WAVE 32 Bit IEEE Float or FLAC

[CryptBala]

Hi Guys,

I have a doubt. I am right now ripping "ORU NAAL ORU KANNAVU" Audio cd i am using dBpoweramp I am least bothered about FILE SIZE after all we are audiophiles.

I have two choices to make WAVE 32 Bit IEEE Float or FLAC

When i rip with the default settings the size of the wav losless and flac are same but refer to the screen shot i have the option to choose 32bit option in WAV the file size in flac is 82MB and the 32 bit version is 700MB which is a lot of difference when i play both the files i am able to find a better quality in 32bit rip but my question is is it worth to burn that much of space or do you think the 32 bit is a better choice for future when i have more sophisticated amp like pathos ?[IMG2][/IMG2]

 

[dips0502]

What is the bit depth of the audio cd itself ? 16 bit ?

 

[CryptBala]

HOw to find that ?

 

[matbhuvi]

What is the bit depth of the audio cd itself ? 16 bit ?

No SACDs in Tamil yet :sad: So, all the CDs are 16 bit .

 

[CryptBala]

A.R. Rahman, Warriors Of Heaven And Earth was released in SACD. ofcourse not in tamil but by a tamil music director.. !!!

 

[dips0502]

So if the original CD is at 16 bit, does ripping them to 32 bit actually make a big difference?

Sent from my MB865 using Tapatalk 2

 

[technobhatt]

Similarly I have a question now...

Does upsampling a lower sampling rate CD increase or decrease the sound quality ?
i.e. will the sound quality be increased if we upgrade the sampling rate of a 16 bit Audio CD to 24 or 32 bit by some software...or sound quality may deter in this case?

 

[Staxxx]

All my music is in WAV64.....Mark Porzilli who designed the system I use prefers it due to something about controlling volume. It's on his website for The Memory Player. I don't understand much of it...and perhaps I don't believe most of it too....but it sounds better than any CD player that I have heard. My Esoteric K-03 is currently getting NO use.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Ripping to 32-bit would only make any sense at all if the source was 32-bit, and it isn't, it is 16-bit CD.

FLAC gives you the advantage of tagging. I wish I'd know that years ago

 

[jls001]

I second Thad's opinion. I understand your source is CD which 16 bit. If you rip and save it at 32 bit depth, you are going to have lots of null bits that increases the size of ripped file. It will not improve the sound quality in any way.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Does upsampling a lower sampling rate CD increase or decrease the sound quality ?

My guess: It remains the same, and I think jls001's post explains why: all you are doing is adding less significant bits to each sample, and they should all be 0.

another random thought: this just might be an advantage if you wanted to do digital volume control, which most of us, most of the time, don't.

yet another random thought: people like the idea (whether it works this way in reality or not) of 'bit-perfect' playback, ie, getting the data that is on your CD to the sound card or DAC unaltered. Whether it is of any audible consequence or not, actually changing the bit depth offends that principle.

probably the most relevant thought so far, from all these posts: it's just a waste of space

 

[CryptBala]

Guys i also have one more doubt. wav and flac seems to take the same size. but the advantage of wav is that i can literally use it in any player but thats not the case with FLAC even the high end player like marantz cd6004 doesn't support FLAC... so now that i understand ripping it in 32 bit is mere waste.. my question is how far FLAC significantly offers better quality than wav or is it the vice versa ? Also one of my friend who works in FM station as music manager told me that they are only using WAV

 

[jls001]

Flac is lossless compressed .wav. Theoretically there is supposed to be no degradation in quality when compressing a wav file into flac. It's another matter that some people claim to be able to hear a quality degradation in flac files, which they typically blame on thE need for processing (decompressing it) versus just playing a .wav file.

Flac is exactly analogous to using a program like Winzip or Winrar or 7Zip - one can unzip and get the complete, original information.

Also, if your flac and the original .wav file are of same size, there seems to be something wrong in the compression process. Flac SHOULD be much smaller.

 

[matbhuvi]

Flac SHOULD be much smaller.

Unless he uses uncompressed flac

 

[CryptBala]

So I am going to rip my 500 Audio cd's please provide me the best possible audio quality option without any restriction... i guess your vote goes to flac.. also suggest me the best program to do it.. right now i am using dBpoweramp .

 

[Staxxx]

I am certain the addition of null bits are also nothing to do with sound quality, but to do with the degradation of sound quality when reducing volume digitally. I am not a technical person, but I believe the idea is that if you reduce the volume digitally using the null bits it is better than throwing away some of the information given only 16 bits.....or so some designer/engineers seem to feel.

Here is a link for your interest: http://www.thememoryplayer.net/#!64-bit

Much of the rest of this site's write up is not great...but the machine is one of the best I have heard so I suppose the proof is in the pudding.

 

[CryptBala]

That's a Incredible website love it... informative.. Thanks a Ton !!!

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Staxxx's single paragraph is far superior to waiting for a flash site to load! And I think it is spot on too. I'm an old grump today, and can't be bothered to check out what they are claiming --- but if he has heard what they sell. and it sounds good, then fair enough .

I don't know what file formats I was even aware of when I first ripped a few CDs and digitised some LPs. I didn't know about tagging then, and how useful it might have been to use it. Mind you, I still organise my digital music according to directory structure and file names, and generally avoid media players that want to index stuff in databases rather than giving me a simple file-manager view --- so WAV would still work for that. My digital media collection is still small, though: so far I have never bothered to rip most of my CDs. Anyone intending to really go media player should plan such things better than I did

 

[sukhjit_bhullar]

So I am going to rip my 500 Audio cd's please provide me the best possible audio quality option without any restriction... i guess your vote goes to flac.. also suggest me the best program to do it.. right now i am using dBpoweramp .

I use EAC to rip my CDs and to convert it into flac i use flac plugin . Here is an guide how to configure it.
Cheers

 

[matbhuvi]

I recommend dbPoweramp over EAC. dbPoweramp is based on EAC (secure rip). But, it is much faster using the online database to verify the accuracy of the rips.