[moriez]

 

A simple CD which is mastered ok would do but just hang on. Maybe someone can tell you that what you like to hear.

Either be helpful, or don't post. I don't pollute your threads with useless argumentation.

 
-1
 
Pollute? Your thinking is polluted. I was trying to be helpful.

 

[squallkiercosa]

-1

Pollute? Your thinking is polluted. I was trying to be helpful.

If he wants to save In wav, let him do what he thinks it s best. Let him be the "hardcore audiophile" he wanted to be, even if he can't tell the difference.

 

[wes008]

   
You should hear no difference between uncompressed and lossless unless something is wrong with your equipment.  Jitter is way blown out of proportion.

 
Uh, "uncompressed" and "lossless" are the same thing. I was using them interchangeably. 

 

[pwwaring]

   
Uh, "uncompressed" and "lossless" are the same thing. I was using them interchangeably. 

 
Actually, they're not.  AIFF and WAV are uncompressed.  FLAC and ALAC are also lossless, but are compressed.

 

[wes008]

 
Actually, they're not.  AIFF and WAV are uncompressed.  FLAC and ALAC are also lossless, but are compressed.

Huh. Good to know. Sorry if I offended anyone 

 

[KElyas]

I doubt the quality increase (if any) could be justified by the increase in file size.

 

[wes008]

  I doubt the quality increase (if any) could be justified by the increase in file size.

 
Between MP3 and a lossless format? For me it is justified. I pay about the same price, and I have a comfy amount of hard drive space on my laptop. And it sounds so much more resolving and pleasing to me ears. Now, I understand if you don't hear a difference, and the hassle of obtaining a lossless version makes it unworthy of your time. 

 

[pwwaring]

   
Between MP3 and a lossless format? For me it is justified. I pay about the same price, and I have a comfy amount of hard drive space on my laptop. And it sounds so much more resolving and pleasing to me ears. Now, I understand if you don't hear a difference, and the hassle of obtaining a lossless version makes it unworthy of your time. 

 
I'm sure others feel differently, but for me going from MP3 to FLAC is definitely worth it, going from FLAC to WAV is most definitely not.  As always, YMMV.

 

[wes008]

I'm sure others feel differently, but for me going from MP3 to FLAC is definitely worth it, going from FLAC to WAV is most definitely not.  As always, YMMV.

Oh yeah, I don't think there's much of an audible difference between FLAC and WAV/AIFF. But any of those are better than MP3 compression  

 

[SteveM324]

I've compared FLAC to WAV on my stereo speaker based system. The difference was very small but it's there. IMO, WAV sounds better than FLAC. With WAV, I could hear the decay of piano notes better and it sounded more natural. There were other small differences all in favor of WAV. Again, the differences were very small. For me though, it was significant enough to go with WAV for all my music files (close to 30,000 at this time). I've spent about 100K on audio gear so why skimp when it comes to buying a HDD. File space is cheap so why not rip to the best format. If I want to load my music onto a portable device, I can always convert to a smaller file size but I can't go the other way (you can't go from low rez to high, technically you can but that would be stupid). That's my 2 cents, YMMV.

For reference, my system includes Harbeth M40.1 speakers, Bricasti M1 DAC, Bryston BDP-2 Digital Music Player, McIntosh MC452 power amp, Ray Samuels Audio A-10 preamp/electrostatic amp, and SR-009 headphones.

 

[hogger129]

I am listening with foobar2000 on my Lenovo desktop (Intel i5, 16GB RAM, factory soundcard) out to my Phillips/Magnavox MX940 receiver and its two bookshelf speakers.  I tried ripping a good, dynamic album (Daft Punk -Random Access Memories) to FLAC Level 5, and then ripped the CD again to WAV, with dbPoweramp in Secure Mode.  I could not hear a difference listening to it with my speakers or with my Audio Technica ATH-M50S headphones.  I would conclude that they are perfectly equal, at least in my setup.  Perhaps my playback hardware just isn't good enough to show the difference - if there is any.  I suppose it is possible for WAV to sound better if your hardware and/or software processes it differently than FLAC.  I've heard of AIFF sounding better in Apple hardware before, too, so maybe that explains why some people can hear a difference - certain hardware or software being optimized for certain codecs.
 
I'm not sure if it might be bias, but I also feel like my rips have better quality if I set the ripping speed at x10 instead of "Maximum" in the Secure Ripping settings.

 

[KElyas]

   
Between MP3 and a lossless format? For me it is justified. I pay about the same price, and I have a comfy amount of hard drive space on my laptop. And it sounds so much more resolving and pleasing to me ears. Now, I understand if you don't hear a difference, and the hassle of obtaining a lossless version makes it unworthy of your time. 

oh no, I meant between FLAC and WAV. I personally can't hear a difference between lossless and compressed myself with my current, basic setup but it is nice to have the lossless copy and I understand why someone would prefer it; but WAV over FLAC cannot be justified imo.

 

[wes008]

but WAV over FLAC cannot be justified imo.

I'm with you on that except they're just as difficult to come by. So I go with Aiff just 'cause. 

 

[cladane]

What SteveM324 is pointing out is that hardware setup is significant in making a file format hearing difference, even subtle. You can't throw any file format to an I3 based system or a new Quad core i7: decoding FLAC will need a lot more work for the i3 than i7 system. If your HDD has an IDE interface how can it compete with an SSD SATA III disk transfering those bit files into memory ??
If possible for example, don't read your music files from the internal HDD; transfer into memory before playing (look at Tools like JPLAY mini or AIMP).
Consider that much more HiRez files of highly mastered quality are available (put a glance at Qobuz.com).
About WAV, get AIFF files instead because of you have metadatas included which makes easier your files management.

 

[hogger129]

  What SteveM324 is pointing out is that hardware setup is significant in making a file format hearing difference, even subtle. You can't throw any file format to an I3 based system or a new Quad core i7: decoding FLAC will need a lot more work for the i3 than i7 system. If your HDD has an IDE interface how can it compete with an SSD SATA III disk transfering those bit files into memory ??
If possible for example, don't read your music files from the internal HDD; transfer into memory before playing (look at Tools like JPLAY mini or AIMP).
Consider that much more HiRez files of highly mastered quality are available (put a glance at Qobuz.com).
About WAV, get AIFF files instead because of you have metadatas included which makes easier your files management.

No offense, but FLAC takes very small amounts of CPU to decode.  A system with an i3 or an i7 should both be able to play FLAC back bit-perfectly no problem.  Even portable music players are able to this. 
 
Also, there is no reason to use WAV OR AIFF when FLAC and ALAC both can be decoded bit-perfectly to produce the same exact sound that WAV and AIFF will.  I know there are some who will say there is a difference -- I've never been able to hear it.
 
I'm not even going to get started on how "high-res" files don't matter for end-user consumption either.