Comparing CD ripper outputs ?

[Beave]

Me too! Therefore what I say about FLAC is at least as true.

Again, I point the moderators to the phrase 'the ol' bum's rush'.


Oh jeez, is it Barry Diament?

Yes .... it goes to show that even well seasoned sound/mixing engineers with an impressive track record and own recording label (great quality recordings b.t.w.) can be set on the wrong foot.

Our member d3adf1sh quoted a post from Barry Diament from Steve Hoffman's forum (another bad source and appeal to authority), but d3adf1sh is not Barry Diament.

 

[Chrispy]

tell that to "The Absolute Sound" magazine and Dr. Charles Zeilig And Jay Clawson of HiFi Critic. did you even read the articles? how is that "horseshit"?

and like i said like the OP i'm not the only one hearing a difference in the sound. if you don't then whatever just move along.

LOL that's funny

 

[RandomEar]

@d3adf1sh So, I took the liberty of doing the suggested comparison and also did the wrong one which you tried/talked about. I generated 30 s of pink noise, saved as 48 kHz 16 bit WAV. I then converted that to FLAC levels 0 and 8 using XMediaRecode and then both of those back to WAV. Using the wrong method of file checksums (Get-FileHash .\Original.wav), I get this:

File	SHA256 (full file, WRONG METHOD)
Original	01D57B043F8BAA9CCFF49C1DC45732B56C8EE5FE5EEF4CFA201C5A599F8E40A8
Original to FLAC lvl0 to WAV	2FFD139331869EA99632D7E238AF1584C0AD124CE5AB289F597A851C977FD9D4
Original to FLAC lvl8 to WAV	2FFD139331869EA99632D7E238AF1584C0AD124CE5AB289F597A851C977FD9D4

Clearly, there is a difference between the files, due to the metadata being different: The original WAV was created using an audio editor, the WAV->FLAC->WAV versions were created by XMediaRecode and both probably write something like "Made by XYZ" into the file header. Using the correct method of comparing only the audio stream (ffmpeg -i "Original.wav" -map 0:a -codec copy -f hash "Original_hash.txt"), we get this non-surprising result:

File	SHA256 (audio only, CORRECT METHOD)
Original	538bdae5b9818bbdcc07f110ead9552c26482a3bc7d8e660245f4f96cc7064c2
Original to FLAC lvl0 to WAV	538bdae5b9818bbdcc07f110ead9552c26482a3bc7d8e660245f4f96cc7064c2
Original to FLAC lvl8 to WAV	538bdae5b9818bbdcc07f110ead9552c26482a3bc7d8e660245f4f96cc7064c2

The files are attached, feel free to check the results yourself. Clearly, the audio streams are bit-perfect after two conversions to and from FLAC - which is the only logical result, because the compression is lossless. You can talk about "audible differences" all you want, they do not exist in this case because the audio streams in the files are the same. You should really look into why sighted listening tests are useless, as shown very clearly by this little excercise.

 

[jhenderson0107]

When my son visits we occasionally engage in philosophic arguments. Either of us might defend the perceived weaker stance, just for the joy of debate and to hone our skills. The ensuing arguments are vigorous and sometimes savage, though positions are not heart-felt.

Threads such as this provide similar therapy.

 

[solderdude]

When my son visits we occasionally engage in philosophic arguments. Either of us might defend the perceived weaker stance, just for the joy of debate and to hone our skills. The ensuing arguments are vigorous and sometimes savage, though positions are not heart-felt.

Threads such as this provide similar therapy.

Except the debate here is between facts and fiction.

 

[Johnkeizer]

I converted about 900 of my cds to FLAC files and put them onto a ssd. Let EAC do everything, including metadata.
Not perfect but they fit onto one micro sd card which is sitting in my A&K DAP.
Beats changing cds every hour after a couple of bourbons.

 

[Redacted]

We lived in a caravan, travelling, for 5.5 years. All my music FLACs and MP3s (and films, docs, etc) was stored on a NAS-RAID with DLNA. They sounded fine and still do, and since going back to living in a house, I have re-ripped loads of CDs from my collection (which were in storage, in a shipping container) just to check they were still in playable condition. All were fine. Using totally different hardware for the rips, I cross-checked against the old rips on the NAS, and according to the excellent FB2K, the rips were all bit-identical. The first time I ripped, I would have gone for the fastest compression to save time, but sampling CDs for the 2nd rip, I used higher compression (longer time to process), but the data bits in the files were identical.

I think that a NAS-RAID unit be will be slightly heavier if you use lower compression, compared with high compression, all other things being the same. It's to do with entropy and energy, so I'll be getting out my Planck-length microscope to check if the treble still sounds good in my FLACs....