CD vs Applelossless?!

DrDee

DrDee

DrDee

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Joined
7 Oct 2008
Posts
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I always presumed that FLAC, Applelossless and what not would sound the same coming from my PC than if the CD itself was in the CD drive and being played, how wrong I was! Playing both the rip of the CD in Applelossless compared to the CD itself is night and day, is there something I could be doing wrong?!

System im useing is a PC/iTunes - SPDIF out to Cambridge Audio DAC magic.
 
DrDee said:
I always presumed that FLAC, Applelossless and what not would sound the same coming from my PC than if the CD itself was in the CD drive and being played, how wrong I was! Playing both the rip of the CD in Applelossless compared to the CD itself is night and day, is there something I could be doing wrong?!

System im useing is a PC/iTunes - SPDIF out to Cambridge Audio DAC magic.
Click to expand...

There must be something you are doing wrong. Lossless means lossless, but to be honest i'm not sure where you would be going wrong. I assume you are using the same software to play back the lossless file/CD?
 
oli collett said:
There must be something you are doing wrong. Lossless means lossless, but to be honest i'm not sure where you would be going wrong. I assume you are using the same software to play back the lossless file/CD?
Click to expand...

I'm doing it all in iTunes, playing both the CD in it and listening to the rip from the said CD straight after. iTunes is set to rip in Applelossless in import settings which I believe is the ripping settings. The ripped songs claim to have a bitrate of 1022kbs or abouts. (its different for each track)
 
being a lossless format, you've got two possibilities. there's an error in the encoding process, or there's than error in the playback software.
 
jellybeard999 said:
is apple lossless lossless, or is it like WMA lossless and actually compressed ?
Click to expand...

Whether it's compressed or not is irrelevant - if it's lossless it's lossless. WMA lossless will be identical to an uncompressed copy of the file, only it will be smaller. If lossless codecs didn't compress the file, they would be somewhat pointless.
 
jellybeard999 said:
is apple lossless lossless, or is it like WMA lossless and actually compressed ?
Click to expand...

Lossless files are compressed. You're not understanding what that means, compression doesn't have to be lossy...i.e. zip, rar etc etc.

As others have said, you have a problem either encoding or playing back.
 
i had badly qaulity audio from apple lossless it turnt out to by itunes fault. played it in foobar and was 400x better...
 
Doug said:
Make sure Sound Enhancer is turned off :)
Click to expand...

I'm playing both the file and the original CD in iTunes, does sound enhancer only enhance the CD player bit or the file playing bit? If not and its both, surely they are both the same sound being enhanced the same way so should sound the same way?
 
smogsy said:
i had badly qaulity audio from apple lossless it turnt out to by itunes fault. played it in foobar and was 400x better...
Click to expand...

OK, playing the file in VLC seems to equal the sound (to my untrained ears at least) from the CD useing iTunes compared to playing the rip in iTunes, that's weird, but at least its solved the problem, thanks!

I'm still wondering what is causing iTunes to lower the quality of the ripped file like this?
 
Glad to here you found the fault, so apple is not to "lossless then" LOL..... I have never been to the iTunes website, and quiet frankly don't I will with.......:p

If you want to try some HQ downloads stuff look here for a sample etc.
http://www.linnrecords.com/
Studio master quality, 24bit 96Khz is equal to SACD quality.
 
9designs2 said:
Glad to here you found the fault, so apple is not to "lossless then" LOL..... I have never been to the iTunes website, and quiet frankly don't I will with.......:p

If you want to try some HQ downloads stuff look here for a sample etc.
http://www.linnrecords.com/
Studio master quality, 24bit 96Khz is equal to SACD quality.
Click to expand...

im not sure about that, my ps3 outputs 24bit 176.4khz when playing an SACD and that isnt considered SACD quality?
 
Max rate is 24 bit, 192Khz, but as SACD is not a PCM system I believe it's variable. Anyway Linn, who record, master and sell their own SACD, plus the downloads... I'm not going split hairs with them ! ;)....... Try some high bit rate downloads....

Now if I remember right my DAC in my media streamer upsample to 24bit 384Khz...(or there abouts) I think as high as you can get !!.....
 
9designs2 said:
Max rate is 24 bit, 192Khz, but as SACD is not a PCM system I believe it's variable. Anyway Linn, who record, master and sell their own SACD, plus the downloads... I'm not going split hairs with them ! ;)....... Try some high bit rate downloads....

Now if I remember right my DAC in my media streamer upsample to 24bit 384Khz...(or there abouts) I think as high as you can get !!.....
Click to expand...

i wasnt boasting, i was saying 176khz is the most the ps3 can muster when playing multi channel sacd's lol.
 
There was a thread either on Head Fi or Avforums recently about problems with Apple Lossless.

I hate iTunes. Horrible horrible piece of software, at least on the PC.
 
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