Could someone with The Greater Cause CD please help me?

[Boray]

So, I bought the FLAC download. The FLAC download should in theory be equal to the CD. But according to the quite off topic discussion in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=56655 ... Executioner claims that the FLAC version is totally crap compared to the CD after listening to my test. He also went to a friend to listen to it on a Mac with the same result. He has also got PMs from other people here who agrees with him.

I think the flac download sounds like CD quality, but as I don't have the actual CD, I can't be sure that they are the same. For example, the bandcamp downloads could by mistake have been based on the early kickstarter versions instead of on the final product. I have no way of knowing this for sure without buying the CD, and frankly, I don't want to buy the album twice.

So what I would like is if someone who have got the CD and the technical know how could rip about 15 seconds from the beginning of one of the tracks to WAV and send it to me. I would then put it side by side with the FLAC version in a music program and flip the phase of one of them to determine if there is any difference. This is a commonly used method among sound engineers. If they are equal, there would be total silence as the result. If they are not the same, you would hear the actual difference and also see with your eyes that the output meter is moving.

I would also post something confirming this here, for example pictures of waveforms zoomed down to sample level, or actual numbers from the files with the flac file converted to wav vs the wav file.

Anyway, as I've already bought the album, you would not be doing something illegal by sending me a short snippet of something I already have.

This is not just a question of "being right". If the FLAC (or WAV etc) downloads in fact is different from the CD, then people should be told about this!!!

[brent]

Has anyone thought about the possibility that the FLAC version and the CD version might not be the same exact files to begin with? Do we know for sure that the wav files converted to FLAC were the same exact files post mastered files submitted by the mastering engineer? Why are we obsessing over minutia here? How can you say what is CD quality? There is no such benchmark, since a CD can be made to sound differently intentionally. So how can you say the FLACs sound like CD?

[Boray]

Has anyone thought about the possibility that the FLAC version and the CD version might not be the same exact files to begin with? Do we know for sure that the wav files converted to FLAC were the same exact files post mastered files submitted by the mastering engineer?

Well brent, that is exactly want I want to find out.

[Boray]

How can you say what is CD quality? There is no such benchmark, since a CD can be made to sound differently intentionally. So how can you say the FLACs sound like CD?

Well, it doesn't sound worse than most CDs, opposed to Exes description of it: "Crappy and distorted".

[Boray]

Trodland sent me a wav file from the CD. Thank you! So no need for anyone else to send me another one now. I will return with the result.

[Boray]

Ok, here it is: The FLAC download is totally equal to the CD. No question about it. There was total cancellation in my test. Here is also a sample level zoom in of the waveforms for you. Can you see any difference?



I also selected a small piece of a few samples and rendered out the same selection from both files. Here is the resulting wav files viewed in a HEX editor. Can you see any difference?

[sickasadog]

I think it's futile to try and determine sound quality whilst listening through a computer. Get a CD player (you can still buy them from SONY) and a basic hi-fi setup and you're way better off sonically. And, FWIW, surround sound is overrated. Stereo is the way to go for music.

[Dan]

Well done Boray, as you can see it's exactly the same, bit for bit..so it's completely impossible for there to be a sound difference.

[p-freak]

You are amazing, Boray. Thanks for proving that there is no difference whatsoever between flac and wav/CD. Could you make something like this to compare CD to several different .mp3 encodings? I'm curious to see how much gets lost when you convert to 320 and then to 192.

[brent]

There CAN be a difference in playback between a CD and FLAC, but not because of the files themselves. I can show you three different audiophile grade CD players that all sound completely different for various reasons. The same goes for computers playing back FLACs. In fact, John Lawry and I were discussing how certain CPUs back in the day would affect the timing of MIDI and the imaging of audio. There are too many variables. I would argue, most of the time, playing data from a hard drive from a robust system is more accurate and sounds better than a CD, because it eliminates the mechanical transport, errors, etc.

[pmal]

I posted this by mistake on another thread but here it goes. I downloaded the original wavs and burned to a disc when the project first came out at the beginning of the year. I listened to that cd for months in my car stereo. When I received and played the professional CD in my car stereo, I immediately had to turn down the bass to play the CD at the same volume levels as before. Now, you can say my burner has issues, my computer audio has issues, or my settings were crappy, I don't really care what it is. Until there is a universal setting or you can download and burn the media to disc without an R2 unit beside you to make sure everything is setup right (that would be awesome though), to me the CD release is 100% better. Since I am the paying customer, that should be all that matters. I hope you guys take no offense to what I am saying ... but it shouldn't be rocket science to do this.

Regards, Phillip

[executioner]

There CAN be a difference in playback between a CD and FLAC, but not because of the files themselves. I can show you three different audiophile grade CD players that all sound completely different for various reasons. The same goes for computers playing back FLACs. In fact, John Lawry and I were discussing how certain CPUs back in the day would affect the timing of MIDI and the imaging of audio. There are too many variables. I would argue, most of the time, playing data from a hard drive from a robust system is more accurate and sounds better than a CD, because it eliminates the mechanical transport, errors, etc.

I think the quality difference with FLAC & CD that I'm hearing has alot to do with the quality of systems I'm running them on. I did finally run the files on something other than my smartphone which ended up being a MAC and yes it did sound better but to me and my friend still sounded "incomplete" his words compared to the CD. I asked him what he meant by incomplete and he said it sounded tinty and lacked a sort of deep punch; at this time he tried adjusting his bass & low end levels on his system and thats when the sound became distorted on a curve, and the more he put in the more distorted it became.
On this note he gave me some explanations: He says he doesn't have alot of experience with FLAC but after talking to a few people that deal with it daily this is the advice he came away with. With any audio/video system you as a user has to make adjustments to the particular file, CD, DVD etc... He said FLAC seems to need the exact settings in order to get the highest quality sound.

[brent]

Computers with stock oem audio cards, phones, ipads, ipods, etc are terrible in the audio department.

[Jonathan]

[curt]

If anyone wants better sound from their computers, you could try with a so called DAC (digital audio converter).

So what is that? To put it short (and perhaps not too well explained) it's a sort of external soundcard that takes care of the sound from you PC. You connect it through USB or optical or whatever you've got. The sound quality gets a lot better, since they contain good quality components.

With all the music available on the Internet it's a good investment, I think. Cause I agree with Exe on his explanation on why he is hearing a difference. It's due to the equipment. If you can solve that problem, you can enjoy a lot of digital music online. Like Boray showed there need not be any difference at all. Nothings wrong with the file.

Read more on Dacs: http://www.whathifi.com/reviews/accessories/dacs