itunes plus vs cd quaility...

[lynx5]

Hi.. this may or may not have been debated before on here.. I tried searching.. couldnt find it.

just wondering if anyone DOES notice a difference between the $1.29 songs on itunes in 256kbps apprently and a track recorded from a store bought cd..

I cant seem to notice a difference though I havent done too much testing yet however if most people do I think ill stick to cd's.. otherwise Id like to saw a few bucks and start downloading songs.. though I kinda like sitting there and listening to cd's but some cd's I only want a song or two off of thats where Itunes might come in handy..

I cant decide what Im gonna do. lol

my sound system is worth only a few grand so Im not talking on a high high end system. like some of u folks out there.

*edit* this is gonna sound crazy but I think I actually perfer the Itunes plus version sometimes (it seems louder and full filled) if that makes any sense at all.. Im just saying I dont notice the cd being "better" as far as im concerned. at this point anyways though my opinoin may change later.

 

[lynx5]

yup I just confirmed it the Itunes version played louder and filled the room more then the excat same song at the excat same volume on the cd version.. though the cd version COULD have been more clearer Im not sure about that one..

thats strange I wonder why this happened... what a bummer too I really wanted to stick to cds now I feel I have to go digital!!!

 

[its phillip]

they're supposed to be transparent. obviously with lossy encoding you are missing some data, but most people probably won't hear the difference.

anyway, does itunes not sell alac? compressed lossless files are only 3~4x larger than a high quality lossy file - in my experience with flac & v0. if you're satisfied with the lossy files then i guess that's okay, but why settle for imperfect copies?

 

[sholling]

There was an AV Rant podcast a while back that showed just what is missing from a lossy rip by playing just the missing data. It was pretty eye opening. You may want to dig it up.

My own choice is to buy CDs and then rip them to flacs for home use and high quality MP3s for my MP3 player.

 

[Transmaniacon]

There was an AV Rant podcast a while back that showed just what is missing from a lossy rip by playing just the missing data. It was pretty eye opening. You may want to dig it up.

My own choice is to buy CDs and then rip them to flacs for home use and high quality MP3s for my MP3 player.

If someone finds that and cares to share, it would be great =)

+1 for ripping to flac from CDs.

 

[its phillip]

Yeah, ripping the cds yourself properly using eac + secure ripping is the way to go, but some people can't be bothered to :/

 

[sholling]

If someone finds that and cares to share, it would be great =)

Search is your friend.
http://www.avrant.com/?p=1242
You'll want to download the zip containing the difference files.

 

[pzaur]

yup I just confirmed it the Itunes version played louder and filled the room more then the excat same song at the excat same volume on the cd version.. though the cd version COULD have been more clearer Im not sure about that one..

thats strange I wonder why this happened... what a bummer too I really wanted to stick to cds now I feel I have to go digital!!!

Chances are real good that your iTunes version was amplified more than the CD version.
I'm assuming that by "the exact same volume" you mean you didn't turn up or down the receiver knob. If this was the case, then you did not have them at the exact same volume. You only had the amplifier turned to the same setting. Recordings can be made louder or softer, inherently, without turning up or down the receiver/amplifier volume.

-pat

 

[KEW]

yup I just confirmed it the Itunes version played louder and filled the room more then the excat same song at the excat same volume on the cd version.. though the cd version COULD have been more clearer Im not sure about that one..

thats strange I wonder why this happened... what a bummer too I really wanted to stick to cds now I feel I have to go digital!!!

I agree with Pzaur.

If the itunes version sounded louder, it is simply the difference between the levels.
It is well established that people will perceive louder as better when making comparisons.

Stick with CD's you can always convert them to "itunes plus" if you need to for convenience. The CD should be identical to the master and, while any itunes version may be close enough not to tell the difference, it can not be better than the CD.

 

[andres6]

Questions

Okay.... Please explain and define what you all mean by FLAC and EAC+ ripping?

I've experimented very slightly with lossy ripping, and have found that the best my computer can do (without Itunes/Apple softwares help) is to do WMA (windows media player file) on VARIABLE Lossless. This method will play on my car stereo, whereas true lossless in any format, really isn't the original format (ACC, WMA). Apple lossless won't play on a standard ACC reader. WMA lossless won't play on a standard WMA reader. However, I found WMA almost lossless/variable will play. My best option I think.

What kind of software are you guys talking about? I have Windows Vista so I use no special software, and the software I got from Kenwood sucks (for the car stereo). I prefer good ol' CD's by a long shot over any form of MP3, WMA, ACC, or anything else.

Better yet, 96K MLP (DVD-Audio), or SACD is my preference.

 

[its phillip]

eac = exact audio copy. best cd ripper around.
http://exactaudiocopy.de/

here is a guide to setting it up properly:
http://blowfish.be/eac/

flac = free lossless audio codec
http://flac.sourceforge.net/

basically you rip the cds in eac, and they get compressed to flac.

 

[andres6]

Thanks, but... more ?'s

So what do you use FLAC files for? What can play them? What is their purpose and function other than saving a few kilobytes of space on your hard drive? What source are you using to listen to them?

 

[pzaur]

So what do you use FLAC files for? What can play them? What is their purpose and function other than saving a few kilobytes of space on your hard drive? What source are you using to listen to them?

FLAC files are used the same as any other file. Most, if not all, car stereos will not be able to read them. The format support is not as wide as the support for Apple or Microsoft formats. If you choose to use FLAC, you'll probably have to use an external player. I use a Sansa Fuze.

The purpose of any format is to reduce the amount of storage space required. Moving from a .wav or .cda format to .flac saves much more than a "few kilobytes" on the hard disk.

-pat

 

[its phillip]

So what do you use FLAC files for? What can play them? What is their purpose and function other than saving a few kilobytes of space on your hard drive? What source are you using to listen to them?

1. To listen to perfect copies of cds on computers and other devices? Why settle for lossy compression?

2. Foobar, mediamonkey, winamp (and a few others I'm unfamiliar with) as players on a windows computer, I dunno what players for linux or osx. Cowon, Sansa, and a few other portable players play flac natively. Older ipods with rockbox firmware can play flac, I dunno about newer models.

3. Obviously the purpose and function is to have a lossless but compressed copy of an album. The differences in filesize is a lot more than "a few kilobytes." Wave files are 1411 kbps. Flac is vbr, but a guessing average would be something like 900 kbps, so a flac version of an album would usually be between 60~80% the size of a wav version. Another benefit with flacs is having metadata...like artist, track number, album title, year, genre, and more. With wavs you don't get any of that.

4. Source = my computer.

 

[andres6]

Lossless Audio is a Good Thing

I was being a bit facetious when I said a "few kilobytes." I do that because I don't believe saving hard drive space is a worthy endeavor if it comes at the expense of sound quality. I prefer lossless audio much more to lossy formats.

That being said, I've never been able to get a computer to output anything better than "decent" sound quality, even with high quality sound card and computer speaker system.

How do you connect to your receiver/amp from your computer? Most computers I know don't have an audio output outside of an auxiliary jack (3.5 mm) plug which you can't possibly get great sounds out of I'd imagine. I remember I had an old HP back in the day that I hooked an Onkyo receiver too, and it was like -35db compared to other sources at the same volume level. You had to turn it WAY UP to hear it right.

So what connection method are you using when using your computer as a source, and what cables/wires? Maybe computers have come a long way in the last 10 years?

 

[andres6]

One More Question

Why is, if it is, FLAC VBR superior to WMA (Windows Media Audio) VBR?

Have you done tests yourself? A/B comparisons?

You guys are right, the best car stereos can usually only read AIFF, ACC, WMA, or MP3 formats. Mine can't even read WAV.... I'd image it would read CDA's which is a CD file, but you'd need special software for that I'd imagine to create CDA's on a thumb/flash USB drive.

 

[its phillip]

I'm using an optical cable from monoprice to connect from the computer to my receiver. Any half decent soundcard will have optical or coax out, and some even have rca out. Alternatively, you could get a usb dac as well that has optical or rca out and connect that to a receiver or some active speakers.

Why is, if it is, FLAC VBR superior to WMA (Windows Media Audio) VBR?

Have you done tests yourself? A/B comparisons?

I haven't done any blind tests, but if you are comparing a lossless format to a lossy format, lossless is obviously superior simply because it is lossless. I don't care if I hear any difference or not - i'm not going to bother ripping my cds to lossy formats...and I don't have any desire to mess around with wma anyway. If i'm going to use lossy, it'll be lame-encoded mp3s because of their wide support.

If you are comparing it to wma lossless, then there is zero difference in quality. Lossless is lossless. Flac, alac, aiff, wma lossless, and wav will all have the same audio data. Now why I use flac instead of wma lossless or anything else? http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html

It's also far more common on the internet and with netlabels and artists, probably for those reasons.

 

[sholling]

I'll add to the recommendation of FLAC. I rip my CDs with dBpoweramp ripper. It's a pay program but it automatically tags and files the ripped CDs. I then use dBpoweramp's batch converter to make high quality VBR MP3s from the flacs for use in the car and my MP3 player. It will do whole directory trees including filing and tagging. The automation makes dBpoweramp worth the money. My flacs are stored on a central drive and I play them back across my network via Western Digital TV Live media players in my family room and bedroom.

The limitation of computer playback is strictly gear. A cheap sound card driving computer speakers cannot compete with a real sound system. However I send music from my PC to a receiver by my desk as pure bits and then use that receiver to drive good speakers. The alternative is to use a top quality sound card like a HT Omega Claro Plus+ to bits convert to analog and drive powered monitors (i.e. Audioengine A5 or Swan M200) and a decent subwoofer. If you go the second route then the quality of the sound card and its DACs matter. The sound card is less critical if you are just having it output bits.

 

[pzaur]

A free ripper that can rip to any format, with the proper plug-ins, is BookEnc. It also queries CDDB for album info. I've started using this instead of Windows Media because it is also faster.

Strangely enough, for burning CDs I've found Imgburn to be considerably faster than Windows Media and it can handle any format I throw at it.

-pat

 

[moves]

eac = exact audio copy. best cd ripper around.
http://exactaudiocopy.de/

here is a guide to setting it up properly:
http://blowfish.be/eac/

flac = free lossless audio codec
http://flac.sourceforge.net/

basically you rip the cds in eac, and they get compressed to flac.

Can EAC convert also to mp3?