Makes me think that bitrate limiting might have been turned on, and set
to a low quality mp3. Seems I recall that LAME V9 (very low quality) was
the default on bitrate limiting when I installed SbS. So perhaps he was
accidentally listening to 32kbs files.
--
garym
macsband;515384 Wrote:
Something I've never read in the Squeezebox literature or in this forum
is that there must be a significant loss that takes place when
SqueexCenter Server converts Apple Lossless to FLAC when sending Apple
Lossless music files to Squeezebox.
You've never read it
My intention was not to improve sound quality because the literature
states that lossless = lossless. I did not anticipate a change in sound
quality. My intention was to get away from Apple's proprietary way of
doing business. However several people have listened to the system
before and
dsdreamer;515386 Wrote:
you've just pre-converted the files off-line instead of having them
converted on the fly.
I guess I didn't make myself clear. This was the whole point of my
post: pre-converting the files off-line instead of on the fly made a
HUGE difference in sound quality.
Mac
macsband;515528 Wrote:
My intention was not to improve sound quality because the literature
states that lossless = lossless. I did not anticipate a change in sound
quality. My intention was to get away from Apple's proprietary way of
doing business. However several people have listened to
If the Apple Lossless files were definitely streaming to the player as
Flac (and not MP3) then there *should* be no difference all.
It is a bit worrying that you have heard some. A perceived difference
in sound quality can sometimes come as a result of a volume change. It
does seem unlikely, but
There's been a spate of similar posts recently and in all cases I
believe something odd is going on with transcoding... can't get to the
bottom of it yet...
It looks like usual suspects can be ruled out (prefs, lame). Seems to
mostly involve some cross platform issue like mac formats on PC or PC
macsband;515384 Wrote:
A year ago, I ripped my CD collection in Apple Lossless format via
iTunes. With Squeezebox sending the music to a $2,000 amp+speaker
system via digital connection, I expected beautiful music. I was
disappointed. The sound was muffled and vague.
A couple days
iPhone;51 Wrote:
Important: When you stream Apple Lossless, what are your settings for
that in the settings section of SBS? Is the Apple Lossless converted to
MP3 or FLAC for playback? If they are being converted to MP3, that is
why they sound inferior.
The default setting is
The ALC files were ripped with iTunes using its default settings for
Apple Lossless. Over time, various CDs, (old and newly procured) were
ripped using the current version of iTunes (most recently, version 9).
The FLAC files converted from ALC were converted by MediaMonkey using
the default
macsband;515558 Wrote:
MP3 files, even those at high bit rates (192 and above) sound less full
than FLAC files, which is expected.
Very, very few people can testably, reliably hear the difference
between high bit rate MP3 and FLAC. If you aren't doing a double blind
test (with a thorough
iPhone;51 Wrote:
Important: When you stream Apple Lossless, what are your settings for
that in the settings section of SBS?
The documentation I've read says that Squeeze Box Server converts ALC
to FLAC for streaming to the Squeeze Box player. According to my
understanding, this is
andynormancx;515560 Wrote:
Very, very few people can testably, reliably hear the difference between
high bit rate MP3 and FLAC.
Come by and listen for yourself. When played sequentially, the
difference is obvious.
--
macsband
Phil Leigh;515557 Wrote:
The default setting is stream alac native... isn't it?
Is there any way to get hold of an alac test file?
Yes the default is Native, but that doesn't mean that is what it is set
to now. If it was changed to Disabled (for whatever reason) then the
ALAC could be
macsband;515570 Wrote:
Come by and listen for yourself. When played sequentially, the
difference is obvious.
Not unless there is either something badly wrong with your high bit
rate MP3s or you are one of those very few people who are blessed/cursed
with an unusually exceptional ability to
iPhone;515571 Wrote:
Yes the default is Native, but that doesn't mean that is what it is set
to now. If it was changed to Disabled (for whatever reason) then the
ALAC could be streaming as MP3 which was my point for asking to check
the actual settings. This setting would only affect the ALAC
Phil Leigh;515573 Wrote:
Understood.
Now you are going to think I'm bananas, but I've just converted a FLAC
to ALAC and played them side by side (Touch, SBS 7.5 nightly standard
convert.conf)
... and the ALAC is clearly quieter by about 2-3dB.
I have Replaygain OFF, but I notice that
iPhone;51 Wrote:
Important: When you stream Apple Lossless, what are your settings for
that in the settings section of SBS? Is the Apple Lossless converted to
MP3 or FLAC for playback? If they are being converted to MP3, that is
why they sound inferior.
Squeeze Box Server Settings
iPhone;515581 Wrote:
Hey Phil,
If you have time, run those same to files against the Diff Program and
see if the graphs line up or if there are slight differences. If you
have time.
Yes I will do that - I've saved the ALAC file away for later. I may be
imagining things... ADM will tell
macsband Wrote:
What difference would it make if the computer were particularly low
spec?
Your SqueezeServer in your computer transcodes an Apple file to a Flac.
With a flac file it does no transcoding and streams the file as is. The
transcoding could take a reasonable amount of the capacity
ModelCitizen;515612 Wrote:
The transcoding could take a reasonable amount of the capacity of a very
low spec machine, perhaps not leaving sufficient resources for other
tasks.MC
Dell Dimension 4600 with Intel Pentium 4 running at 2.8GHz
As this is the only task this computer performs,
A year ago, I ripped my CD collection in Apple Lossless format via
iTunes. With Squeezebox sending the music to a $2,000 amp+speaker
system via digital connection, I expected beautiful music. I was
disappointed. The sound was muffled and vague.
A couple days ago, I got tired of dealing with
If the change was as dramatic as you describe, then I can only imagine a
bad ALAC binary or misconfiguration of the file conversion pipe was to
blame.
I assume you didn't re-rip your CDs? If not, you've just pre-converted
the files off-line instead of having them converted on the fly. The
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