WAV or Apple Lossless Encoder?

Peter is not the only one that has heard this anomaly by a long shot. I have received a number of reports of the same thing. The problem happens even when the data is streamed with WiFi to AirPort Express or AppleTV.

Steve - I may be embarrassing myself here as I still don't know if I'm calling out the same file as Peter, but I did hear a clear difference and I am not using either Airport Express or Apple TV. I am, however using Wifi, but with a Modwright Transporter. As far as I know, Peter was probably using your products (a PaceCar and an Empirical modded Northstar DAC via USB), but he also could have used his Havana DAC...not sure. Neither of us is using an Apple device for conversion. Both of us hear a difference, though I don't know yet whether we agree on what that difference is. There is no doubt at all that the files he provided me sound different and that one sounds superior to the WAV rip I did in iTunes using error correction (which I'd always assumed would be the best means of ripping a file).

Great, I ripped all my cds into itunes with apple's lossless thinking I was getting everything I needed and saving space. Now I have to delete and reload!!

Steve - I do not believe a 24-bit file and a 16-bit file would compare exactly. The extra 8 bits per sample have to be stored somewhere. So I am not sure what you mean by this.

Can someone do a bit compare on the Apple lossless files and see how different they are? As a first pass, do they contain the same number of bytes? (Although you have to be aware of the how the offset is set in EAC and how silence between tracks is handled.)

If there is a difference, then it could be either in the iTunes ripping process or in the wav to Apple lossless conversion. In fact, if a Apple lossless file ripped by iTunes is converted to wav and becomes identical to an EAC wav file, I would conjecture that the iTunes rip was as good as the EAC rip. If you take the iTunes ripped file, oonvert it to wav with iTunes and then convert it back to Apple lossless does it sound different than the original file? Does it bit compare?

Not trying to be difficult. I just want to figure out if the data in these files are different and if so where the difference comes from.

First answer - Marco, the file that you preferred was indeed the one prepared in EAC by ripping to wave, and then transported over to itunes and converted to Apple Lossless (ALAC). I detect a "significant" difference as well - maybe 10-20% improvement in sound quality, and I consider that to be a lot. What about your findings surprised me even more was that you found the itunes ripped WAV file of the same song similar to the (inferior) itunes ripped ALAC file, compared to the EAC ripped (and itunes converted) ALAC file. This suggests that itunes rips with both the WAV and the ALAC format are inferior. The third file I gave you would have lost its Tag information, but I believe was still imported to itunes. It is an EAC ripped WAV file. If you can find it (using "modification date" field) and rename it, you can directly compare your itunes ripped WAV file to the EAC ripped WAV file, and confirm that itunes seems to be producing an inferior rip on the WAV format, as your initial results already suggest.

Marco - I think Steve was saying that this problem is noted EVEN with these apple devices, not ONLY with them.

DTC - I spoke with Steve about this, and he mentioned that an ALAC file contains more than just the music bits, it also contains information on how the music bits should be played. Steve had suggested to me that the problem may reside there.

ANY ONE ELSE UP TO MAKE THE COMPARISON? IT REALLY IS EASY TO DO - THOUGH MOST OF US WOULD LIKELY RATHER NOT KNOW SUCH BAD NEWS!

Peter - You'll have to come by and listen on my system. I confess that once I detected a significant difference in the single file I spent more time and attention comparing that file to the other two. Though I felt the other two sounded much more similar to each other I don't think I spent nearly as much time comparing those two to each other. The difference was far more obvious in that one file.

Dtc - how do you compare bits in the files? What software (Mac) would one use to do that?