Question about rip/burn Cd's

[Feanor]

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I highly doubt whether processor speed has any bearing on transcoding fidelity; it isn't a processor intensive task. The SB is way more than adequate. Similarly, I don't understand what you mean by 'lossless is great, but...'. I mean...lossless is lossless; it is what it is. You don't have to 'well implement' it to get more lossless. Any difference you hear is downstream and subject to variations there.
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Understand that there are a lot of audiophools out there who insist that they can hear a difference between WAV and compressed lossless such as FLAC. Well there are a lot of variables with compter sound so maybe they do if they aren't "well implement", but you have to be "well implemented" whether WAV, MP3, or whatever.

Noddin, you are perfectly correct that decoding FLAC is a totally trivial task for any CPU made in the last decade. In general sound differences, (assuming they are real rather than imagined), are rarely if ever the result of the decoding process per se.

[Dawnrazor]

Noddin, you are perfectly correct that decoding FLAC is a totally trivial task for any CPU made in the last decade. In general sound differences, (assuming they are real rather than imagined), are rarely if ever the result of the decoding process per se.

Hey Feanor!

I kind of agree with this statement for most people. Though for those of us who have gone kind of crazy with the minimalist approach of the cics memory player concept that flac processing is not trivial even though the hardware could normally handle things very easily.

I for one cant really play flac. It causes a hang that .wav doesnt when loading from ram. I accidentally imported some flac and the volume was much higher than normal from a previous song, and the flac was blaring and the mouse hung for a long while and I couldnt do anything. This never happens on .wav

Here is an explanation from the author of the software and overall computer transport concept:

-There's no difference in SQ as FLAC is decoded entirely before playback. The issue that FLAC causes is potential dropouts when cPlay does background RAM loading. Although this takes just a few seconds, FLAC decoding is insanely CPU intensive and will cause a dropout. This gets worse when output rate is at 192k as CPU headroom reduces significantly (at 96k, CPU0 load is ~40% vs ~78%).-

Anyhow I dont really see what the big deal is. Hard drive space is cheap these days.

It is probably just me, but I have had pretty bad luck with flac on a wide variety of computers from normal pcs to audio ones.

Here is a vid I put together of one of those issues where the same file played as a flac stutters but the .wav doesnt:

http://www.basaudio.net/diyhosting/asylum/MVI_1602.avi

[Feanor]

Hey Feanor!

I kind of agree with this statement for most people. Though for those of us who have gone kind of crazy with the minimalist approach of the cics memory player concept that flac processing is not trivial even though the hardware could normally handle things very easily.

I for one cant really play flac. It causes a hang that .wav doesnt when loading from ram. I accidentally imported some flac and the volume was much higher than normal from a previous song, and the flac was blaring and the mouse hung for a long while and I couldnt do anything. This never happens on .wav
...

Anyhow I dont really see what the big deal is [with WAV]. Hard drive space is cheap these days.

It is probably just me, but I have had pretty bad luck with flac on a wide variety of computers from normal pcs to audio ones.
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Dawnrazor, good to hear from you.

I'm glad you concede that getting into CICS is "going crazy".

I'm also glad you mention that decode FLAC is exactly the same as WAV so that any sound diffference that there are, are the result of decoding -- part of "implementation" as E-Stat refers to it.

Personally I've never actually had a "stutter", "hiccup", or dropout that I could attribute to FLAC or other compressed format vs. WAV -- to be sure, I have had these probems. However in my case these anomalies have been the result of (a) bad sound drivers, e.g. the ASIO driver for my M-Audio card, or (b) computer startup programs or Windows services that interrupt processing. These are other aspects of what E-Stat calls "implementation", and by experimentation I have eliminated these problems except for the following ...

Presently about once every ~3 hours of listening, on average I have a network dropout that causes Foobar2000 to kick up a "file not found" message. These dropouts seem to have begun after I got my newest network router. They have nothing to do with the sound quality before or after the interruption. I'll enlarge Foobar's input buffer to see if that makes any difference -- it might not. In any case at the current frequency of these dropouts they aren't really a problem .

If you can do without metadata tags, and if you have the pockets for twice the hard disk capacity, sure, go for WAV. Personally I couldn't live without the tags and, now that I'm retired, the extra cost of HD space is still relevant.

[E-Stat]

Personally I've never actually had a "stutter", "hiccup", or dropout that I could attribute to FLAC or other compressed format

Nor have I when played back on a computer - which is where the processing in my arrangement now occurs. The compact Touch player, however, uses a comparatively low powered imbedded processor that is comparable to the Pentium II used in my 1998 desktop. You end up pushing it pretty hard when it also runs the Linux based server software playing from a local USB or SD card.

rw

[Dawnrazor]

Dawnrazor, good to hear from you.

I'm glad you concede that getting into CICS is "going crazy".


If you can do without metadata tags, and if you have the pockets for twice the hard disk capacity, sure, go for WAV. Personally I couldn't live without the tags and, now that I'm retired, the extra cost of HD space is still relevant.

Hey Bill, it IS crazy in the sense that many people sadly just dont seem to care about quality sound. Maybe it is the knee of the curve thing but I for one care about that extra 10-20%. For one who really cares about the sound cics stuff is not crazy...it works.

And to you and E-stat I just dont get the need for tagging.

It must be a classical thing. Personally my cue sheet/wav method gives me all I need: artist, album, song.

a cmp2 box also adds genre, which is kind of meaningless for me.

(Fwiw it is a long long story but most of my collection doesnt even have song names, though my latest rips do contain that info. I still enjoy the music whether it is "track 4" or "False Faces"....)

Others have mentioned to me in the past that one can do searches through the metadata. But I for one dont want my audio rig to behave like a computer per se requiring a keyboard.

Anyhow I am not saying there is anything WRONG with tags, just that I dont see the benefit especially if there MAY be an issue with sonics.

On the issue of the Squeeze box and the psu, one of the most knowledgeable people is John Swenson, who is an engineer of some renowned has repeatedly said that the psu in the squeeze box needs replacing. The Audio Asylum is down right now (why I am here) so I cant find the posts but they are there if you want to look. He also talks about power cords and has measured many and price point doesnt always seem to correlate with performance.

On a related note there is general agreement within the memory player project that the psu has a big effect on the sound and there are several advanced mods that take the cmp2 recipe to the next level (adding a separate psu for the drives and usb, and cpu is one of the hallmarks of the recipe, though it uses easy to do switchers):

http://www.cicsmemoryplayer.com/inde....ApdxBAdvanced

[E-Stat]

And to you and E-stat I just dont get the need for tagging.

Nor did I for many years - until I started using it.

Others have mentioned to me in the past that one can do searches through the metadata. But I for one dont want my audio rig to behave like a computer per se requiring a keyboard.

What I use contains a touch screen that works like an iPhone. You scroll through choices with your finger. Sometimes, I find it nice to quickly locate a song title via searching for its name.

Anyhow I am not saying there is anything WRONG with tags, just that I dont see the benefit especially if there MAY be an issue with sonics.

I'm not yet convinced what it would take to fully duplicate the performance of the CDP I use in the main system. On the vintage system however, I find that my tweaked Touch works every bit as well as various CD transports and changers I've used in conjunction with the Manley DAC.

On the issue of the Squeeze box and the psu, one of the most knowledgeable people is John Swenson, who is an engineer of some renowned has repeatedly said that the psu in the squeeze box needs replacing.

It was reading his posts and comments of others that led me in the direction of looking for a high quality linear for mine.

rw

[E-Stat]

Although this takes just a few seconds, FLAC decoding is insanely CPU intensive and will cause a dropout.

I didn't think so many folks were hallucinating. I wanted to pass along the advice that I found to be true when using a non-computer based solution.

Hard drive space is cheap these days.

The chief advantage to FLAC is tagging support, not space preservation. For a couple of years, I had most of my library ripped to WAV and played it back on my computer alone. I confess that the additional convenience of tagging was worth all the hours spent converting to FLAC.

rw