So I had a weird phenomena last night, some friend came over to listen to my new ATC SCM 12's.
My wife had downloaded Katie Gray's album from iTunes at the above mentioned resolution.
One of my friends brought over the CD he had bought of the same album.
We ripped it to iTunes with error correction to an AIFF file, then played both, there was a big difference, and not the one I had expected. The "lossy" download version sounded way better, any ideas?
Jeff
iMac->Airport Extreme WiFi->AppleTV->Benchmark DAC1->DNM/Eichmann Interconnects->McIntosh MC602->DNM/Eichmann Speaker Cables->ATC SCM12's
Posts: 31
Some artists just sound
Some artists just sound better with parts of their music missing? ;) It seems like its just preference given that if your system is set up the right way, the cd AIFF should include more of the recording than the lossy download (hence it being lossy). Maybe your computer is upsampling the lossy file before output and that makes a "better" sound than the aif. You could try outputting the aif at an upsampled rate. Or, there could be something affecting the aif chain from computer to dac, but not the aac one.
Or, if your computer is outputting at 16 or 24 bits and the aif is at 14.1 bits, then it's doing something to it.
Posts: 72
Mr. C, thanks for the reply.
Mr. C, thanks for the reply. Good things to check, although I am not sure how.
I am using iTunes to Apple TV for both songs, but different computers, both streaming wirelessly to the Apple TV, then both fed through a Benchmark DAC1.
Any ideas how to upsample in iTunes, or how to check the sample rate output of iTunes?
I would assume that the DAC resamples both files to the same rate. I believe it is 110 Khz.
I guess it is possible the setting in each computer are different.
Actually the AIFF file sounded like something was missing, it was flat, not dynamic, where the AAC file really sounded amazing, despite what it is supposed to sound like.
iMac->Airport Extreme WiFi->AppleTV->Benchmark DAC1->DNM/Eichmann Interconnects->McIntosh MC602->DNM/Eichmann Speaker Cables->ATC SCM12's
Posts: 3145
Hi Jeff - Please take this
Hi Jeff - Please take this in the spirit in which it's intended. I think you're being tricked temporarily by a false sense of fidelity. The 16/44.1 version is how it's supposed to sound. Listening to the 256k version over time will likely cause fatigue. All kind of techniques are used to make lossy files sound "better." Exaggerating the lows may make the highs seem higher and more crisp. I'm not suggesting this happened on the recording at hand, but I am suggesting this is a false sense of fidelity.
Chris Connaker
Founder
Computer Audiophile
Posts: 31
upsampling
iTunes upsamples (or not) based on either the audio midi setup on a mac, or the quicktime settings on a PC. Benchmark has a good optimization guide: http://extra.benchmarkmedia.com/wiki/index.php/Computer_Audio_Playback_-...
The apple tv will only output 16/44.1 (I think), so anything sent to it higher or lower than that will be changed by the Apple tv (which degrades the sound). The different computers may very well have different settings on them right now. I also agree with Chris: it may be that it sounds better in 256, but that might just be that it is a poor recording. For example, my Santana album sounds way better on a lower end system than a higher resolving system because of the recording quality (not that I'm knocking Santana).
Posts: 26
Hey machinehead. If you are
Hey machinehead. If you are using a Mac when you insert the CD into the drive and it pops up on the desktop, highlight it, click File up at the top then click Duplicate. This takes longer to copy but I find this gives an audibly better rip than Itunes with Error Correction enabled; and by better I mean louder and more clear, its obvious to me.
david is hear