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In Reply to: FLAC Degrades sound quality permanently posted by Mercman on January 5, 2012 at 16:11:41:
There's been a phenomena that's been bothering me in my system for several years now. Almost all of my music sounds good, but some of the hotter masters seem to have unnecessary and unnerving distortion. I hear it on kick hits, on deep snare hits, on the bass guitar, etc. We're talking really hot masters, like John Mayer and Coldplay. The single worst-offending song is Clarity on John Mayer's 2003 album Heavier Things (starting at 1:21).
I've tried two different pairs of good headphones, two different headphone amps, two different integrated amps, three sets of speakers. I've tried three different media players, I've tried using Windows sound vs ASIO4ALL vs WASAPI. I've tried three different DACs. But I can't seem to get the sound to go away. I thought it was just in the music, which was irritating, until I listened to the actual disc on a good system. The distortion was gone. And believe me, I was looking for it.
What I find interesting is that I told my brother (a non-audiophile) about the phenomenon and played him Clarity, and his nose wrinkled in disgust. But then I played it for mastering engineer Bob Katz on my system, and he couldn't hear it. But then again, he was driven batty by some sort of "distortion" or "digititus" on a certain piece of very high-end outboard DSP he was using, and I found this distortion to be completely inaudible. I guess different people zero in on different things when they listen.
The last paragraph aside, I really can't think of many pieces of the signal chain that remained constant when I was switching out gear to isolate what was causing the distortion, other than the fact that a computer ripped it, it was being played from a computer, and that it was converted to FLAC. I have believed the conversion to FLAC to be the culprit, although I'd like to do some more testing to be sure.
I suppose the next step would be to test on my new system that has new speakers and a new DAC. Assuming I hear it, I'll play the CD in a cheap CD player connected to the system. Assuming I don't hear it then, I'll play the CD on my computer. Assuming I don't hear it, I'll play the original WAV file (I keep my entire library in uncompressed WAV as well as FLAC level-8). Assuming I don't hear it, I'll have my answer.
Has anyone else experienced this type of distortion? Does anyone else have the song Clarity by John Mayer to compare? Is this exactly what Absolute Sound is talking about or totally separate? (I'm not a subscriber, unfortunately.)
On the other hand, you have five fingers.
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Follow Ups
- Perhaps I've heard this - Skye 09:39:15 01/10/12 (6)
- RE: Perhaps I've heard this - Tony Lauck 13:21:57 01/10/12 (5)
- RE: Perhaps I've heard this - Skye 13:32:58 01/10/12 (4)
- Components interact. Ears are a component. - Tony Lauck 14:42:49 01/10/12 (3)
- RE: Components interact. Ears are a component. - Ryelands 15:44:45 01/10/12 (1)
- RE: Components interact. Ears are a component. - Tony Lauck 11:22:36 01/11/12 (0)
- RE: Components interact. Ears are a component. - Skye 15:29:47 01/10/12 (0)
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