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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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In Reply to: Re: Q:Apple lossless vs AIFF posted by Ted Smith on March 18, 2007 at 17:12:09:
I just spent the weekend making backups of my CD’s to my Mac G5. I wanted to test and compare for myself if it is worth using the larger file formats. In short, it is worth doing and AIFF and Apple Lossless (ALE) are good enough. The song I picked was a classic for finding problems in a sound system. Habanera from Charlotte Church from the Prelude Album. Modern Opera with Charlotte Churches voice is a real challenge. Very wide range of low bass drums and her voice traveling through a very broad range with a classical guitar following along.I played the Original CD on my Denon 2910 connected to my Rotel/B&W systems with a real 900W behind it and the sound is fantastic as usual. I played from the G5 AIFF and ALE back to back and could hear no difference between the formats but they both did not compare to the CD being played directly. I toggled back and forth playing the tracks at the same time but switching input at the Rotel Pre-Amp. Coming from my Mac G5 to the Preamp using both formats gave me flat highs, soft bass and poor transitions.
Burning the CD from the AIFF and the ALE formats fixed most of the problems and the sound is excellent but still not as good as the original CD. It looks like the pre-amp in my Mac G5 is just not up to par. What surprised me is that the Burned CD with AIFF, Apple Lossless and MP3 128k sounded better than direct connect to the G5. The quality of AIFF and ALE is good but not as good as the original CD when played back to back. The MP3 did a good show since I used Lame to rip it from the other files but lost a great deal of bass and was fuzzy with the voice at higher octaves. MP3 is still no match for AIFF and Apple Lossless.
For critical listening, MP3 is out of the question while AIFF and ALE are good enough when compared to a traditional CD with a Stereo. I understand that in theory the transfer from CD to hard drive should not color the sound. My guess is that sound is colored when iTunes burns the data to CD. That means that AIFF would be the best format if you want to burn from another software in the future since Apple Lossless is proprietary. I am not a technophobe and have both PC’s and Macs at home and use them both daily. I would recommend keep in the largest format since external Hard disk drives are cheaper everyday. It is worth having a backup of your CD collection in the event of trouble in the future.
Test Environment:
I have a Medium end system with Rotel 400W AMP (RB1080) and Pre-amp (RC1070) with B&W 703 Speakers and B&W 605 Sub system 500W. Denon DVD 2910 for my CD player. Entry level Audiophile stuff.
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Follow Ups
- Re: Q:Apple lossless vs AIFF - Yukon Dave 13:14:31 03/19/07 (1)
- Re: Q:Apple lossless vs AIFF - Dawnrazor 18:18:04 03/19/07 (0)
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