Competition: Apple Lossless Vs. WAV - Which one is better?

[runawayprisoner]

Well, I give up. You guys win.

And no, seriously, I'm not saying that in a sarcastic form. I've kept saying over and over again that it's true that there should be no difference in normal cases.

But I just suck at explaining why there is a difference for high-end usage. Perhaps someone who knows more than I do will be able to explain it better... someday.

 

[slashbinslashbash]

Regarding Burn-In:

http://www.nousaine.com/pdfs/The Art of Breakin.pdf

"The only thing that can possibly change during break-in is the elasticity (compliance) of the suspension. There are no direct contact surfaces to mate to each other or "wear together" like they might in a car engine. In a speaker, if anything but permanently bonded surfaces touch during motion, we have bad news."

Also note that, *immediately* after a "burn-in" procedure, the speaker (or more particularly, the voice coil) will be hotter than when it has been sitting idle... maybe substantially hotter. This causes a change in impedance, which can cause a change in frequency response. So, yes, it might sound different, for a while.... until it cools back off. (Read the PDF, he explains the whole thing; and this was for a subwoofer that had a manufacturer-recommended 48-hour burn-in.)

 

[vbuggy]

Well, I give up. You guys win.

And no, seriously, I'm not saying that in a sarcastic form. I've kept saying over and over again that it's true that there should be no difference in normal cases.

But I just suck at explaining why there is a difference for high-end usage. Perhaps someone who knows more than I do will be able to explain it better... someday.

So for high-end, you're feeding more distortion into your amps? (it wouldn't surprise me of some, but still)

And you're making assumptions if you assume my discretionary spend budget is as presumably limited as yours.

As I said, you may want to buy some of this stuff and not only just listen to it but bench it too. If you can't, maybe it's worth heeding the comments of people who have. I don't mind splurging 5-6 figures on a decent system especially if it looks the part in my mancaves, but I fully realise that beyond a certain (pretty low) point, you're simply dotting the i's unless you e.g. need serious amounts of power in larger rooms. There is way too much BS in especially the high end. I don't like deluding myself so I like to arrive at my purchases from a somewhere near objective standpoint. I like to know what I'm buying into, basically.

If that means buying 5 >$10K DACs and selling on 4 I think don't work as well - and then squaring it up to a $500 DAC and seeing the latter is practically sonically identical from a human perception standpoint save for the much nicer enclosure and features/niceties of the former that I've decided I'm going to keep it for - it's something I do.

 

[runawayprisoner]

So for high-end, you're feeding more distortion into your amps? (it wouldn't surprise me of some, but still)

And you're making assumptions if you assume my discretionary spend budget is as presumably limited as yours.

As I said, you may want to buy some of this stuff and not only just listen to it but bench it too. If you can't, maybe it's worth heeding the comments of people who have. I don't mind splurging 5-6 figures on a decent system especially if it looks the part in my mancaves, but I fully realise that beyond a certain (pretty low) point, you're simply dotting the i's unless you e.g. need serious amounts of power in larger rooms. There is way too much BS in especially the high end. I don't like deluding myself so I like to arrive at my purchases from a somewhere near objective standpoint. I like to know what I'm buying into, basically.

If that means buying 5 >$10K DACs and selling on 4 I think don't work as well - and then squaring it up to a $500 DAC and seeing the latter is practically sonically identical from a human perception standpoint save for the much nicer enclosure and features/niceties of the former that I've decided I'm going to keep it for - it's something I do.

I don't think what I own or how much I can afford has anything to do with this. I never claimed to own 6-digit gears. Being on a limited budget, I truly enjoy my DT880 600 + O2 combo much better than some of the tube amps under $300 that I had the chance to audit. If someday, I find the justification for going over $500 just to power my $300 headphones adequately, then perhaps I will scale up and try all of this for myself, but for now, I'm doing exactly what you are saying: heeding information from those who have owned and listened to this stuff... and many of them keep saying tubes sound better solid state at the higher end.

In fact, you are about the only person that I know of that plugs a T1 into a $10 USB DAC/amp. Since I don't have a T1 to test, I really can't tell whether it does "well" enough or not. But my DT880 600 would only play nice with the O2, or tube amps, under the $300 price range. I have tried the Fiio E11, Fiio E10, Fiio E9, Matrix M-Stage , Audioengine D1 (by the way, this one is damn nice when it doesn't distort), and I almost thought about building a M^3 but went for a pre-assembled JDS Labs O2 instead. It was worth every penny.

So yes, I flat out prefer solid states to tubes. But that doesn't mean I completely disregard that higher-end amps do use tubes almost exclusively, and that there is at least some advantage to tubes that manufacturers can't let go of.