Hard Drive/Computer Audio at the SHOW and CES

I have compared lossy and "lossless" compression to WAV files, and I can hear a difference (but I'm picky, no doubt). I ripped all of my CD's to external hard drives as WAV files and use them on my iPod when I travel, it was VERY time consuming (this was a year ago, haven't added the other 100 CD's I bought since). My biggest concern is the time it takes to rip all your music and make sure there's no errors, and hard drives do fail so what do you do? Have a back up set of drives ready in the event of failure?

I did wander into a room at T.H.E. show where there was earnest discussion going on with a media server company and some zealous enthusiasts ($7k digital music system), but I didn't stay as there was no music playing at the time and I didn't get around to going back to listen. There's also Kaliedascape (sp?) for those who like such things, seems like a good solution for the most part.

Hack: You are evidently among the few that can hear a difference between lossless files and WAV files. My aging ears and apparently those of many many others here are not nearly as acute as yours. I stand humbled in your presence. :)

As for vinyl, no comment.

Wdrazek, I am sure my ears are older than yours, but I still can hear lossless and WAV differences. I am always perplexed that others cannot.

Hack, I have known colleagues who still fail to backup their hard work on computers, so I am not shocked that people would fail to backup their music. I have always used Macs and have never experienced a hard-drive failure but will always backup everything.

...and hard drives do fail so what do you do? Have a back up set of drives ready in the event of failure?

While it is true that hard drives fail, there shouldn't be any issue if you place all your music on a large hard drive, purchase an identical drive, and run the pair in a RAID 1 configuration. So to answer your questions, yes you should have a backup.

Those who claim to hear differences between lossless and WAV, can you please describe the circumstances where you discovered the difference? Where did you source the music? How did you convert to lossless (what software)? What equipment did you play both back on?

The reason I ask is that I have heard other people claim to hear the difference between lossless and WAV and when asked to answer these questions, we discovered that there were other variables or factors that were responsible for the difference.