What decides audio quality on digital storage

R

rgb1111

Enthusiast
Hi,
I have a basic question, about two ways of storing music on PC.

First is to rip a CD to my PC using on board CD drive & on board sound card the file is finally stored in let us say wav format.

In second case, the same CD if played on an external high end CD drive (M5), input it to PC & stored in wav format

Will both the files play equally good ?

What decides the quality of playback in either cases ?

Thanks in advance for your attention
 
OttoMatic

OttoMatic

Senior Audioholic
First is to rip a CD to my PC using on board CD drive & on board sound card the file is finally stored in let us say wav format.

In second case, the same CD if played on an external high end CD drive (M5), input it to PC & stored in wav format
I think both will be the same, assuming that the extraction was correct. I second the recommendation for usage of Exact Audio Copy software as the tool used to the rip.

I see that in your first comment, you mention the sound card. In either case (internal or external CD drive), the sound card won't have anything to do with the extraction of the audio files. The sound card will have something to do with playback. If you are using a digital output of the soundcard, most (all?) of the digital decoding work will be done by whatever DAC you are using (may be a receiver a pre/pro or a dedicated DAC). If you are using analog outputs of the soundcard, your audio quality will be much more dependent on that soundcard's audio characteristics. Many sound cards are very cheap, and will have a less than good audio quality. I would very much suggest using a digital output on the soundcard.

I'll offer some other comments here that are related...

Audio file quality depends on the file type, or more specifically, the compression type used. wav files represent the music as it was stored on the CD itself and use zero compression. In general, wav is one format that's "as good as it's gonna get." (although I suppose it could be argued that one could employ interpolation algorithms and upsampling to "improve" resolution, but that's a separate discussion; I just wanted to note it here for the next guy that comes along and says "no it's not!").

As you probably know, mp3s take a lot less space on your hard drive. These use a lossy compression scheme that reduces the amount of information in the music, and therefore the quality of the original recording. Now, there's going to be some guy that comes along to tell us that there's some double-blind test where so and so couldn't tell the difference between wav files and 320 kBps mp3s and blah-de-blah-de-whatever......... Yeah, mp3s are pretty good for what they are, but there is (without question) loss of musical information occurring when that translation happens (from wav to mp3).

There are also other lossless audio storage formats. These allow a reduction in the size of the file, while still maintaining the audio quality. You may ask: "how do you reduce the file size without losing information?" Well, imagine you had a digital photograph that was simply all black. One way to represent it (I think BMPs would to it this way) is to define a value for each and every pixel. So, your data file would be "black, black, black, black, black, ... " for the size of the file (8 megapixels, anyone? That's a LOT of "black, black, black..."). Another representation would be to have a file that noted the color value, and the number of pixels that are that color. A file like that would read "black, 8,000,000" to represent that it contained 8 million black pixels. That's much smaller than the BMP that represents each pixel with a value. Anyway, that's a rather trivial example, and there are other ways to take advantage of repeated information in audio, photo and video data.

A popular lossless file type in use today is FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Compression). I use this, and offers me roughly a 30% decrease in file size. That's great, but I find it useful for a more important and practical reason: it allows use of the mp3 style "tagging" that lets me name, organize and easily search my music. wav does not support that type of tagging, and it's really hard to quickly and easily find the music desired in media players like MediaMonkey and Winamp when using wav files (actually, wav might support some tagging, but it's very rudimentary compared to the mp3 style tags).

Anyway, there's some of my take on this stuff. Hope that helps.
 
M

MDS

Audioholic Spartan
In second case, the same CD if played on an external high end CD drive (M5), input it to PC & stored in wav format
In that case you are not 'ripping' (aka digital audio extraction) the CD. You are recording the CD and the quality of the sound card does come into play.

The player is playing the CD and sending the data to the computer. If you use an analog connection to the sound card then the quality of the recorded audio is dependent on the ADC in the sound card. Note that this is a real time operation so it will take 60 minutes to record 60 minutes of audio from a CD whereas you can rip the same cd in 2-3 minutes.
 
F

fmw

Audioholic Ninja
You are processing data. Data is data. It doesn't matter what the source of the data is. All that matter is that it gets to the computer.
 
OttoMatic

OttoMatic

Senior Audioholic
You are processing data. Data is data. It doesn't matter what the source of the data is. All that matter is that it gets to the computer.
Well, if, as MDS suggests, the OP is going to "record" data to the computer using an analog input on the PC, then, yes, it does make a difference.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
Hi,
I have a basic question, about two ways of storing music on PC.

First is to rip a CD to my PC using on board CD drive & on board sound card the file is finally stored in let us say wav format.

In second case, the same CD if played on an external high end CD drive (M5), input it to PC & stored in wav format

Will both the files play equally good ?

What decides the quality of playback in either cases ?

Thanks in advance for your attention
The only thing that matters is the playback system in 1. The DAC and more importantly the associated analog equipment after the conversion.

Now computers are not known for good analog circuitry. So it is best to rip either on the computer's drive or an external one, it does not matter as long as the information is transferred to the storing hard drive digitally. After that it is then up to the DAC and the analog circuitry after the DAC, on playback.
 
S

sparky77

Full Audioholic
If you want to rip cd digital audio to the highest quality use....http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdexos/
and follow any one of the many tutoriols availible on the net, or pm me and I will customize a tutorial based on the format to which you prefer to save your files. The most important hint is to set up the drive configuration to use full paranoia mode.
 
R

rgb1111

Enthusiast
Thanks for pulling me in all directions!

Now I would like to put up my original question in different words;

To get best possible audio in digital from on a PC, what set up I should use? These digitalized file will be later sent to my AV receiver for reproduction.

Most of my collection is in analogue form, cassettes,vinyls, audio CDs, very little of it in "original" digital form.

I dont mind size of file, ( it does matter the time used for transferring to PC)

I intend to use Creative's X-fi Xtreme audio card on the PC
 
M

MDS

Audioholic Spartan
Analog formats like cassette and vinyl have to be recorded through the sound card. You will be playing them from beginning to end so it will take as much time as the length of the music on the cassette or vinyl. You want a good audio editor to do it. There are some good free alternatives like Audacity but I use Sound Forge.

For your CDs, just rip them using the cd rom drive in your computer. You can use EAC if you want or the aforementioned cdexos but the result will be no different than any other program capable of performing digital audio extraction unless you have a very old inaccurate cd rom drive - in that case the 'paranoia' or 'secure' type modes will read the blocks dozens of times and take the block that is returned the most number of times as the 'correct' data...and it still won't matter because a block is 588 samples or 1/75 second of audio.
 
OttoMatic

OttoMatic

Senior Audioholic
To get best possible audio in digital from on a PC, what set up I should use? These digitalized file will be later sent to my AV receiver for reproduction.

Most of my collection is in analogue form, cassettes,vinyls, audio CDs, very little of it in "original" digital form.
You will have to record those tracks from the native device. So, if you want to record cassettes, you will have to plug the analog output of the cassette player into the analog input of your sound card. Then press "play" on the cassette player, and set your record levels in the recording software (MDS recommended a couple below). If you intend to record vinyl directly to PC, you will probably need a phono preamp between your turntable and the analog input on your PC (will depend on your TT).

Another option is to run those devices through a preamp or receiver, and then send that signal to the PC. Such a device may have an input for a turntable, and that would alleviate the need for some other separate phono preamp. Of course, running those devices through a preamp or receiver (with preamp outputs) will add another stage of noise, etc., but it may be more convenient.

I dont mind size of file, ( it does matter the time used for transferring to PC)
Well, like MDS said, it's going to take as long as it takes to play the music when you are recording in the analog domain.

The CDs will rip in a few minutes.

As for file size, I would recommend originally creating them in wav, and then transcoding them to FLAC. As I noted in my post above, FLAC allows you to assign mp3 style tags to the songs, and that allows you to easily organize and access your music.

I intend to use Creative's X-fi Xtreme audio card on the PC
I don't know anything about that particular sound card, so I can't comment. I think M-Audio makes some good sound cards (at least they used to), so you might compare specs there to ensure you have a good one.

Good luck!
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
External sound card

Ottomatic has given you good advice.

There is no short cut to archiving the analog formats. You will have to play them in real time. The CDs you can rip.

I strongly endorse not using lossy compression the archive your LPs. Using FLAC is a good way to go.

Now unless you have a very good cassette deck, and they were far and few between, you might want to consider mp3, as the fidelity will not be good, unless you have a high end Nakamichi or something like a TEAC Z 6000 mastering cassette deck. If your deck is only two head you can be certain it is not out of the top echelon.

Now for the LPs, having a cartridge and turntable in good condition and properly set up is crucial, if this is a serious archive project. Accurate RIAA correction from a good preamp, either phono, or one of the fine older audio preamps is essential. RIAA correction on a lot of older Far Eastern receivers is suspect.

Now if you can not get a digital signal from your receiver to your computer, then I strongly recommend an external sound card. A computer is not an hospitable environment for high quality analog audio.

To give you an idea, here is my set up.

http://mdcarter.smugmug.com/gallery/2424008_RKGvb#127076985

The blue unit is the external DAC.

http://mdcarter.smugmug.com/gallery/2424008_RKGvb#127076985

http://mdcarter.smugmug.com/gallery/2424008_RKGvb#127076985

The turntables cassette recorder and reel to reel with various coder/encoders.

http://mdcarter.smugmug.com/gallery/2424008_RKGvb#127076985

http://mdcarter.smugmug.com/gallery/2424008_RKGvb#127076985

I can archive LPs, 78s, cassettes, two and four track tapes at 15 ips, 7 1/2ips, 3 3/4 ips. Decode available for Dolby A, Dolby B dbx 1 & 2.

If you have a lot to do, it is worth getting organized. Good luck.
 
haraldo

haraldo

Audioholic Warlord
Well, to get the Analogue stuff into your PC, you have to digitize it in some way, and as posted earlier, many PC products are not known for their sound quality...

You could go for the products that some of the PRO's are using:

- Alesis Masterlink, records up to 96KHz/24 bit to HDD
http://www.alesis.com/masterlink
Not pricey at around $1000

- Tascam DV-RA 1000 HD
Records up to 192KHz/24bit to HDD
http://www.tascam.com/products/dv-ra1000hd;9,11,42,14.html
I have seen that some studio's are actually using this in the mastering process. Expensive but not overpriced if you look into the incredible feature list
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
or pick up a used dat, if you dont want to drop a g. I record directly into cool edit pro(adobe audition) off the sound card, then flac. The aforementioned tascam is a nice unit, but more for field recording and pricey.

http://cgi.ebay.com/sony-PRO-TCD-D10-dat-custom-cables-more-clean_W0QQitemZ150231631150QQihZ005QQcategoryZ3278QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
I must say a lot of those older DATs have rougher than average DACs.

For flexibility and ease of use this is a pretty good deal, and Sweetwater is excellent. Their after sales service is well beyond the call of duty. This is the little brother to the unit I have, and will give you excellent service and fidelity.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ADI2/

Since you seem to have a big project, you might well want to consider dual computer screens. Audio work is very consumptive on screen space. The pros all use dual screens.
 
R

rgb1111

Enthusiast
Thanks all you Generals, Pro's, Samurai's & Enthu's. It is indeed great knowledge & experience u have imparted to everybody reading the thread:)
 

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