreement.

I don't recall ever saying that.  

  Files and data don't 'degrade' however they can become corrupted for various reasons.  My concern isn't transfer within the computer (not so much) but transfer to the computer via something like an optical drive.  http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/Ripping.htm  I'm not concerned about the general rules but the exceptions.  When you have engineers using figures like 95% and saying 'Ripping has nothing to do with real time, some rippers use this to read a damaged part up to 80 times to establish the most likely value' it's certainly more complex than saying it's just '1's and '0's no need to worry.  The actual origin of my concern has more to do w/ transfer to and from devices via interfaces like USB, Toslink and Coax.  When you started talking about the perfect binary world with satellites crashing I began thinking of digital devices that do permit operation despite jitter, errors and imperfect data transmission.  Digital errors don't guarantee catastrophic failure in all cases.  Do you disagree?  My other comment had to do w/ using lossy as an archive.
 
To the topical point at hand.  I have ripped audio files in the past that seemed to make it past built-in checks and verification on EAC.  You could play the first few seconds of the song and then it would skip to the next everytime.  It was actually 'Hell Freezes Over' by the Eagles.  I actually had to rerip the disc a 3-4 times before the problem was fixed.  I have no idea why since this was supposed to be 'impossible'.  You'd think it would have aborted and/or ejected the disk.  Why a bad file would get transferred and be able to play (to a point) is beyond me.
 
Speaking of degradation.  How about the CD as media?  Do you believe that does not degrade?  I've certainly had DVDs and audio discs go bad after working w/ no apparent damage or scratches.  It obviously has to do w/ the substrate on top of the CD getting altered.  People worry about scratches to the acrylic w/o concern for the substrate material actually containing the pits.  If you have unseen damage to just one single pit will the whole CD fail to run or just the song or part of it?  Or will the computer interpolate the missing data and provide you with a bit perfect copy or an imperfect CD?  Isn't this another case against digital perfection?  Sometimes there are simply variables beyond the computers control that it must compensate for.  
 
    

 

[ac500]

I didn't say digital media doesn't lose data during transfer, it does and very often - depending on what medium it's being transferred across. The point is that error correction is extremely good for modern computers, and effectively this data loss is 0. My point was that if this effective data loss was not ZERO, satellites would fall from the sky. In fact, satellites do have to deal with data loss quite carefully, the point is just that because it's dealt with, the data loss is effectively zero. Computers will simply crash if one bit is wrong of an instruction code. Fact.
 
I never was talking about CDs in this thread. In my experience Audio CDs are utterly trash when it comes to sensativity to scratches. The tiniest little scratch will mess up your audio tracks. It's no surprise that you'll have to try to re-rip a CD multiple times when it has microscopic scratches on it. Also, I have experienced pure audio CDs (not the more up to date format where you store files on the CD) are rather bad at error detection, so a CRC check isn't a terrible idea.
 
But once they're off the CD and on your computer and verified, error loss is no longer a problem. Did you read the part where I was talking about modern computers? I mentioned "modern" several times. Do you realize audio CDs are 30 years old now? Hard drives, flash storage, etc. are extremely reliable.
 
Also, here's the original post of this thread:
 
> MacBook, iPod Classic 160GB, Etymotic ER 4's, FiiO 11 Headphone Amp, LOD. All my music is in iTunes.....what format should my music files be in for best performance?? ALAC??
 
Itunes does not store music on CDs, it uses your hard drive. Hard drives don't suffer from human handling and scratching.
 
If iTunes wipes your music collection, this has nothing to do with bit data loss. This has everything to do with Apple programmers being dumb and letting a terrible software bug like this through (in general though I find Apple software pretty high quality).

 

[Anaxilus]

Quote:
 
I think we are tracking now.  

  It's funny, hadn't really thought of CD's as 'old' technology yet.  Sign of age perhaps.  
 
I absolutely love the new Blu-ray coatings.  Have yet to scratch one.  At least visibly.  I don't know how stable their substrate is compared to CDs though.  I'm sure the spec is higher to cram all that data in even smaller pits.
 
 

 

[weechuen]

hi, offtopic,
 
but JRS, how do you find FiiO E11 with Ety?
 
Planning to get E11 to pair up with my etyER4P soon.

 

[JackRabbitSlims]

Hey weechuen.
 
I'm lovin the new E11!
 
I've only had it a few weeks and it has been getting plenty of playing time for sure!!
 
I am reasonably new to all this Headphone Amp / IEM thing, so have been doing quite a bit of experimenting with my Music - I know that the source is key to a good sound, and TBH on some tracks it sounds too bright and screechy (if that is the right term) for my ears.......on others, it is just wonderful.
 
I'm thinking of making a jump up to the Westone UM3X in the coming months though.
 
Cheers.

 

[anetode]

So, no love for the cloud?
 
It's not quite ready for primetime, but ten years from now I expect that it will be a viable alternative to primary storage. It should eliminate the concerns over hardware failure.

 

[Anaxilus]

Quote:

So, no love for the cloud?

Not for me.  Security/privacy.  Amazon cloud has the free Mp3s they gave me.  
 
'...cloud security is tough because it can't be independently validated very easily. We can all tear apart MS PowerPoint to see what it does with our data, but when you ship your data off to the cloud, researchers like me cannot look at the software to try to find bugs. In fact, poking around on their Web site is illegal. Using software that is not on your system, and thus cannot be torn apart and reverse engineered, means you are putting a large amount of trust on whoever is writing that software. The guys like me won't be able to help you. As for whether these big companies are better than the average person, I'm not sure. Sony might be a good counterexample to your argument.'
 
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/charlie-miller-battery-hack-security,2996.html
 

 

[keanex]

Listen to various encodes from a FLAC/ALAC and compare them. Find the lowest rate that is transparent to you and enjoy.