[Marius]

http://blog.bowers-wilkins.com/music/digital-music-a-quick-guide-to-the-best-lossless-files/


Never had any issues with FLAC. I think? Don't do many tags though.
Any AIFF (dis)advantage known to our BDP community?


SoS is a wonderful source of new and unknown artists to me, as well as offering nice classical performances in hires format.


Cheers,
Marius

[zoom25]

I whole-heartedly agree with the article about compression. I've done comparisons between all 4 on both BDP-1 and Audirvana Plus with live monitoring of CPU usage over many trials with disabled background activity to eliminate conflicting variables and taking notes on sound quality.

I find ALAC is the worst of the bunch. FLAC is better than ALAC. AIFF-C and WAV can be tied for top spot. These two have an overall ease over the compressed formats.

Reading info: http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/WAV-FLAC.htm

I have my library duplicated twice. One is with compressed FLAC (various compression levels). The other is WAV with tagging via XLD. WAV is what gets played on BDP-1.


Pure subjectiveness with no rationale:

WAV and AIFF are the closest thing to PCM. No compression. Either should be fine...Yet, I don't know why, at times I think I hear a certain warmness with WAV. It's probably in my head.

So I go with WAV just to not have to worry. Also, WAV is by far the most supported format among all my devices, whether designed specifically for audio or not.

....

But yes, uncompressed lossless vs. compressed lossless might be worth testing out for yourself. It doesn't cost much nowadays as hard drives are cheap and doesn't consume a lot of time with batch conversion on fast computers.

[CanadianMaestro]

I would be doing WAV instead of FLAC if only it did not take up so much more memory. The two sound very very very similar to my ears, and since I don't care about the file extras (tags, etc)., I stick with FLAC in my system.

AIFF and ALAC just aren't even on my radar.

[zoom25]

I would be doing WAV instead of FLAC if only it did not take up so much more memory. The two sound very very very similar to my ears, and since I don't care about the file extras (tags, etc)., I stick with FLAC in my system.

AIFF and ALAC just aren't even on my radar.

Same.

Yes, FLAC has always been my recommendation for downloading from sites, ripping CDs, and for archiving. Lossless, full metadata, CD cover, no problem with tagging, space saver, low on I/O, lowest CPU usage among compressed lossless, and open sourced.

WAV is something you consider when you have the time and a large, spare hard drive. The differences become aware over longer time, like back to back CD's ideally. Hard, fast switching isn't the way to go.

Still, most of the crowd here agrees on lossless. I have people on other forums telling me that MP3 is all that I need and difference between lossless and lossy is non-existent. 

[CanadianMaestro]

 I have people on other forums telling me that MP3 is all that I need and difference between lossless and lossy is non-existent. 

Well, I don't disagree categorically with them. I have bought some symphonic and vocal tracks from Presto Classical, in MP3 320kbps (they only sell 320 MP3's, unlike Apple's iTunes). Many of those 320s sound terrific thru my BDP-1/BDA-1. As good as 44/16 CD rips of the same albums. (I use XLD to rip). So, I throw dogma out the window. There is truth to the spouting...some of it, that is.

It all depends on the quality of the masters....

[Marius]

It all depends on the quality of the masters....

that goes without saying. ('d almost suspect you wrote that with someone special in mind )


we'll see about these B&W Aiff's. I've always had a boxy kind of experience with their 24b flac downloads. tried the 16b files, and they too had that same  strange enclosed studio sound, one wouldn't expect with their recordings being live (it is their LSO live catalogue after all).


it must be their Masters...


Chees,
Marius

[CanadianMaestro]

that goes without saying. ('d almost suspect you wrote that with someone special in mind )


it must be their Masters...


Chees,
Marius

Shouldn't you be listening to Wagner in stereo FLAC?
Instead of haunting the forums....
 

[Marius]

Shouldn't you be listening to Wagner in stereo FLAC?
Instead of haunting the forums....
 

you bet.
no multi-tasking when Wagner is on. Things might get out of hand....
 

[gbaby]

This is a very misleading thread title.