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In Reply to: RE: Critical listening comparison of iTunes lossless or uncompressed music files played via Vista and OSX posted by DSG on April 02, 2009 at 09:31:34
This doesn't really answer your question (has anyone compared Mac vs. PC playback of lossless files), but here's some experience I've had with lossless audio formats, audio software, and so forth:
I conducted some blind tests my wife about one year ago. In my experience she has very sensitive ears, and she is generally ambivalent about audio formats and hardware (although she definitely appreciates how good our computer audio setup sounds). The system: Vista 64, 8GB, Foobar2000 (no upsampling or DSPs), Benchmark DAC1 USB, Jeff Rowland Model 201 monoblock amps, Dynaudio Confidence C1 speakers, Cardas Golden Reference power cables, interconnects, speaker cables, PS Audio Duet power conditioner.
The results? She could not hear ANY difference between FLAC and AIFF. I also used this opportunity to check Foobar 0.9.x vs. Foobar 0.8.3...also no difference (I had tested her before on Foobar 0.9.x vs 0.8.3 and she didn't detect a difference at that time either).
She DID notice a difference with USB cables (no name generic vs. a Cryo Parts cable I had recently acquired), which surprised me (I've had posted prior to this test that it seemed like a digital cable should not make a difference in playback quality...my conclusion after the test is that USB might be a particularly sensitive way of transmitting information, particularly given all the interference going on in a computer-based system, so perhaps a cable upgrade is warranted). Her feedback was that cable B (the Cryo Parts cable, since replaced by a Polestar cable from the same company) sounded clearer, whereas cable A (generic) seemed very slightly "fuzzy" in the highs.
In a previous test (about 6 months earlier) I found that she could tell the difference between MP3 (vbr) and FLAC, but not between DirectSound (in Vista64) and KernalStreaming (which bypasses DirectSound, like ASIO). Her feedback there was pretty simple: file A (FLAC) sounded "right", whereas file B sounded like some of the data was missing (paraphrasing a bit).
My conclusion was that, assuming you are using a system that can handle simple decompression and audio playback (which, apparently, is more than one can expect from many Mac laptops and minis, based on what others have posted here about hearing an improvement with AIFF vs. lossless compressed on those systems), there will be no audible difference between the two (which makes logical sense, at least, because the data being sent to the DAC is identical when using uncompressed vs. lossless compression...assuming the system can keep up with the relatively trivial task of decompression and keep the playback buffers full).
Follow Ups:
And by the way. I trust my wife's ears too.
My experience is just the opposite. I hear a difference between FLAC and WAV but cannot hear a difference from USB cables. Just goes to show this hobby is more of an art than a science.
Differences between AIFF and FLAC and differences between USB cables are caused by system interactions. They are not inherent in the formats or cables. Thus it is not surprising that people with different equipment reach different conclusions.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Yes, I believe that adds to the misunderstandings.
Well my personal experience was a bit different...I was convinced that I could not hear a difference between the USB cables when I was testing them myself. Of course, I had read quite a bit (and written some) that there shouldn't be any difference between USB cables, so I was a bit biased. Blind tests provided an interesting new data point though...my wife completely surprised me with the differences she claimed she was hearing.
I had her try some blind tests on me (I told her to pick a random cable and plug it in between the DAC and computer, let me listen, then try the other one) and I heard it a bit differently all of a sudden...I'm still not 100% sure that one was truly better than the other, but they did sound very slightly different.
Hence my general rule about subjective audio tests: people are going to hear what they want to hear if they know what they are listening to. Which leads to my general annoyance with proclamations made here (and elsewhere) that go something like this: "I just spent X thousand dollars (or spent X hours getting things all set up like that "expert" told me to, etc.) and now everything sounds much better!" Such proclamations are, in my experience, worthless. But, often, we don't have anything else to go on (and I am no exception to this...I don't have the time or energy to blind-test every aspect of my system), so we use our subjective tests as a basis for our opinions. Oh well.
And I'm not sure the difference I hear between FLAC & WAV isn't placebo. At least I am able to admit that, unlike a lot of people in here. One thing I am ABSOLUTELY sure of is the difference I hear between DS and ASIO.
I concur on ASIO vs. DirectSound...when using XP. I could hear a very clear difference between the two, and used ASIO (and KernaleStreaming) with XP exclusively (by the way, I could detect no difference between ASIO and KernalStreaming, which isn't surprising because all these protocols are doing is a direct transfer of the data to the audio driver, rather than the Windows audio library, aka DirectSound).
However, once I switched to Vista I could no longer tell the difference between DirectSound and KernalStreaming/ASIO/WASAPI (and a blind test with my wife didn't reveal any differences), so I usually listen to DirectSound (unless I'm in the "all these people must be hearing something...I'll try WASAPI today!" mood).
Using Foobar, I tried DS and WASAPI.
I hear a difference.
I find it very hard to explain what this difference is and even worse, which one is “better”.
It is a difference I could hear listening to the equipment and doing a direct AB.
For me, the difference is to small to survive an ABX and to irrelevant when listening to music.
But I love the "all these people must be hearing something...I'll try WASAPI today!" mood.
The Well Tempered Computer
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