The best format etc
Planet 10
One of the CDs/SACDs used was Norah Jones-Come Away With Me.
I think that this CD may have been downsampled from the SACD original mastering session (?)
I upsampled to 96KHZ 24 bit ,(Sound Forge 9) this album and another Norah Jones album to make an audio DVD. The other CD did not sound anywhere as good as "Come Away With Me "
when the compilation DVD was played back.
SandyK
Planet 10
One of the CDs/SACDs used was Norah Jones-Come Away With Me.
I think that this CD may have been downsampled from the SACD original mastering session (?)
I upsampled to 96KHZ 24 bit ,(Sound Forge 9) this album and another Norah Jones album to make an audio DVD. The other CD did not sound anywhere as good as "Come Away With Me "
when the compilation DVD was played back.
SandyK
Just out of curiosity I did some more ABXing in foobar, taking three files and saving them as...
- LAME MP3 @ 128kbps
- LAME MP3 @ 320kbps
- MPC Q7
- APE extra high (the most CPU intensive to decode)
- Flac level 5
- WAV
Out of the lossy files, MPC was the best, slightly more fuller sound than MP3 @320. MP3 128 sounds mid-fi, and cannot stand the comparison with higher bitrates.
I surprised myself by getting a consistent 100% ABX score when testing between the various lossy and the lossless. The easiest way to explain it is that with the lossless, there is just more music, more sounds, better soundstage.
Between the lossless files, however, my ears could hear no difference. Any difference I thought I could hear did not translate to to the statistics.
the nicely recorded files (ripped secure EAC) used were:
Dead Can Dance - The ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove
U2 - Without of Without You (MFSL)
Eva Cassidy - Cheek to cheek (from live at Blues alley)
Conclusion: in my system, lossless is better than lossy, and to my ears there is no difference between the lossless formats. So I just rip to ape or FLAC, and don't fret about formats anymore. I'll make a mental note to do the test again as my diy projects progress....
And, as has been mentioned: backup, backup, backup.
This is how I do it:
Rip CDs (in my case using EAC)
Convert to flac and tag (I use Foobar)
Download cover art from 'net, and save in same folder.
When I reach over 4GB of files, then I burn/verify a DVD, put the disk on the spindle and back in the safe.
Then the music is copied to my music PC, and to an external back-up HDD which sits undisturbed in my office's nice and cool server room.
Then I transcode the music on the PC to MP3 for the iPod, and I don't bother backing up the MP3s.
- LAME MP3 @ 128kbps
- LAME MP3 @ 320kbps
- MPC Q7
- APE extra high (the most CPU intensive to decode)
- Flac level 5
- WAV
Out of the lossy files, MPC was the best, slightly more fuller sound than MP3 @320. MP3 128 sounds mid-fi, and cannot stand the comparison with higher bitrates.
I surprised myself by getting a consistent 100% ABX score when testing between the various lossy and the lossless. The easiest way to explain it is that with the lossless, there is just more music, more sounds, better soundstage.
Between the lossless files, however, my ears could hear no difference. Any difference I thought I could hear did not translate to to the statistics.
the nicely recorded files (ripped secure EAC) used were:
Dead Can Dance - The ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove
U2 - Without of Without You (MFSL)
Eva Cassidy - Cheek to cheek (from live at Blues alley)
Conclusion: in my system, lossless is better than lossy, and to my ears there is no difference between the lossless formats. So I just rip to ape or FLAC, and don't fret about formats anymore. I'll make a mental note to do the test again as my diy projects progress....
And, as has been mentioned: backup, backup, backup.
This is how I do it:
Rip CDs (in my case using EAC)
Convert to flac and tag (I use Foobar)
Download cover art from 'net, and save in same folder.
When I reach over 4GB of files, then I burn/verify a DVD, put the disk on the spindle and back in the safe.
Then the music is copied to my music PC, and to an external back-up HDD which sits undisturbed in my office's nice and cool server room.
Then I transcode the music on the PC to MP3 for the iPod, and I don't bother backing up the MP3s.
The lossless formats will sound the same using the ABX plugin for foobar (if this is actually what you meant by abxing in foobar?) . Aparently all lossless formats are converted back to wav into a temporary file before playback using this plugin - As far as I know, this is not what foobar does during normal playback.
See here for discussion of this.
See here for discussion of this.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the best format etc
"One" would be refering to the music on "ones" computer.
My computer(one of them) happens to be here in my rec room, connected to the receiver and high def. TV to watch movies on, listen to some music or what I am doing right now: wasting my time explaining this to you.
My HT receiver is high enough fidelity for it's purpose.
planet10 said:
"One" would be refering to the music on "ones" computer.
My computer(one of them) happens to be here in my rec room, connected to the receiver and high def. TV to watch movies on, listen to some music or what I am doing right now: wasting my time explaining this to you.
My HT receiver is high enough fidelity for it's purpose.
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