[slow_down]

This is me being silly and paranoid but please humor me

A couple months ago I bought an SB3 with a Bolder modded ELPAC power supply and ripped all my music to FLAC, using EAC v.99 prebeta 3.  That program version had the FLAC compression software built in and I simply selected it through the setup wizard.  EAC is a pretty straightforward program and I've had much experience with it in the past when I ripped all my music to LAME mp3 a couple years ago.

Anyway, at the same time I got my SB3, I also got my first nice stereo - an Odyssey setup that I'm pretty happy with.  Now I don't know if this is a matter of the stereo showing me the shortcomings of some of my recordings, or something else, but some albums sound spectacular and others, not so spectacular.  As an audiophile newbie, I have to ask, is this simply the price I paid for finally owning nice stereo equipment - being able to hear recording flaws/quirks/shortcomings in my albums that maybe my older/cheaper equipment masked or otherwise failed to show?  Or is it possible that somehow my FLAC ripping went wrong on some of these?  Since FLAC is lossless, I would think that any advanced settings one might choose would have no bearing on sound quality, but rather just file size and maybe time it takes to compress the file, but who knows.

Any thoughts?

[WGH]

You can use foobar (or another tool) to convert one of the bad sounding recordings back to a WAV for a comparison, but I doubt you will hear much of a difference. You are probably hearing the differences in recordings for the first time.

[bpape]

Or you can even just rerip just to make sure and skip the FLAC conversion.  Listen to the WAV direct.

Bryan

[slow_down]

Thanks guys.  Feel kinda silly now.  Ripping one of the suspect CD's to WAV is no-brainer and something I should have tried before posting! Why I didn't think of that before, I don't know, but I'll definitely give it a try now.  Suspect WGH is right and I'll hear no difference, but want to find out for sure.

[Thump553]

I wouldn't even bother re-ripping.  I'd A-B one of your suspect flac files to the original CD track.

It is possible to screw up ripping to FLAC (heaven knows I've done it) but I'd put my money on what you're hearing is defects in the original recording, defects on the original recording master.

[Val]

I agree with Thump553. Right now I am listening to my brand new Monarchy Audio M24 tube preamp/DAC (original model) while it breaks in and it's like I am listening to well known music for the first time! Up to now and for more than a year, my SB2 was driving the amps directly.

I believe I screwed up several rips to flac (I am not fond of EAC) and some day I will get a really big hard drive and re-rip all my CDs to wav.

[slow_down]

I believe I screwed up several rips to flac (I am not fond of EAC) and some day I will get a really big hard drive and re-rip all my CDs to wav.

How do you think you messed up?  Using EAC set on beginner, there are few choices to make and thus few mistakes you can make.  Based on some of the research I've done, the main variables with FLAC deal with the metadata and the tradeoff between compression time and final file size (but that doesn't affect sound - it's lossless regardless).  The EAC setup wizard made it pretty easy to choose a metadata tagging scheme, and I left everything else on the default settings.  Am I missing something here?  The whole reason I posted is because I'm afraid that despite all my preparation, that somehow I ripped 200 CD's with some minor setting set the wrong way

What do you prefer over EAC?  I'd love to give it a try.

[Val]

I haven't used EAC in a long while, but I remember well that several tutorials on the web contradicted each other on several settings, settings on EAC weren't the last word in clarity to begin with (that was the main reason for the differences) and it was buggy. I think you should set the particular software you're using in the most secure mode. As my signature shows, I use dBpoweramp reference (you can try the free version) and wouldn't go back. The latest Audiograbber (1.83, I think) is also good and simple to use. Regarding the ripping format, with the cheap cost of storage nowadays there is no reason not to rip to wav.

[Thump553]

One main reason not to rip to wav is the ability to tag files.

[bpape]

The other is if you're using the Squeezebox.  If you have a busy network, streaming FLAC over the network and decoding using the built in FLAC decoder in the SB hardware cuts the network traffic in half.

Bryan

[Val]

I haven't yet tried ripping to wav, but since I mostly listen to classical music and tagging it is a problem in itself, I tag files my own way with mp3tag and Windows Explorer!

I have a dedicated wireless router for my SB, so no problems with traffic.

P.S. By the way, Vista's Window Explorer is a handy tagger.

[bpape]

My network is a bit more crowded. 

- Music Server
- 3x SB
- 3 wired PC's
- 2-4 wireless laptops depending on if kids are home

Bryan