Just listened to a CD for the first time in years....

ScarySquirrel said:
I am rubbish with sound. I can only tell the difference if the quality is truly awful. MP3's and CD's sound the same to me. Not sure if that is a good thing or not.
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Same.
I can tell the difference between MP3s at 128kbps and below, compared to 192kbps VBR (and above). That's about as audio-ly sharp as I can be.

Played Muse Blackholes and Revaluation CD via my MacBook, played into a HD 201 headphone and the Aego M, can't tell the difference to a 224kbps VBR MP3 rip.

I suppose this is a "good" thing as I won't be too picky and spend too much on aural pleasures :)
 
badbob said:
I can tell the difference between 320kps MP3 and flac.
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As can nearly everyone, once they know what they are listening for :-P Especially if you can provide them with an identical listening environment, ie. CDP or Flac vs. MP3 all into same DAC. Doing it blind on mediocre equipment, without having heard the original CD is a much better party trick. And still kind of pointless.

Lossless compression does have a place, and a 192VBR Lame is fine for portable, if not all casual listening. Quite frankly, given the quality of most CD recordings these days some of them sound just as good when compressed on an Ipod than when played back on decent hifi.

I suspect DrJones' Muse CD falls into that category. It's probably already compressed to all intents and purpose. Have a read here:

http://turnmeup.org/

FLAC/USB-DAC/SB3 does work for proper hifi but at end of the day it's whether you be bothered with the cost/hassle of doing it. If you've got room for the CDs in the lounge, why not enjoy browsing though them and reading the sleeve notes :-)

Just my tuppence.
Rich
 
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Golden Ape said:
What an interesting thread. Could someone clarify something for me? If say I have all my music on a PC in a lossless format, let's say FLAC, and I have a sound card with some sort of digital out (I guess optical of some sort) does the ultimate sound quality that I get depend on the computer? I guess what I mean is - does the PC do any processing and/or can the digital signal pick up noise before it leaves the PC?
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From a theory point of view, use software like Exact Audio Copy, and the data from the digital output should be "bit perfect", i.e. as good as you're going to get as a data extract.
Whilst I've never conducted the tested, I'm repeatedly told that people who've tried using the digital output from a PC tend to find that it doesn't sound as good as from say a half decent dedicated CD player.
The best explanation that I've read to try to explain this is jitter. In short, whilst the data might be fine, a DAC is expecting it every 1/44100th of a second. If it arrives slightly too early, or too late, that will cause issues with the analogue signal coming out from the DAC. As such, reducing jitter with very accurate clocks and attempts to re-clock are usually common on more expensive players.
 
To continue if I can.... using the SPDIF output even when Bit Perfect.
ie no resampling done in the PC, you are at the mercy of the DAC to eliminate Jitter. (Buffering and reclocking) As the SPDIF from what I understand just sends in a constant stream, if it can.

If you use a "proper" streaming player, Squeezebox, DS etc. It then receives packet data from the PC over LAN, which is requested by the Player. Plus it is loaded into a memory buffer, and clocked out to the DAC or DSP processors. So there by giving better jitter performance than a CDP.
Again it's all down to successful implementation....which often means how much do you pay for it !!!

PS to pimp my own old thread on what I have just done on digital streaming. Might be of interest to those not seen it
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17848339
 
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Not Oasis albums, that's for sure. Usually jazz/blues/soul as seem to put effort into the quality of the recordings. Haven't tried thrash metal, although it's noise it's quite complex so have to wonder how lossless copes with that. I can tell with cymbals also, seem to lost the detail, and sound quite different. I prefer ogg over mp3 so I use that instead for my iriver h140.
 
Gimpymoo said:
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CD AND AND EVEN MINIMALLY COMPRESSED MP3's is like night and day.

Ive allways ripped my CD's to the PC then left them on the shelf :(

Off to listen to some of the CD's I purchased a year ago :)
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Totally agree.


Gimpymoo said:
Even the "Lossless" audio files dont matchup.

I am amazed.
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Lossless is exactly what it means = NO LOSS of quality.


9designs2 said:
Using a PC and it's sound card just isn't up to the same level of a CDP. You need to be streaming the data to an external DAC, ala Squeeze box, Transporter or DS !!!
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Totally disagree. Using a custom built PC will knock the socks off the highet end CDP..
 
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It's out of date, only discuss the issue of a transport, not the critical DAC and analogue stage, and frankly a waste of time, 2-4 weeks to build one up ...PMSL.

So there isn't anything in the article to compare to a CDP !!!

Read the very last paragraph on the last page........ That's were the Squeeze box, transport and DS and all are at NOW !!

The issues of Jitter in CDP are the ones we highlighted earlier in the thread, and why I mentioned the Ripped version of a CD is potential better then playing the CD it's self.
So I maintain a PC is a poor and expensive "transport" and with out an external DAC is a poor sounding devise as well. Certainly not "high end" rival.

The answers is NAS drive (I'm using a TS109, 400Gb, was about 235 quid for OcUK) and a network DAC. Ripped to Lossless /FLAC format.

OR play the original disc in a good CDP.
 
It's out of date, only discuss the issue of a transport, not the critical DAC and analogue stage, and frankly a waste of time, 2-4 weeks to build one up ...PMSL.
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6 months is out of date???? Don't know where the tiime frame came from, but I'm sure a beginner could kncok up a PC in less than a couple of hours.

So there isn't anything in the article to compare to a CDP !!!
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Not in this article, but my PC used as a transport beats my Arcam CD92 (while not considered actually high end) by a very big margin and the reason I got rid of it.

Read the very last paragraph on the last page........ That's were the Squeeze box, transport and DS and all are at NOW !!
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Yes agree but my original quote was that a PC will beat a CDP and I'm sticking by it from experience...
 
CD's are nice, but it all depends on your CDP really...


Hopefully I will be picking up a dcx2496 today, then I will be able to use the digital out. :)
 
skindog said:
Not in this article, but my PC used as a transport beats my Arcam CD92 (while not considered actually high end) by a very big margin and the reason I got rid of it.


Yes agree but my original quote was that a PC will beat a CDP and I'm sticking by it from experience...
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Hardly "knock the socks off the highest end CDP" then is it ;)

So what DAC did you use with the PC to beat the CD92 ? .... A PC as a Transport only is fair enough, but of the conversion to analogue ??
 
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