High resolution downloads are changing the way we enjoy music, opening up possibilities undreamed of back in digital’s early days…
It’s hard to understate the impact that Compact Disc made, upon its introduction back in 1982. At the time, the music world was very different, with vinyl regarded as the only serious way to play music. Found everywhere from broadcast studios to the local youth club, LPs were the world’s favourite music format. Still, at over thirty years old, black plastic was knocking on and sales were on the wane, down 40% from its 1975 high watermark. The scene was set for the brave new world of digital audio…
What music lovers needed now was a small, convenient, high quality music carrier, and CD was it. Hailed as a miracle of modernity, it fused two technologies – a digital audio coding system developed by Sony, and a laser optical disc storage system developed by Philips.
Legend has it that Sony had wanted the new ‘Digital Audio Disc’ to be 12 inches wide, just like an LP, as they were worried that album artwork wouldn’t look good on Philips’ proposed 5″ disc. Philips had wanted cardboard sleeves, just like LPs, but Sony insisted on a plastic ‘jewel case’ to give the product a more tangible feel. So when CD finally emerged, it was full of compromises limited by the technology and what the big companies thought the public wanted.
SOUND AFFECTS
Given that the average early eighties turntable could scarcely spin at the right speed, the new digital disc was a revelation. Sonically CD was was streets ahead of most people’s vinyl experience – and had the added benefit of being immune from surface noise, static crackle and disc wear too. There were some golden eared hi-fi hacks around who didn’t like its sound, describing it as a little stark and two dimensional. But by and large, CD was a quantum leap forward…
Despite Philips’ famous description of it as giving “pure, perfect sound forever”, people soon started noticing problems however. Compared to analogue, early 16-bit digital could sound spiky and hard, giving cymbals and female vocals a coldness that just didn’t seem right. Lab measurements showed that whilst CD’s 16-bit digital system gave very low distortion on the loudest parts of the music, it distorted heavily on the quieter bits – the exact opposite to how analogue LP behaved. Worse still, the digital system was prone to distorting most in the upper midband and treble, just where the ear is most sensitive…
This was down to the way digital audio encodes the analogue musical waveform, and it applies to every format that uses the Pulse Code Modulation digital system, such as CD, MP3, AAC and FLAC. With PCM, the two basic factors that determine the sound quality are bit depth (which determines the quality with which the analogue signal is digitised), and the sampling frequency (which is the number of times per second that the analogue signal is digitised). CD is a 16-bit, 44.1kHz system, giving a frequency response of 5-22,000Hz and 96dB dynamic range.
A good analogy is radio sound quality. The sound of AM radio can be likened to digital systems running low sampling frequencies (giving a rolled off treble) and low bit depths (making for a coarse and flat sound lacking in detail and subtlety). FM radio, with its more extended treble and smoother, more sophisticated sound can be compared to a high resolution digital system. As the bit depth increases, you get a deeper and more delicate sound, and as the sampling rate rises, you get a wider frequency range.
The graph above shows the difference in the way a real sine wave looks on an oscilloscope, and how a low resolution digital approximation of it appears – you can see how the latter is simply unable to trace the analogue waveform smoothly. So the more bits you use, the more natural the music sounds, and the faster the samples, the wider the frequency range. CD’s 16/44.1 digital system was state of the art in 1982, but it didn’t take long for it to get past its sell-by date.
Malcolm Hawksford, Professor of Psychoacoustics at Essex University, reckons that, “CD’s digital specification was almost good enough for audiophile music reproduction. It was near the limit, but in my view probably a bit marginal. Ideally, at least 20-bit resolution at 60 kHz sampling frequency would have been better”.
BIT BETTER
Compact Disc became a technological time trap for audiophiles. Its almost-good-enough digital specification put the development of digital in suspended animation, locking us in to an outdated nineteen eighties way of digitising music. No surprise then that in recent years, many hi-fi purists have been turning back to vinyl which – being analogue – offers almost infinite levels of resolution. “Analogue audio systems are limited not by digital bits, but atoms,” argues Hi-Fi World magazine’s Paul Rigby. “Where LP record playback fails is in the mechanical tolerances of the playback equipment, such as bearing friction and so on, rather than the resolution of the format itself. With digital though, it can only be so good and no better.
Happily, DVD-Audio and Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) arrived at the end of the nineties to save the day, offering far superior sound to CD. With the former offering true 24bit resolution, it came over as punchy and powerful with tremendous detail, plus a wonderfully smooth low distortion sound right across the audio band.
“I have seen some really good recordings over the last decade where 16-bit was just not enough to hold all the information,” says B&W digital research engineer Albert Yong., “and given the opportunity to then listen to those recordings in 24-bits, they just blew the 16bit version out of the water”.
Although 24-bit DVD-A sounded superb, it never got off the ground commercially. It was expensive, you needed a special type of DVD player and most importantly of all, retailers simply didn’t want to sell it. With DVD video discs making the stores a mint (at the time), there was no reason to devote shelf space to less commercial audiophile music releases. DVD-Audio’s life was over just a couple of years after its inception, and no one missed it except a select bunch of audiophiles who’d heard 24-bit digital and couldn’t go back. But, whilst the disc went the way of the Dodo, its coding system would live on…
Just as DVD-A’s sun was setting, so digital file downloads began making great inroads into the music marketplace. The MP3 format was no great shakes sonically but it was only the first wave; it might have sounded bad, but it ushered in a new way of obtaining music that no longer had any limits. Whereas CD was frozen in time and space, committed to its dated 16-bit, 44.1kHz flavour, internet distributed music could arrive in a way that suits the artist, label and listener.
Enter Free Lossless Audio Codec in 2001 – which was an altogether more intelligent way of encoding music. Rather than the compressed system that MP3 used which reduces file sizes by about 80% by cutting out most of the music you can’t hear (and some that you can), FLAC used a clever ‘lossless’ packing system that doesn’t remove any music at all, and saves about 30% to 50% of space. “It’s a problem-free system,” says Professor Hawksford, “if the arithmetic is performed correctly and the compressed files are not corrupted then there are no errors in the reconstructed output.”
Whilst we’ve seen a number of lossless systems, from Apple Lossless (ALAC) to Windows Media Audio Lossless (WMA Lossless), the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) has emerged triumphant for music-loving hi-fi buffs. The spiritual successor to MP3, it’s an open-source system that’s not tied to any one manufacturer, which explains it success. Better still, it comes in more than one resolution. Whilst you can encode your CDs to FLAC keeping their 16-bit, 44.1kHz resolution, FLAC can also come in 24-bit form too. “The system is so flexible that it can take anything from 4 to 32 bits and sample rates up to 655350Hz in 1 Hz steps – it can certainly replace 24/96 DVD-Audio”, says Albert Yong.
BETTER THAN CD
Compared to the mastertape, CD gives a decent but unsophisticated facsimile. Its 16/44.1 specification boasts a dynamic range of around 96dB, which is ample for most music work. The trouble is though, the quieter the signal is, the more the system distorts using the PCM digital system, which effectively sucks out the atmosphere – all the subtle ambient details – of a piece of music. In a direct A-B comparison with the mastertape, “16-bit sounds slightly vague,” says Paul Rigby, “like a primitive digital camera it simply loses the subtlety and fine detail; it’s less easy to live with than hi res digital”.
Theoretically, 24-bit digital has a resolution of 144dB, which is more than enough (130dB is the threshold of pain for the human ear), but the problem is, as Professor Hawksford notes, of actually finding studios capable of recording at anywhere near this resolution. “Not many recordings fully exploit the capabilities of CD, let alone higher resolution formats”, he notes…
Bowers &Wilkins’ Albert Yong agrees that we’re a good way away from achieving true 24-bit masters, but still we can do much better than old fashioned 16-bit, and people can easily hear the difference.
“We have seen some extremely good recordings lately, when the entire recording chain is done right. We can potentially get up to around 20 to 22 bits at the moment, and they do sound a lot better. The difference is in the detail. Sounds generally are more open, and there is an extra level to airiness to the music. Voice and instruments sounds closer to live, and more dynamic as well”.
THE MECHANICS
Like any other music file, you can either ‘rip’ FLAC copies of your existing CDs, or download load them from music sites such as Society of Sound. We’ve structured our site to make downloading FLAC a breeze. After you’ve logged into the download manager it’s simply a case of choosing an album and downloading the format you want. You can choose which folder the music goes to using the Settings within the app and then simply pull into your player.
If you’re looking to build up a FLAC library of your existing CD collection, then a good starting point for ripping is Exact Audio Copy or dBpowerAMP. These are freely downloadable applications for Windows, commonly thought to be the best sounding and most bug-free. Mac Users can try Max or MacFlac.
Once you’ve downloaded your FLAC music, or ripped it from CD using the aforementioned applications, you’ll need to play it. Currently, neither Microsoft’s Windows Media Player or Apple’s iTunes support FLAC without modifications.
If you wish to import FLAC files to iTunes on MacOS we recommend you try a program known as Max for MacOS X 10, which can convert and rip PCM files and import them to your iTunes library. For more information please see here.
Both Windows Media Player and iTunes have their own equivalents (WMA Lossless and Apple Lossless respectively) but these are tied to the operating system providers, whereas FLAC is of course a free, open source system like MP3. So for Windows-based systems, we recommend you download Winamp which is a highly flexible media player that also supports burning 16-bit formats to CD. There are other media players you may wish to try such as Songbird, Media Monkey and Foobar2000, which is generally agreed to be the best sounding on the Windows platform. When you start up your music player, it should automatically search for all your digital music and add it to the library. SongBird will even go online and look for the artwork too, just like iTunes or WMP. which is a slick player for both Windows and Mac, with a nice clean interface.
Through their bundled music players, both Microsoft and Apple have chosen to support certain file formats (WMA and AAC respectively). Whilst these players offer some flexibility (they both play MP3, for example), they’re both committed to their own Lossless formats. so FLAC is excluded. However, there are now ‘bolt on’ FLAC players for iTunes.
Fluke is freeware that works as ‘plug in’ for iTunes (Mac platform), but can be buggy. Amarra Mini by Sonic Studio is a more sophisticated system that piggybacks on to iTunes, replacing much of its audio code with a superior sounding and more flexible system. Sound is excellent but you pay for it; the basic Junior version which gives FLAC playback up to 24/96 starts at $99.
Audirvana Plus (www.audirvana.com) is another fine application that, like Amarra, shuts down certain parts of your computer to minimise drain on CPU resources, to (so the theory goes) give better sound. There’s a free trial download but you’ll have to pay $49 for the full version. It now offers optional integration with iTunes and is a strong, stable performer. For Mac users, its combination of value and performance is currently hard to beat.
It’s easy to burn 16-bit FLAC files on to a CD-R for playback in a conventional hi-fi or car CD player. Winamp is a free player which also supports burning FLAC16 files to CD. If you wish to use a proper CD authoring software, then Roxio RecordNow MusicLab 10 Premier (Windows, $49.99) or Roxio Toast 11 Titanium (Mac. $99.95) are worth considering because the standard Windows or Mac music players won’t handle FLAC, either 16 or 24-bit.
Once you’ve got your 24-bit FLAC files and FLAC player; now it’s time to get the music out to your ears. There are several ways of doing this:
- The simplest is to take an analogue line output from your computer soundcard. This is likely to have a 3.5mm mini-jack plug; we recommend a high quality bespoke cable such as Chord’s iChord for around £30. Although it will give a decent sound, particularly if you have a good quality soundcard, it is not ideal because computers are electrically ‘noisy’ environments, and it is best if at all possible to pipe out the digital signal away from the PC or Mac.
- A dedicated USB DAC like HRT’s Music Streamer II (£160) gives excellent results, and connects up as simply as a digital camera; just plug the USB lead into the computer at one end and the HRT into the other. It will stream digital music at up to 24/96 resolution through its RCA line level analogue phono outputs (which connect into the ‘Aux’ input of your amplifier) and it sports an asynchronous USB connection, so the high quality clock onboard will control the computer’s digital datastream. This gives tighter, smoother sound compared to standard asynchronous USB, as a result of lower jitter.
- If your PC or Mac has a digital output, you can run a good quality optical or coaxial lead into a modern digital convertor such as an Arcam rDAC (£300) and you have a proper, high quality 24-bit FLAC playout system, that will give superior sound to many CD players. It’s important to note here that Windows users should download the latest ASIO drivers; these provide a ‘source direct’ function, ensuring the digital datastream goes direct from the FLAC software player to the USB digital output. Many of the latest DACs, like the Arcam rDAC and Cambridge Audio DAC Magic Plus (£350), also have USB inputs that can be driven directly from computers.
- Wireless streaming is the third, and for many the preferred option. Logitech’s Squeezebox Touch (£259) is one of the most inexpensive and convenient ways of getting full 24-bit FLAC replay at up to 96kHz sampling rate. It comes with bespoke playback software that lets your computer control it via your home wireless network, giving an iTunes-style user interface. Generally, these work very well and are an excellent way of giving multiform functionality. Although it has built-in line level analogue outputs which are ideal for use in a second system, again audiophiles should use its digital output into a hi-fi DAC, such as the aforementioned Arcam rDAC or Cambridge Audio DAC Magic. For even better sound at a slightly higher price, the £500 Rega DAC is hard to beat at or anywhere near the cost.
- For those with more money to spend, there’s a whole host of network music players, from the Cambridge Audio NP30 (£400) and Musical Fidelity M1 CLiC (£1,300) to Naim’s NDX (£3,000) and Linn’s Akurate DSM (£5,600). These are all excellent products at their price; the more money you spend, the better. Also, the more expensive they are, the less the need for a separate DAC; the Naim and Linn deliver superb results out of the box. It all depends on how far you want to take your networked music; whether it’s just another handy way of playing your favourite tunes, or a purpose-designed no-compromise system to eke out the very best from digital.
You can also check our recent 24-bit blog post to see how fellow audiophiles listen to 24-bit FLAC
THE EDGE
There’s an old maxim in the hi-fi industry, borrowed from the early days of the computer pioneers – “garbage in, garbage out”. Any speaker can only be as good as the system driving it, and any system is limited by the quality of the original source material. That’s why B&W, as a manufacturer of premium, leading edge loudspeakers, takes FLAC very seriously. In 24-bit form it’s the modern day incarnation of digital’s finest hour, DVD-Audio, but even better because it’s almost infinitely upgradeable and future-proof. Professor Hawksford gives it the nod. “FLAC has a place in the future for high quality audio. It is good for transporting files on the Internet as it typically halves download time. It is unlikely that for lossless compression there will be significant improvements”, Hawksford believes.
The ease with which it can be delivered to a computer means that anyone who’s capable of sending their friend a digital photo can now download and play high resolution FLAC files, and the benefits are clear for all to hear.
“FLAC is as good as it can get for now. I think what it brings is not limited to quality of audio, but the added convenience as well”, says B&W’s Albert Yong. The only drawback is the sheer scarcity of quality recorded music in 24-bit FLAC format, and that’s where Bowers & Wilkins’ Society of Sound comes in.
Meticulous attention to detail across the whole recording process with the latest high resolution digital recording systems, makes for music of unalloyed purity. That’s why we’re so keen for you to experience 24-bit for yourself. Download Portico Quartet’s Ruins in 24-bit stunning quality.
DIGITAL TIMELINE
1841 Augustin-Louis Cauchy first proposed sampling theory.
1928 Harry Nyquist presents sampling theory to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers
1937 Reeves proposed pulse code wave modulation (PCM) as a way of storing audio
1948 John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain’s bipolar junction transistor, which made compact digital circuitry a reality.
1958 C.H. Townes and A.L. Shawlow invented the laser.
1960 I.S. Reed and G. Solomon’s work on error correction codes gave us the technology that would be directly applied to Compact Disc twenty two years later
1967 Japan’s NHK Technical Research Institute publicly demonstrates a digital audio recorder running 12bit resolution and a 30kHz sampling rate.
1969 Physicist Klaas Compaan uses a glass disc to store black and white holographic images using frequency modulation at Philips Laboratories.
1977 Sony, Mitsubishi and Hitachi demonstrate digital audio discs
1980 Sony signs up to Philips ‘Red Book’ laser disc; Compact Disc is born.
1982 Sony and Philips launch first commercial CD players.
1987 Sony launches Digital Audio Tape (DAT) with 16-bit, 48kHz digital PCM system.
1994 MP3 (MPEG 1 Audio Layer 3) finalised. A compressed, lossy 16/44.1 format using approximately 20% of the space of a WAV file, it ushers in online music distribution.
1999 Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) launched, offering high resolution digital sound using the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) system, with effective 20-bit resolution.
2000 DVD-Audio is launched from the DVD-Forum; offering up to 24-bit, 96kHz resolution from a DVD.
2001 Josh Coulson finalises Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) v1.0.
Nice article Susanna. It’s wonderful to see B&W talking about 24 bit FLAC.
Posted: Thursday, 26 November 2009In the article you were saying:
“it’s always preferable to isolate the electrically noisy computer from the hi-fi by using an optical digital link.”
Does this mean you recommend connecting for example a Sonos ZP90 Networkplayer to a Naim SuperNait rather via the optical link rather the digital cable?
Posted: Saturday, 28 November 2009Can someone please tell me if the Zeppelin can accept 24-bit using the optical inlet?
I’m using my computer with the M-Audio transit and can send flac files to the Zeppelin. I’d like to buy some 24-bit recordings and want to know if Zeppelin’s internal DAC can process them.
I can’t seem to get B&W customer support to respond.
Posted: Monday, 30 November 2009Hello Mike
Thanks for your interest in 24-bit. As you are probably aware our Society of Sound offers a wide selection of albums in 24-bit.
As for your Zeppelin question, unfortunately the Zeppelin doesn’t support 24-bit.
Regards
Shaun
Posted: Monday, 30 November 2009Hi there. I just wanted to tell you that this article is truly incredible. I’m the editor-in-chief of unrated nyc and I plan on sharing this piece with all my readers. Great work!
_Sam
Posted: Monday, 30 November 2009I was irritated when I failed to find any information on FLAC’s developer, then discovered his name is “Josh Coalson” (not Coulson). Other than that I found your article quite interesting. I am not sure I agree with the universal need for >16 bit audio though.
As a sonophile audio professional I always record at and work with 24 bit audio, frequently at higher sample rates than 44.1, but when I carefully dither my final mixes down to 16 bit (using iZotope’s MBIT+ algorithm or one of the fine Airwindows dithers) I have always been very happy with the results.
Certainly it’s preferable to leave the material in the original resolution, especially when dealing with the extreme dynamic range and subtleties of classical and avant garde music performed in “real” venues, but for most consumers of the music I produce the dithered version will be way superior than many other off-the-shelf recordings.
It might boil down to the care you take in training your ears, selecting your gear, preparing for and then recording the acoustic event in the first place, as well as the purity of the processing chain. And let’s not forget that it all begins with good music, performed by inspired musicians. Many thanks to them!
Regards,
blumlein records – Andrew Levine
Posted: Saturday, 12 December 2009Great article but it does not talk about the effect of amps and speakers on the result. If the frequency response of speaker id 25 hz to 20khz will you notice a difference in 16/44 and 24/96 sound?
Posted: Sunday, 13 December 2009Do we need 24 bit audio for sonic nirvana?
http://radio.blumlein.net/2009/12/do-we-need-24-bit-audio-for-sonic.html
Posted: Sunday, 13 December 2009Hi Andrew,
Posted: Monday, 14 December 2009Many thanks for your comments – I have amended Josh’s name and apologise for that.
I thought your last point is particularly salient and is one of the cornerstones of Society of Sound.
Kind regards,
Susanna
I would highly welcome 96 kHz / 24 bit downloads on the B&W music site.
Posted: Tuesday, 29 December 2009This is worth a read. I have been producing music for 15 years and concurrently worked in human factors research in the medical device industry, so I am data driven…
http://mixonline.com/recording/mixing/audio_emperors_new_sampling/
16 bit 44.1 kHz is indistinguishable from higher sample rates and bit depths. That you prefer SACD or some other high-end format is likely that it was produced better in the first place.
digifish
Posted: Tuesday, 29 December 2009Years ago I was doing the usual browsing at a music shop and stumbled on at the time – for me – an unusual cardboard mini lp CD import from Japan – Charlie Rouse – remastered in 24 bit. At the time I had no idea what 24 bit was – I was just entering the digital world from analog 12” LPS. The CD, however, had a mystique about it compared to all the other “ordinary” plastic jewel cased CDs in the store, and I decided to purchase it and give it a listen. Ever since then I have been an absolute believer in 24 bit recordings and have been collecting the majority of music in 24 bit; never did cross over to SACD format. A few years back I started noticing alot of remastered music coming from Japan in 20 bit format after 24 bit had started. The 20 bit recordings sounded awesome but it puzzled me. The whole process and the art of remastering recordings has since really puzzled me; however aside from the inherit individual preferences in remastering music, why would one remaster a recording in 20 bit instead of 24 bit? Aside from 20 bit vs 24 bit I’d sure like to see a book published to both celebrate and discuss the whole art of remastering recordings!
Posted: Tuesday, 29 December 2009How do I get from MPEG-4 Audio File Format (.m4a)to Flac so I can play the B&W tracks on my winamp
Posted: Saturday, 2 January 2010I’m back, Ethan Winer of RealTraps (makers of sound control solutions for studios) just uploaded a fantastic video relevant to this topic from the 2009 Audio Engineering Society.
Audio Myths Workshop.
Ethan & co-presenters cover such issues as placebo effects in audio, loudness vs quality, ‘scam’ equipment, dithering, expensive vs cheap A/D D/A converters and more.
Start at 41m:15s to cover D/A A/D converters and then bit-depth sections. If you have time
I would encourage you all to watch the whole thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ
Posted: Friday, 5 February 2010This is exactly what I have been waiting for!!
FLAC is the best method for storing and listening to music, in my opinion. It’s a free codec, it compresses very well, it decodes well, and it’s lossless. It even holds multi-channel sound.
If a better version of FLAC ever comes out, it’s easy to just convert those old lossless files to the newer version, without losing any quality!
I have all of my CDs ripped to FLAC files and mirrored on another hard drive as a backup. :)
Now, if only we can get mastering engineers / record labels to quit the loudness war and to start master old albums to the best quality they can be, and have those albums released like these 24 bit FLAC files..
Posted: Friday, 19 February 2010Dear Audiophiles.
Music is for listening to, wherever you are. You don’t need to worry about wether you are not hearing all the information. Just listen and enjoy. Even the cheapest CD player from your nearest supermarket does the job, just fine. I started recording my favourite music on a Phillips portable cassette recorder and progressed to a dansette record player when I was a kid. I wasn’t worried about what I wasn’t hearing, I just enjoyed , what was for me, a life changing experience.
Sorry about that rant! But can any one help me with this problem? I have downloaded the 24 bit version of Peter gabriel’s CD. I want to place it in my i tunes libary. I have downloaded Max as I have a mac, running 10.5.8. What do I have to change the flac file into, to then drag and drop it into my i tunes libary.
Thanks.
Paul.
Posted: Friday, 5 March 2010Good article. I enjoyed reading it:)
One note: MP3 is not open source format as Flac is. It’s proprietary and you have to pay for it if you want to use it. As a user you probably don’t pay for it directly ‘couse the company which software/hardware you use payed for it and charged you when you bought their stuff.
This is also why most Linux distributions did not play MP3 files out of the box. Right now it may changed. Dunno ‘couse don’t use it any more.
Posted: Saturday, 6 March 2010whereas FLAC is of course a free, open source system like MP3
Posted: Sunday, 7 March 2010As far as I know, MP3 is not open source, you have to pay a license to Thomson
I wish someone would take the trouble to give this article, with its misplaced links and trailing sentences, a decent edit so it’s actually readable. It would then reflect much better on its host B&W.
Thanks for the SoS though. I’m enjoying my trial membership.
Posted: Tuesday, 23 March 2010Paul Stanwix says:
“I have downloaded Max as I have a mac, running 10.5.8. What do I have to change the flac file into, to then drag and drop it into my i tunes libary.”
Paul, Max can convert FLAC 24-bit files directly to Apple Lossless and send them straight to iTunes. In Max Preferences go to the “Formats” pane. Choose “Apple MPEG-4 Audio.” In the “Output” pane choose “Same as Source file” or choose some other place. In the iTunes pane check “use iTunes compatability mode” and “Add output fies to iTunes library.”
Max will preserve the bit rate and sampling rate, and the Apple Lossless files will be identical in quality to the downloaded flac files. Since iTunes copies the files into your iTunes library, once the tracks show up in iTunes you can delete the Apple lossless files from the output folder, (I have Max set to put them in the same folder as the FLAC files). You could also delete the original flac files, since you could always convert the Apple Lossless files back to flac if you wanted to. I’m superstitous though, and even though they are not only theoretically and practically (to my ears through a Linn system) the same, I back up the flac files to an external drive before deleting them. Since Time Machine backs up iTunes, this is unnecessary, but it just feels weird to me to delete the original files.
The only catch is that older iPods won’t play 24-bit files. I have an iPhone 3GS, and it plays 24-bit files beautifully, especially hooked up to a good rig, but it won’t play files with a sampling rate over 48k. Scratch My Back, like most of the Society of Sound recordings, is 48k, so you should have no problem; but for recordings with higher sampling rates, you’ll need to downsample. Max can’t do that but XLD is freeware that can. So if you ever find yourself with files sampled faster than 48k and want a version that will play on your iPhone, use XLD to downsample. But save the original higher sample’d file to play through iTunes.
Depending on why you want them in iTunes, you could also forego iTunes and play the FLAC files directly in Cog or Songbird. But if you want to transfer them into an iPod or iPhone, you’ll need to use iTunes.
I hope that helped…
Posted: Friday, 2 April 2010I have downloaded many of the SoS albums and mostly they sound great. However the first track on the Daby Touré & Skip McDonald album (Diaguanu) sounds awful to me. Is there a problem with it? Is the problem my end? The rest of the tracks seem to be OK.
Thanks
Posted: Friday, 2 April 2010Sorry – I should have said, it is the 24-bit FLAC version that I have.
Posted: Friday, 2 April 2010Besides the Transporter from Slim (now Logitech) Olive seems to develop a 24-bit music server (www.olive.us) …
Posted: Friday, 2 April 2010Flac shmac … it is still a PCM format. I have been quite impressed with some 96 kHz/24 bit recordings, but the most impressive recordings are pure DSD recordings on SACD. The article also seems to place an undue emphasis on bit rates –> it seems to me that the real gains in removing digital artifacts comes from high sampling rates … not from high bit rates. There is also vastly more hi-rez content out there on SACD (over 6000 titles now) than in FLAC (which is currently in the low hundreds).
Posted: Saturday, 3 April 2010Thank you for this excellent article B&W, and the useful advice it contains.
I have to say that to my ears, the difference between 16bit/44 and 24bit/88 is enourmous. I am sitting here listening to a previously downloaded 24bit wma sampler including music which I would never normally listen to and it is like disovering music for the first time.
This is the first time that the sound coming out of my speakers from a digital source is genuinely enjoyable.
Posted: Monday, 12 April 2010I hope some people find this link interesting
http://www.soundfountain.com/amb/cd25years.html
24/88, 96 sounds to me more natural especially on live music recorded in places with certain acoustical character. Hi-End should about preserving the perfomance at the time and space I took as faithfully as possible, but there is always a limit to technology we use, …what is real, anyway.
Posted: Sunday, 16 May 2010Does anyone know if the MM-1 speakers have a 24 bit DAC. The only information I have found suggests that the DAC is 16 bit only.
Posted: Saturday, 22 May 2010Aren’t HiRes fans in a bit of a conundrum at the moment? If we didn’t have cheap computer based music servers to connect to our hifi systems, we’d all have SACD or DVD-Audio players, but these days, downloadable content and music servers are all the rage, and what’s better than ripping your entire music collection to a computer so you don’t have to buy an expensive CD changer or keep swapping discs??
But you can’t rip SACD!! Is it worth the purcahse if you want a computer based music library? You can rip DVD-Audio… just… with a moderate splattering of hassle (even multi channel). But it’s certainly not as “accessible” to rip HiRes music discs as it is to rip standard CD’s. Isn’t the “best” option, the most “future-proof” one, to download HiRes FLACs where available?
I have a Pioneer DVD player that’s nearly 10 yrs old that can play DVD-A and SACD, and I’ve just started buying HiRes discs (1-2 DVD-A’s and a few more SACD’s, but I know I can never have these in my digital music collection, so it puts me off buying more physical discs.
Anyone else have this problem?
Posted: Thursday, 10 June 2010Hi Graham,
Posted: Thursday, 10 June 2010The MM-1s do have a 16-bit DAC.
Susanna
Hi Graham,
Posted: Thursday, 10 June 2010You’re correct, the MM-1s do have a 16-bit DAC.
Susanna
@ Andrew Henry
Hello Andy, I am convinced that there should be no problem to record your hi-res albs to your computer collection. Your CD/SACD certainly has a digital output has it? If so you can easily connect the player with pc using some audio card such as M-AUDIO to grab your hi-res signal.
Jan
Posted: Sunday, 25 July 2010@Jan : Sony forbids SACD players from offering any hi-res digital output (IIRC, they’re limited to 16/44.1).
Posted: Monday, 26 July 2010Is it worth recording vinyl music to a 24bit digital flac file as oppose to 16bit? If it is can you explain why?
The reason i ask is because i thought vinyl has a depth of around 12bit??
Look forward to your comments :-)
Posted: Thursday, 29 July 2010Why do the MM-1s have a 16-bit DAC? Maybe I should return mine! I assume that the internal DAC is 16-bit and that for everything except the couple 24-bit titles I have there is no difference. However, I got the MM-1s for their quality and also as a better DAC for my P5s! I guess I should have done some more research. So if I’m listening to the 2009 Beatles 24 bit FLACs and comparing them to the 16 bits does that mean that they will be the same or just almost the same? I assume the downconversion won’t end up with the same 16bits.
I have been most impressed with the quality of B&W products. I trust them as a brand and company that anything I buy from them will be of the highest quality. More than that, very competitive on price. Comparing a B&W product to the others on the market for instance the Zeppelin and the Bose sound docks makes the Bose look like a complete rip off.
Posted: Thursday, 29 July 2010The way 24 bit vs. 16 bit is presented here is simply not true or, dare I say, honest.
The sample point analogy shown in the graphic is completely misleading. Mathematically it is PROVABLE that ANY analogue waveform below the Nyquist limit for the frequency can be reproduced PERFECTLY! I’ll say that again: PERFECTLY!
Bit depth only becomes relevant when discussing signal to noise ratio, also known as the noise floor. Through the process of dithering all quantisation noise, the inaccuracies introduced as a result of the sampling, are ELIMINATED and merely raise the noise floor.
In other words the ONLY benefit of 24 bit is the increased dynamic range. 16 bit has a dynamic range after dithering of at least 96dB which can be increased using “noise shaped” dither. But this is irrelevant as no master recording in existence has a dynamic range of more than 70dB! Even in the most quiet of settings background noise is at least 30dB meaning that even with the dynamic range of 16 bit you would expose yourself to 126dB of SPL! That will make you deaf quite quickly.
The only reason to use 24 bit for playback (this does not apply to recording) is if you need to subject yourself to more than 126dB of SPL.
For a more in-depth explanation go to http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/415361/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded
Posted: Friday, 30 July 2010Great article, thanks!
Posted: Monday, 9 August 2010I have a question regarding ripping CDs to FLAC files for computer storage/playback. Since a CD is 16-bit, I believe you should rip at that conversion (eg 16/42). If you try to convert to 24/96, etc, isn’t the conversion utility just using interpolation to add missing data? You can put data in what’s missing, you may be able to gain something but it probably won’t be that accurate. Please advise, and thanks :-)
Whoop,s I think I should correct that, it’s “CDs to AIFF files” I believe.
Posted: Monday, 9 August 2010Very good article,
Posted: Saturday, 14 August 2010However, I want to add Musicbee to the list of media players as an cexcellent choice for Windows users. Musicbee offers, in my opinion, great sound quality and lots of good features.
Sorry Andysor but that is entirely incorrect. Nyqusit-Shannon states that all frequency compnents can be recovered but not perfectly as perfectly suggests 0 distortion. If you take your statement to it’s logical conclusion then a 1 bit DAC (and I dont mean 1 bit as in delta-sigma) could perfectly reproduce any signals below half the sampling frequency is simply incorrect. Quantisation error cannot be ignored.
The other big benefit to increasing both sampling rate and and bit depth is that filtering sampling noise from the output of the DAC becomes easier, and consequently produces less distortion in the filters.
Hope that helps.
Posted: Tuesday, 17 August 2010@Andy McGhee:
As I thought I made clear in my post the “perfectly” refers to reproduction above the noise floor.
Quantization error CAN be ignored if noise shaped dither allows us to hear the sound reproduced beyond our ears’ dynamic range while keeping dither noise below the noise floor.
The main error in this article relates to the “resolution” argument. As “resolution” relates to frequency reproduction 44.1/16 provides all the resolution we need up to 20kHz, and in terms of dynamic range it provides all that our undamaged ears can tolerate.
A low-pass filter is required for ANY DAC to avoid the errors introduced by exceeding the frequency limit, and the 20-22kHz range is more than enough to accomplish this transparently with today’s electronics. However, because 44.1/16 DACs are more mature in this implementation it is possible that there may be audible differences when simply switching between 2 streams on a dual mode DAC.
Posted: Monday, 30 August 2010