Which way to go for lossless music from CD's?

[krazeyeyez]

Originally Posted by John72953

Thanks Lou for addressing that one, because I can't. Is that really music?

John

ha ha if a cd is then yeah, but i am sure you probably equate ipod with mp3 and in that case no....


as far as music i do realize most does not have bass that drops that low, but their are songs that go extremely low, and in those cases how are you NOT losing that information, unless of course you have towers that would make most saudi princes drool?


@lou that is the setting i was looking for, but my stereo option just sends signal to my fronts and not my sub, weird. I am not a purist so wether it is natural or not, i would like to have my fronts and sub for music, but the only setting i have come across is to turn off the surround and center and then use all channel, i assume their is a better option but i have yet to find it.

[louhamilton]

Originally Posted by John72953

Thanks Lou for addressing that one, because I can't. Is that really music?

John

Although I get less songs on my iPhone, I have all my CD's burned in ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) so, yes, it really is music. I have very few mp3's left in my collection. Those are usually songs I had from long ago or my wife and son have downloaded from the iTunes Store.

Originally Posted by krazeyeyez

ha ha if a cd is then yeah, but i am sure you probably equate ipod with mp3 and in that case no....


as far as music i do realize most does not have bass that drops that low, but their are songs that go extremely low, and in those cases how are you NOT losing that information, unless of course you have towers that would make most saudi princes drool?


@lou that is the setting i was looking for, but my stereo option just sends signal to my fronts and not my sub, weird. I am not a purist so wether it is natural or not, i would like to have my fronts and sub for music, but the only setting i have come across is to turn off the surround and center and then use all channel, i assume their is a better option but i have yet to find it.

Obviously, you will loose some of the low-end if the speakers cannot handle them. However, when I have used Direct, I havn't noticed the low-end missing too much. As a matter of fact, I once forgot to turn my sub on after some cable rearranging for TWO DAYS before noticing it was not on.

My receiver has a configuration setting where you need to turn the sub on and set the crossover frequencies. It was off by default because the speakers are set to large. Read through the manual, particularly the stereo section.

EDIT: what are you using for your pre/pro? The Primare I21 integrated amplifier you have listed previously appears to be two-channel so I'm confused about the center/surround comment. Or are you just quoting the article (I did not read it. sorry.)

[krazeyeyez]

Yeah i was just quoting that article, as to why i was under the mistaken impression that 2 channel music systems i hear about from purists also had a sub, and that article listed that equipment as 2 channel and of course had a sub in the mix.

I already thought it did anyways because of the levels on some classical music as well as other stuff that has low lows that i have seen people suggest to demo subwoofers. I love my sub so i was just looking for the best settings to incorporate it without too much altering or loss.

For now i have a receiver, but i do plan on adding external amplification sooner or later as i have heard that it really does make a noticeable difference with a dedicated unit. My equipment for now is....

Integra 6.8 receiver
Klipsch RF-82 5.1 system
and a Pioneer 5 disc cartridge cd player so old i cannot tell you what model it is

and to throw john a bone YES, even that 10+ year old cd player still sounds slightly better then my IPOD lossless files and all.


I will have to download my manual since i think it's packed away some where but i will see what i come up with. Normally my music time is reserved for the car, and movie time at home, but recently i have discovered some new favorite bands and wanted to verify settings for home play since i have never had anything beyond 2.1 systems until the current one i have.

[naturephoto1]

Originally Posted by John72953

Having the ability to do so still doesn't make it right IMO.

John

Hi John,

I want to have that option. But, using the subwoofers attached directly to the towers themselves (1 for each) essentially would still make this a 2.0 system and not a 2.1 system. It will allow the main towers to play to lower frequencies. There is organ music, bass, drums, and other instruments that reach below 30 or even 20 hz. This is similar in idea to those big tower sets like the Nola Grand References which has a tower for the highs and mids and a tower for the woofers for both the L and R channels. This is also very similar to the original idea that Dahlquist had when they came up with the subwoofer and passive crossovers for their DQ-10 speakers about 30 years ago. Don't forget that Carl Marchisotto when with Dahlquist designed this option which he has now taken to use with his Nola speakers.

Rich

[zicmubleu]

Originally Posted by richteer

Quality wise, you're not going to improve on WAV, because that's essential the on-disc format anyway. I'd recommend FLAC (Free Lossless Audio CODEC), though, because it's lossless and non-proprietory.

First question is why hasn't Dobyblue weighed in on this issue? He would know the details off the top of his head I bet. Anyway, I am no expert in this area but I typically use WMP to rip then burn a music CD-R. I have found lately that the CD-R won't play in my car, my primary reason for burning it in the first place. Looking at the burned CD and the original CD at a DOS level, the burned CD does have .wav files on it, down several directory levels. The top level \ has a .wpl file, windows media playlist, then there are directories that have the disc name and finally .wav files with the song titles on it. However the original disc only seems to have .cda files, CD audio, on it at the top directory level. I am guessing that when WMP rips the music it finds something identifying the song in the .cda file and then may supplement it with data from the Internet although I have no idea what is contained in the .cda file format. I also didn't check for hidden files, don't know the DOS switch command for that and too lazy to look it up if there is one.

So one question for someone who knows, does the .cda file contain the .wav file data so there is no conversion process going on when the CD is ripped? And is there an option to rip the files directly as .cda to be copied to a music CD-R that will play wherever the original CD would play? I am thinking a direct CD to CD-R burn might work but haven't tried that.

[John72953]

Originally Posted by naturephoto1

Hi John,

I want to have that option. But, using the subwoofers attached directly to the towers themselves (1 for each) essentially would still make this a 2.0 system and not a 2.1 system. It will allow the main towers to play to lower frequencies. There is organ music, bass, drums, and other instruments that reach below 30 or even 20 hz. This is similar in idea to those big tower sets like the Nola Grand References which has a tower for the highs and mids and a tower for the woofers for both the L and R channels. This is also very similar to the original idea that Dahlquist had when they came up with the subwoofer and passive crossovers for their DQ-10 speakers about 30 years ago. Don't forget that Carl Marchisotto when with Dahlquist designed this option which he has now taken to use with his Nola speakers.

Rich

Hi Rich,

I didn't know one was able to do that. And if you did...what would be the connection method?

Interesting concept actually, Hmm!

John

[naturephoto1]

Originally Posted by John72953

Hi Rich,

I didn't know one was able to do that. And if you did...what would be the connection method?

Interesting concept actually, Hmm!

John

Hi John,

The way that this is done (if you have one subwoofer you can connect both speakers) using a speaker cable (preferably with Banana plugs at both ends) coming from the woofer (or either terminal from the speaker) and into the Hi Level inputs on the back of the plate amp on the subwoofer. With 2 subwoofers you would hook up the same but only 1 speaker to each subwoofer. In my case with the Epik Conquest (and I believe all of the Epik subwoofers) there is a toggle switch that allows the user to switch from the internal crossover of the plate amp of the subwoofer to the LFE coming from the Pre/Pro. The unfortunate thing though is that I believe that the crossover for the subwoofer can only go down to about 50 Hz, but I can at least adjust the volume output of the subwoofers to blend with the tower speakers as closely as possibly.

Rich

[benricci]

Originally Posted by zicmubleu

So one question for someone who knows, does the .cda file contain the .wav file data so there is no conversion process going on when the CD is ripped? And is there an option to rip the files directly as .cda to be copied to a music CD-R that will play wherever the original CD would play? I am thinking a direct CD to CD-R burn might work but haven't tried that.

To answer your question, no it doesn't contain any audio information. And since that's the case, you wouldn't want to "rip" anything to a .cda file, anyway. In actuality, it doesn't even really exist on the disc to begin with...

In short, the .cda extension is a little confusing, so here is a good explanation:

So what are .CDA files that you see on an audio CD?

These files are created by the Windows CD driver. They are simply representations of the CD audio tracks and are not actually on the CD.

Each .CDA file is a kind of a pointer to the location of a specific track on the CD and contains no musical information. CDA files are all 44 bytes in length and each contain track times plus a special Windows shortcut that allows users to access the specific audio tracks.

So if .CDA files contain no musical information, what happens if you "copy" a .CDA from an audio CD to your hard drive and then double click it?

If the CD is still in the drive then the corresponding track will play from the CD. If you remove the CD you will get an error message. That's because the .CDA file contain no music, it only points to where the music is located on the CD.

To work with audio files on your CD you need first to convert them to .WAV, .MP3 or another file format that computers understand. That's what a CD ripper does and that's why you must use a ripper before you can work with your audio files. Simple as that.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/how_..._cda_files.htm

[Arcam_or_bust]

FLAC would be my opinion.

Because it's typically used by torrent systems you not only get great hi-res files but you get them for free.

Go to the free site, vuze.com, they will allow free torrent downloads and flac is a very popular file type.

Be aware you will have to get a codec pack to process the flac typically, and find a way to get it though to the amp.

I stream from my computer into the ps3 then pass it though via hi-quality toslink cable and then my amp.

******************************************

As far as the two channle thing;

I personally can't stand the sub on when in stereo mode. When I go to direct mode, (only analog input signals, then my amp turns off all digital processing), for my turntable I use this and there isn't a better sound than I can get through my system. For FLAC I still set my settings so in stereo there is no sub present.

If you aren't getting a full bass sound in stereo that's because, 1. your speakers aren't able to represent the full bandwith coming in, your amp isn't pushing it or the source simply has a weak bass signal.

Just switching records can substantionally change the amount of base, same with FLAC files.

I find the higher fidelity the system the more it will expose bad engineering...


P.s. I have some tracks that boom so loud bass wise that friends asked me to turn off the sub and it was never on. I have a buddy that had to reduce his bass signal in a two channle also so he could better hear the rest of the music.

[krazeyeyez]

Well in my case it isn't that the sound is "off" with just stereo 2 channel, its the fact i have what i consider to be a very nice sub, designed to handle low levels, and two very nice towers that go low, but not as low as the sub. No matter how good you think your two channel is, there are tracks where i am sure you are losing some levels of bass in some cases, unless i am understanding the numbers game wrong? I am sure it still sounds great, but i don't like the idea of just dismissing levels of bass no matter how few tracks drop those low levels especially since i was gunning for a faithful representation of those tunes. Don't know though maybe i am missing something about how a tower manages to reproduce those low lows on the level of a sub beyond its specs.

[benricci]

Many towers have strong enough woofers that a separate subwoofer is not necessary to reproduce the bass accurately.

I find that subwoofers which are added to an already competent 2.0 tower setup adversely affect the sound, by adding too much unnatural boom to the mix.

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by Arcam_or_bust

FLAC would be my opinion.

Because it's typically used by torrent systems you not only get great hi-res files but you get them for free.

Torrent "systems" use .torrent files and nothing else.

.flac is a lossless compression scheme, it has nothing to do with whether you're getting "great" files or "hi-res" files...you're getting whatever was originally put into the .flac compression scheme.

You could take 128 Mbps .mp3 files and convert them into .wav files and then into .flac files...you have neither hi-res nor great files in this case, you have lossy .mp3 128 Mbps transcoded files.

You will only have hi-res files if you have 24-bit .flac files and you're aware of the lineage. You will only have great files if the lineage is proven with a .log file and of course if the original mastering was "great" to begin with.

People should be aware that .flac is just like any other compression scheme - garbage in, garbage out.

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by Zaphod

I am now looking to try to ween my way from the monster we call iTunes and try to go with lossless rips from CD's that I own. I have over 600 CD's and want to convert them to a lossless file that I can put on my Windows Home Server, and then access those files through my PS3 and Xbox 360.

Now I know there are many different lossless file formats, but which one is going to give the highest quality audio?

As others have recommended already, go with EAC for ripping and then use FLAC Frontend to convert losslessly to .flac files. You should be aware that EAC has many different settings and options, so it's best to run through a tutorial as you set it up to make sure you're getting the best rips with the drive you're using. EAC maintains a database with settings per drives and chances are it will offer you the detailed settings already confirmed to work best with your drive for sample offsets, etc.

When you rip you'll want to check your logfile as well to make sure the track quality is 98~100% so you know you're getting a bit-for-bit rip of your CD. EAC is far superior to any other ripping software I've used in terms of getting the data correctly from scratched or damaged CD's.

This is a good tutorial you can follow - http://filesharefreak.com/tutorials/...-with-eac-099/

Download EAC here - http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/inde...rces/download/
Download FLAC frontend here - http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html

[Arcam_or_bust]

Torrent "systems" use .torrent files and nothing else.

.flac is a lossless compression scheme, it has nothing to do with whether you're getting "great" files or "hi-res" files...you're getting whatever was originally put into the .flac compression scheme.

You could take 128 Mbps .mp3 files and convert them into .wav files and then into .flac files...you have neither hi-res nor great files in this case, you have lossy .mp3 128 Mbps transcoded files.

You will only have hi-res files if you have 24-bit .flac files and you're aware of the lineage. You will only have great files if the lineage is proven with a .log file and of course if the original mastering was "great" to begin with.

People should be aware that .flac is just like any other compression scheme - garbage in, garbage out.

dobyblue


Absolutley. That's what I am saying. Because FLAC is used in torrents and flac is capable of carrying the hi-res files, where as an mp3 is limited etc as you said,

Whenever you get any source you are limited by that source. I like how typically they (torrents) do list their history, most people use EAC for the flac rips. Also depending on the setup you can monitor the stream, through the PS3 server program I have the bit rates displayed.

EAC is what I use on my computer, what I love is you are able to get hi quality rips for free, and if someone doesn't understand how to rip properly you can just delete and move on.

Not like some CD's when you buy them, get them home and the engineering is crap and you are out $20.

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by Arcam_or_bust

Absolutley. That's what I am saying. Because FLAC is used in torrents and flac is capable of carrying the hi-res files, where as an mp3 is limited etc as you said,

This is still misleading - that statement implies that .flac is used exclusively in torrents, which it is not. You can put anything in a .torrent file, from a word file, to folders, to .zip and .rar files, VIDEO_TS folders, .vob files, excel spreadsheets, .mp3's, .avi's, etc., etc., etc.

Whenever you get any source you are limited by that source. I like how typically they (torrents) do list their history, most people use EAC for the flac rips.

Torrents don't list their history at all though. A torrent is simply a file that states what is to be torrented, through which tracker, and from where. .log files list the lineage of any music folder, whether torrented, b&p'd or offered straight as a download via torrenting. Most people use EAC for CD rips, not .flac rips. EAC rips to .wav format, any further conversion is done by external encoders whether to Apple lossless, .mp3, .ape, .shn, etc. SHN was actually far more popular than FLAC up until a few years ago.

EAC is what I use on my computer, what I love is you are able to get hi quality rips for free, and if someone doesn't understand how to rip properly you can just delete and move on.

You can only know if it was ripped properly if a .log file is included...otherwise the only way to compare is to buy the CD yourself, rip it properly and compare the checksums.

Not like some CD's when you buy them, get them home and the engineering is crap and you are out $20.

Same thing can happen with any media, not just CD's. Plus you have to buy the music to begin with anyway don't you? I don't know of too many artists giving away their music for free. FLAC isn't somehow exempt from poor mastering. You take a FLAC rip of Oasis' "Be Here Now" CD it's going to sound identical to the CD - brickwalled with no dynamics.

[Arcam_or_bust]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcam_or_bust
Absolutley. That's what I am saying. Because FLAC is used in torrents and flac is capable of carrying the hi-res files, where as an mp3 is limited etc as you said,

This is still misleading - that statement implies that .flac is used exclusively in torrents, which it is not. You can put anything in a .torrent file, from a word file, to folders, to .zip and .rar files, VIDEO_TS folders, .vob files, excel spreadsheets, .mp3's, .avi's, etc., etc., etc

I'm not saying exclusive in torrents, what i am saying is that lots of people using torrents use the FLAC codec. Anything can be torrent"ed" I get lots of movies and t.v. show also through torrents.

Hope that clarifies.Using flac as a great format for higher res over mp3 and the such. WAVE is completley uncompressed, but huge files, FLAC is compressed but only slightly in comparisson to mps, and the fact that you can get them for free through different torrent provider sites makes it very benificial.

Quote:
Whenever you get any source you are limited by that source. I like how typically they (torrents) do list their history, most people use EAC for the flac rips.

Torrents don't list their history at all though. A torrent is simply a file that states what is to be torrented, through which tracker, and from where. .log files list the lineage of any music folder, whether torrented, b&p'd or offered straight as a download via torrenting. Most people use EAC for CD rips, not .flac rips. EAC rips to .wav format, any further conversion is done by external encoders whether to Apple lossless, .mp3, .ape, .shn, etc. SHN was actually far more popular than FLAC up until a few years ago

I'm not saying torrents do it, I am saying that typically the people creating the torrent will list the history for you. Example, one guy will tell you , 44.1 bit/16khz vinyl to flac. Others list gold disk cd rip using EAC to flac. ETC.

As far as EAC rips, I use EAC to rip to wav then EAC uses a codec pack source to wrap it into FLAC. I went into advanced settings and set it up so that whenever a wav file is created EAC wraps it. (encodes it)

Quote:
EAC is what I use on my computer, what I love is you are able to get hi quality rips for free, and if someone doesn't understand how to rip properly you can just delete and move on.

You can only know if it was ripped properly if a .log file is included...otherwise the only way to compare is to buy the CD yourself, rip it properly and compare the checksums.

You can also tell right away because typically an incorrectly riped track sounds bad, or uninteresting. File size can also tip a person off, because of the lossy format FLAC files are quite larger than highly compressed files, depending on the song the can get as high as 60 MB per song.

Quote:
Not like some CD's when you buy them, get them home and the engineering is crap and you are out $20.

Same thing can happen with any media, not just CD's. Plus you have to buy the music to begin with anyway don't you? I don't know of too many artists giving away their music for free. FLAC isn't somehow exempt from poor mastering. You take a FLAC rip of Oasis' "Be Here Now" CD it's going to sound identical to the CD - brickwalled with no dynamics.

I don't buy CD's anymore, I get them all through torrent providers, like vuze.com.

I download flac via torrents, and based on sound quality and monitoring bit rates and such I decide wether I want the vinyl. I also download flac via torrents to get songs I just don't want to track vinyl down for.

For reasons you stated above that's why buying vinyl is a crap shoot! That's why I preview them for free, lol.

Peace

[louhamilton]

I don't trust torrents in the least. I've heard too many horror stories. The only place I've ever downloaded torrents from is the NIN website.

I've never seen any free download sites. But then again, I haven't really been looking. The only site I've seen have FLAC downloads is the B&W Society of Sound, but I download the ALAC files anyway.

The compression between ALAC and FLAC is almost identical. I believe they maintain about 60% of its original file size. I know FLAC is open source, but since I use Apple TV and iPhone/iPods, ALAC makes more sense for me.

I know some people are just anti-Apple, but I use iTunes to rip my CD's, manage my music and stream to my Apple TV. I also have an iPhone app to control my iTunes from anywhere my wi-fi network can reach.

[Arcam_or_bust]

I recommend giving vuze.com a try. So far everything seems to be on the up and up.

Haven't checked on the apple file types, even though it's a great movie preview site.

[stapunpin]

I was browsing reviews here and other sites and have become interested in buying some concert blu's. I'm really tempted to buy the Foo Fighters Blu-ray that was just reviewed on here since I'm a pretty big fan of them and maybe The Police concert Blu-ray. Any other good recommendations?

[Opips2]

I want to know, Which you would like using tone on or off as like control treble and bass??

I know that Vinyl record don't need use control tone: treble and bass.

I not sure about redbook. I think do same as vinyl record??