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View Full Version : Does Digital Source Not Start Out As Redbook CD



gary
03-08-2008, 11:47
I am completely new to this most interesting recent HiFi development of playing through digital source and the question I have is where does the source material come from to start with.
Surely if it is just ripped from CD you still need a pretty good player to record a good copy onto the computer to start with.
Ok if you have access to the original hi def digitally recorded master I can see where it would be better.

The old anology (crap in - crap out) springs to mind.

I remember playing cds taken from mp3 years ago and while they were ok when taken back to cd format they were never as good as original cds there was always information lost in the process.

If the source material is your own collection of cds ripped to computer then doing so with a cheap transport or worse your computers own cd rom surely introduces errors to the digital image recorded.

And I know it can read it three or four times and try to compensate for errors but that is assuming transport is not making same error every time.

I understand the theory that once you have well recorded digital image then playing it back on PC or Mac should be better as there are less moving parts to deal with ect.

HiFi manufacturers have spent vast amounts of money perfecting good CD transport systems to try and eliminate jitter and other digital playback errors and I find it hard to believe that a £15 cd rom or cheap cd player can achieve the same level of performance.

lurcher
03-08-2008, 12:22
And I know it can read it three or four times and try to compensate for errors but that is assuming transport is not making same error every time.

I think you are missing the fact that there are checksums so there is a way of knowing when the data is read correctly.

If you use something like Exact audio copy, each track has a checksum as well, so you can compair your extraction to those others have done.

Togil
03-08-2008, 12:23
I think Stereophile checked on bits accuracy once and found that no bits were lost.
However remember : "The right bit at the wrong time is the wrong bit "

gary
03-08-2008, 13:00
As I said I am completely new to this, that makes sense though, thanks guys

Beechwoods
03-08-2008, 14:37
I remember playing cds taken from mp3 years ago and while they were ok when taken back to cd format they were never as good as original cds there was always information lost in the process.

The important thing to remember regarding your observation about MP3s is that they are lossily compressed this means that audio information is discarded - and this lost information can never be retrieved, even when converted back to WAV or CD Audio. The lost information is at best the 'space' and 'presence' in the music, or at worst, it results in audible warbling and phasing...

There are lossless audio compression codecs that reduce the filesize while retaining all the original information in the file (great for archiving). FLAC is probably the best known of these. Converting to and from lossless formats will be bit perfect, some like FLAC, have checksum verification built in.

Increasing numbers of people are realising that computers can be a digital source better than many expensive CD transports. It seems that the main differentiator is in the DAC, and many computers now have digital outs so you can run them into an outboard DAC better than most onboard soundcards.