highdudgeon;161137 Wrote: > Has anyone seriously and honestly compared EAC rips to good 'ole iTunes > and Apple Lossless? The way to do this would be to have a friend over, > I think, and play the tracks without telling him/her which is which. > That would just help you do a reality check. > > I'm using iTunes exclusively -- in part out of convenience -- but my > sound is wonderful and I don't find it lacking. Yes. I thought so too until > recently. I have happily ripped 16000 tracks in 320 kbps MP3 and now I accidentally discovered that a few quiet piano tracks have artefacts that are easily audible, such as burbling hiss background, once I am clued in. Damn!!
So I set up a playlist consisting of Glenn Gould Bach Goldberg recording from 1981, just track 1, encoded either as 320 kbps mp3, or FLAC. The encoding is not obvious from the track name. I simply give the remote to someone, show them how to flip between the two, and ask them to play them until they are happy that one sounds better. Meanwhile, I live the room. So far 3/3 can 100% detect the difference, mainly due to the hiss, but we also suspect that piano sound is slightly affected in the harmonics. But I can't really live with this extra hiss on certain recordings, so I'm faced with selective re-ripping, maybe of all the classical. -- SteveC ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SteveC's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=665 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=30325 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
