Apple Lossless and FLAC

[amey01]

Now that I've acquired a Squeezebox I'm becoming quite picky about the sound quality. I've always used Apple Lossless from a carryover from my iPod, but I've heard much discussion about EAC / FLAC and saying that it produces better quality hard drive rips.

Now, Apple Lossless is certainly easier and it is what all of my library is in, but I'm more than open to using EAC / FLAC if it is going to produce better sound quality - BUT - is this the case?

A little experiment shows the following checksums generated:

Original WAV: 112bff2281
ALAC: 0a497bdee8
FLAC: a8ffe9db55
ALAC --> WAV: 112bff2281
FLAC --> WAV: 112bff2281

Now, I've never been one to try to link sound quality to statistics like this (and I personally [at least on initial listen] can't tell any difference between FLAC and ALAC), but I am a little disappointed with the sound of the Squeezbox compared to original source material. If EAC can do a better job then i'm all for it, but at this stage I can't see any evidence that it does in fact rip more accurately. Please help!

 

[Burke]

There will be no difference in sound quality between Apple Lossless and FLAC, or any other lossless compression scheme. The reason is that when played back they all produce the exact same file or data stream, which should be the same as on the original CD.

What make one lossless system different from another is the compression percentage (how small the resulting file is) and how much CPU it takes to uncompress at playback time.

Since you already have everything in Apple Lossless I would just stay there.

 

[ralflar]

To really improve the sound from the Squeezebox one must mate it with an external DAC.

Like Burke said, all lossless compression techniques produce the original data, otherwise they would not be lossless by definition. However there may be other factors.

Some SB3 owners claim that uncompressing FLAC in the SB3 (vs doing it on the music server and transmitting the uncompressed bitstream) degrades sound quality. They blame this on the increased CPU load.

If you believe this then you want to stick with Apple Lossless which must be decoded on the music server anyway.

Conversely, FLAC can be decoded in the SB3 itself. Less data needs to be transmitted via the wireless network. If your wireless quality is really bad and requires lots of retransmissions the effect will be audible.

If you believe this try a cable between server and SB3. If that helps try FLAC.

EACs ability to create the Perfect Rip will not improve the quality of the ripped data if the original CD reads out perfectly. That is the case with many of my CDs. EAC can only improve the quality of bitstreams from CDs which do have read errors.

 

[kcl]

By definition, "Lossless" means that there is exact reproduction of the digital stream. As such there's no difference between ANY of the lossless formats. The only difference would be in the decoding systems. If you already have everything in Apple Lossless, you shouldn't notice any difference.

As was stated previously, the SB3 is a FLAC decoder. In fact, any lossless format supported by the SB3 is first converted to FLAC via software before being played. This is why poor wireless connections are prone to problems with non-FLAC encoding (and also why converting them to wired solves the problem).

 

[w_thongchai]

Just like what some of our experience member shared, I couldn't hear any differences between ALAC and FLAC in perfect environment as well. But the reason I said perfect environment is b/c SB3 plays each format differently. For FLAC, the compressed data is being feed directly into the box and decode via SB3 internal DSP to either audio/digital output.

On the other hand, for ALAC, SlimServer on PC/Mac has to decompress from ALAC to WAV (kcl might be right if it goes on to FLAC, u may check slimdevice website ) on the fly and feed full size data via medium (either Ethernet wire or WiFi) to SB3 [they use one small program to do this task beside SlimServer - you may check task manager and see this process going back n' forth in Windows Tasks Manager - Processes tab when playing take place]. For this, SB3 is just like pure transport of Wave data without any decoding done for WAV.

I from time to time heard some delay/juggling of sound from ALAC approach+WiFi, but zero-evident for FLAC because of the different packet size feeded. This could either be from network congestion or insufficient resouces on my SlimServer (even now I use 2.8GHz + 1GB Memory)

Anyhow, I used to be all FLAC library but later cross over to ALAC b/c I got Apple TV. So, now I majority use Apply TV to feed to my DAC + main listening stereo. SB3 now sits aside my LazyBoyz Chair + Headphone for quite night reading. :music:

Just my two cents.

 

[ScottG]

...
Anyhow, I used to be all FLAC library but later cross over to ALAC b/c I got Apple TV. So, now I majority use Apply TV to feed to my DAC + main listening stereo. SB3 now sits aside my LazyBoyz Chair + Headphone for quite night reading. :music:

Just my two cents.

I'm relaxed just reading your plans for a quite night reading... :music: :bowdown: