Re: [ARSCLIST] Lossy compression losing quality (was Re: [ARSCLIST] Pristine Audio and the Milllennials . . .)

[Scott Phillips <scottp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Howard,

	If you rip an CD-DA disc to a 16 bit 44.1 wav file, then there
is no loss. Under this condition all the ripping software is doing is
reorganizing the audio data for your computer into a defined file
format, it isn't modifying the actual audio. The sample and bit rate on
the CD and the wav file the ripping process makes are identical, so no
conversion or resampling is required. 

	If you pick a sample or bit rate wav file output to your hard
drive other than the CD's original 16/44.1 to have as your final result
on your computer, then there is quite likely a loss. In my Windows media
player software, if you select wav as the output of the ripping process,
the output file from ripping will stay at 16/44.1 and so be lossless. 

	Not all ripping software is restrained when ripping to wav
files. Sound Forge gives a vast selection of wav sample and bit rates to
create from the CD original... and they might well not be lossless. Any
mp3 file generated by ripping a CD will be have loss in quality, but
when done at a high sample rate you can get a reasonable amount of file
size compression that still sounds very good. For me that is 320k, for
some 256k. Anything under 192k sample rate mp3 drives me crazy, but that
is just me. In all cases for mp3, there IS a loss... data was thrown
away and you can't get that back. Even if you were to use media player
to take an mp3 and create a CD-DA disk at 16/44.1, the lost data is
still lost, never to be recovered.

	As a generalization (Yes folks, I understand upsampling, lets
stay out of the weeds) if you rip a CD-DA to anything with a sample and
bit rate different than the original will produce a loss in fidelity.
You pick your poison for the use you want to put the audio to. I have
2Tb of hard disk space, so except for portable players I keep it as a
wav file. With the wave file stored away, I keep mp3 directories for the
portable players in my house. I take the wav files after ripping and
make 320k mp3 files for the players, and so I keep both copies. The
lossless wav files are still there if I need them, and normally I listen
to the wav files instead. 

	It is true that because of error correction and masking that
some errors can happen during the initial ripping process. With a good
CD, drive, and ripping program any errors should be very small. There is
a major difference though between a tiny occasional data error and a
change that deliberately throws out data to create a smaller file the
way mp3 does.

Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
[mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Howard Friedman
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 3:10 PM
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Lossy compression losing quality (was Re:
[ARSCLIST] Pristine Audio and the Milllennials . . .)

Richard,

As I remember, Windows Media Player has certain options regarding ripped
formats, and I think it includes WAV.  So if I rip audio CD tracks to
WAv files, there's no loss of quality?  What about WAV to MP3?

Howard