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In Reply to: RE: Squeezebox Evil Plan Fails--need help!, posted by mr9iron on September 19, 2014 at 22:18:53
I find lossless playback formats like FLAC decoded in real time to be less tolerable than even lossy playback formats like (at least 256 kbps) MP3.......
"I am a total nube on this digital stuff, and although I have been on the asylum for quite a long time, I think this is my first post in the Digital Forum.."
Welcome!!
"Here is my situation:
"I launched an evil plan to set up a network hard drive that will store all of my CDs and what ever digital music comes along. I set up a Logitech Squeezebox server and a Logitech network receiver to stream the music to my system. The receiver is running an optical out to my PSB Dlink DAC. This is the same DAC I use on my CD player.
"I figured I would copy my CDs to the drive using iTunes Apple lossless and I would have ultimate CD quality sound and loads of storage. I copied a CD that I am super familliar with and tested it.. Success?"
Apple Lossless decoded in real time will have a similar ill effect to FLAC decoded in real time..... I don't like any lossless format decoded in real time.
"No! It ends up sounding like complete crap, it sounds jittery, dull, slightly distorted, and lack of bass and dynamics..it sounds compressed, or something is wrong. I put the CD back in just to be sure... It is like night and day."
You're probably picking up the jitter components of lossless playback decoded in real time. This jitter seems to be correlated to the music signal. (One sonic artifact of lossless playback decoded in real time that I've experienced is the vibrato from solo singers or instruments being "smoothed out" somewhat.... Kind of spooky.)
"I am not sure what the culprit is... Or if it is everything, is anyone trying a similar set up? Maybe my ambition to have uncompressed, uncompromised CD quality sound is misguided? Bad plan?"
If you have CD playback that is very satisfying to you, I think you'll likely be disappointed with *any* server based playback. (My personal issue is that the sound quality is dependent on the whatever hardware and ripping/playback software used. The sonic character of the files changes when either copied or defragmented. Too many variables in PC-based audio playback.) If you must have a server, I'd recommend using only non-compressed WAV or (Apple) AIFF files.
Follow Ups:
Good grief. We were arguing about stuff like this 10 years ago, and every single blind test I tried on skeptics resulted in no appreciable difference between FLAC vs. WAV on their part, and that was with PCs built 10 years ago. We have advanced a bit since then yet you are still maintaining (based on purely unscientific "feelings") this mindset?Sure, if you personally feel you can hear some magical difference, go ahead and stick with uncompressed, but stop presenting your unscientific findings as the truth on the matter, when it is far from it.
The frustrating part is that some person unscientifically arrives at the conclusion that they can hear a difference (which is almost a foregone conclusion unless you are using blind tests...you tend to hear what you want to hear unless you don't know what you are listening to, as has been shown countless times), and then makes some ridiculous logical leap that therefore everything they think is correct and everything else everyone else says is just plain wrong. It's just laughable at this point.
Edits: 10/30/14 10/30/14 10/30/14
Todd's results don't agree with my own. Nevertheless, I think everyone needs to satisfy their own ears with their system.
What do you do when:
1. You hear a difference you weren't expecting
2. You try to confirm it via blind testing and it vanishes
3. You convince yourself it doesn't exist
4. You still hear a difference
Do you stick with what sounds better to you or not?
"Good grief. We were arguing about stuff like this 10 years ago, and every single blind test I tried on skeptics resulted in no appreciable difference between FLAC vs. WAV on their part, and that was with PCs built 10 years ago. We have advanced a bit since then yet you are still maintaining (based on purely unscientific "feelings") this mindset?"
There is a big difference. We know now that blind tests put up by bigots can only confirm their initial biases. We know now there never was any science in these tests. The fun part is that we know now how the "scientists" who created these tests react when people passed their "impossible" tests. We see through their posts that these "scientists" never were scientists. They are exposed as bigoted hot-headed nerds.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Let me guess...Flat Earth Society member?
Edits: 11/04/14
Obviously, you didn't read the complete thread and the related linked thread at the AVS forum.
BTW, the "flat earth" is a straw man. The ancients knew the earth was round and what the diameter was to surprising accuracy.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
My experience running a Squeezebox from an old XP machine was excellent. I've sold all kinds of players as a dealer and tried them on my system. Including YBA that is up your alley; older DAC chips,. no brick wall, no upsampling etc. The SB w/FLAC to my Musical Fidelity tube DAC in my Trivista player was the cleanest, least edgy, digital playback ever.....by a lot.
That PC died and I'll be setting up a new one. In the mean time I'm playing CD's again and both the glass optical and my coaxial are inferior by a lot. After over a year of streaming via the SB the difference is quite easy to hear. The image,dynamic range and most else in the sound is fine. As usual the easily heard problem area is HF.
ET
Todd, I'm going to have to "archive" this explanation some where,after I've read it several more times as it may be true...what they say about Old Dogs
that is.
I really hate having to defend why I don't think compressed lossless sounds
the same as uncompressed lossless & normally end up just becoming disinterested because I could'nt put my finger on what bothers me about the
compressed version. Given the fact that for whatever reason many people are
insensitive to the artifacts of "Jitter" this solves a lot of this "Mystery"
for myself.
(I'm thinking a small tattoo w/ the word "jitter" & skull & crossbones, might work)
Thanks,Steve
I find lossless playback formats like FLAC decoded in real time to be less tolerable than even lossy playback formats like (at least 256 kbps) MP3..
Curious. Maybe more processing power was needed. When I have two Touch players decoding FLAC with different content, the quad core i7-860 CPU usage stays below 1%.
I might understand the challenge when you leave that chore to a tiny embedded processor like an Atom.
I decoded two versions of an entire album, MP3 to WAV and FLAC to WAV. In both cases, the input had been cached by the file system in RAM and the output went to a RAM disk. I measured the total elapsed time taken by the conversions. It took about 60% longer to decode the MP3 than it did to decode the FLAC. The software involved was dBpoweramp running on an Intel core i5 (2nd gen) CPU. The FLAC had been encoded using FLAC level 8 by dBpoweramp. The MP3 had been encoded using LAME, high quality setting 192 VBR, also by dBpoweramp. (FLAC level 8 uses the longest LPC predictor and hence is the most CPU intensive in decode.)
It's certainly possible that a poorly implemented player doing real time conversion could botch things up and spend more time in operating system calls, buffer juggling and unneeded data copies than the actual decoding required for the format. Hence, YMMV.
It's certainly possible that a poorly implemented player doing real time conversion could botch things up...
I think that's one reason I like the idea of having a high performance server do the decoding and streaming - located distantly from the audio system using a dedicated player connected via TCP/IP.
The processing required to decode FLAC is less than the processing required to decode MP3, despite the extra data that has to be moved. You must have had a very poor implementation of FLAC for it to sound worse than MP3, or perhaps one of those recordings where the MP3 sounds better than the original CD. (There are some. There are others that sound even better when the stereo is turned completely off...)
"The processing required to decode FLAC is less than the processing required to decode MP3, despite the extra data that has to be moved."
While that may be true (never investigated it), the end result is what matters......
"You must have had a very poor implementation of FLAC for it to sound worse than MP3, or perhaps one of those recordings where the MP3 sounds better than the original CD."
I've tried quite a few implementations.... Any recommendations?
It's difficult enough getting the jitter under control with non-compressed data..... Why complicate matters?
How are you playing FLAC, WAV and MP3 files with your computer? What's the player software, driver, OS, type of connection to the DAC, type of DAC? How are the hardware components powered? Do you do any DSP in the computer such as upsampling?
I am tempted to try the iBasso DX90 portable player.... It does have FLAC capability, I guess I could find out if a high end player makes a difference in the quality of the FLAC playback.
"I am tempted to try the iBasso DX90 portable player.... It does have FLAC capability, I guess I could find out if a high end player makes a difference in the quality of the FLAC playback."
Yes Todd please try something, if MP3s sound better there is something wrong somewhere in your system.
Todd, you are a lot more patient on this than I am.Should it turn out that the quality of FLAC playback is actually dependent
on how the decoding is implemented in any particular player or type of playback equipment used,it still appears to have "a fly in the ointment".Heh,heh,heh... this is great to know,if you are'nt that heavily invested (in time,effort & "Moolah") yet in how you've "built" your playback system. If you do happen to be, it's probably easier to stick with the "Horses that Brung Ya"(WAV files)& "Gershwin it" (You know..."Call the whole thing off")
"lossless playback... to be less tolerable than even lossy playback". You find that, great for you. It has no connection to reality though.
"Apple Lossless decoded in real time will have a similar ill effect to FLAC decoded in real time."
Not so on SB as SB is optimized for FLAC, but I challenge those who make such claim to repeatedly and consistently determine which one is which between WAV and FLAC files on a properly set system.
"The sonic character of the files changes when either copied or de-fragmented".
You must be one of those who claim also that the same file sounds different when stored at different location. I say you need serious professional help, professional like people in white coats. Other than that, if you read around and understand how the data is stored on a CD you may see the light and understand why your statement is nonsense.
Don't get too worked up. This poster floats pie in the sky nonsense as fact and purports to have magic perceptual powers.
I find some of his preferences utterly bizarre, and his observations of no value.
Todd is often outspoken and has his own ideas. He'll tell you how great the old Magnavox 5 disc changer sounds with a Don Allen mod. I do agree with him on asynchronous upsampling. He's wrong on this one though as I wrote in my post. No need to attack him though on a personal level. Nothing good comes from that. You can attack the statement he made about MP3 v FLAC as I see it as silly myself.
ET
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