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Heefty
1387
May 15, 2018
You're inherently losing part of your signal in digital. You're also inherently degrading your storage medium in vinyl. Both have their positives and negatives. Most serious audiophiles still swear by vinyl though. Personally, I've never heard a really good record setup, so I can't compare.
The only record players I've ever heard have been old-timey, bought in the 1950's, buried in dust and my grandparent's house ones. Not the best to compare against. I can say that I do notice more degradation of sound quality as more DSP is applied to a signal. It follows that an all analog source will be better, at least temporarily, than a digital source since DSP is as inherent as signal loss. I don't have a good feel for where the source degradation of the record overtakes loss from converting the analog sound to the lossless digital file in terms of signal loss.
IMHO, I think it really comes down to personal usage. I listen to my digital files many, many times. If you do the same I think you'll be happier with a digital rig because your vinyl will wear, but your 1's and 0's won't. If you're more the type to sporadically play a record infrequently, stay vinyl.
Heefty
1387
May 15, 2018
HeeftyAlso, Don't use FLAC or ALAC if you go digital. Stick with WAV. Less DSP involved that way.
fhood
715
May 15, 2018
HeeftyI could be missing something but what you said doesn't make sense to me. FLAC is a truly lossless compression algorithm. So if you take raw digital audio and convert it to FLAC, when you convert it back you get the exact same file.
nwimpney
219
May 15, 2018
HeeftyThis is wrong. A decoded flac is bit-perfect equivalent to the wav. The only thing you're saving is a little bit of cpu power to decode it, and you're wasting a ton of disk space.
Heefty
1387
May 15, 2018
fhoodFLAC is a truly lossless what? Compression Algorithm. You're using DSP trickery to compress a file and, in theory, getting the same file back when you decompress it. You're counting on DSP for both processes. DSP does affect sound.
I have many FLACs and used to feel the same way, until I A-B compared between FLAC and WAV. WAV wins hands down.
nwimpney
219
May 15, 2018
HeeftyYou are wrong. Lossless compression does not affect sound. That's why it's called lossless. It's basically no different from using any other non-audio compression (zip, 7z, gz, RAR, etc), except that it's tuned to be much more efficient at audio waveforms. Bit for bit, the output is identical. Maybe you're just using different programs, which may be applying EQ or volume effects (not related to the compression)?
fhood
715
May 15, 2018
HeeftyNo I mean you can compare the binary of the original file to the binary of the decompressed file and they will be identical. The data will be completely unaltered. I don't think this is a matter of opinion. The FLAC compression algorithm is provably invertable. f^-1(f(x)) = x
It is totally possible that you did hear a difference, but that wasn't FLACs fault. More likely something was being added or subtracted in another software layer.
Heefty
1387
May 15, 2018
nwimpneyWrong on which point?
I can call a dog a pigeon, but that doesn't change what it is.
You can draw out diagrams about how it works and stomp your feet and scream all you want, but if I can hear the DSP in it, it's not the same.
Heefty
1387
May 15, 2018
fhoodThat's what I was wondering on it. I didn't do a lot of AB comparing between players. I did tell it not to apply anything other than decoding in the settings, but who knows what that means.
So far, I've done this test on only 2 players and been able to tell the difference. Both cases I prefer the WAV.
Not entirely scientific in my approach, but I don't want to spend the money on every player there is to find out.
HeeftyI respect ya heefty but fhood is accurate in his statement. FLAC is identical to wav from a binary perspective. If you take wav convert to flac, then convert back to wav, you will mathematically have the same file was when you started. This isn't true of lossy compression systems, you will have different 1's and 0's when you transcode back to wav. This is similar to how Meridian Lossless Packing works with lossless surround compression formats and raw PCM streams.
Heefty
1387
May 21, 2018
ElectronicVicesI've looked at the theory behind FLAC as well, and have to agree, but I can hear a definite difference. I still haven't completely understood why, but I can hear it and I'm not worried about disk space. I'm still gonna go WAV until I understand why it sounds better and can get my FLACs there.
HeeftyOh not saying you couldn't hear a difference as there is more at play than just the tech behind the compression. I just wanted to clarify that all things being equal WAV=FLAC and FLAC=WAV. In real life the "all other things being equal" rarely pans out. This is often related to how your listening program "unpacks" the FLAC encoding. I just hate limited tagging options in .wav and I've not been able to notice a difference with jRiver in my system.
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