Struggling to match Apple lossless

[james777]

Re: Struggling to match Apple lossless

Hi Gary,

Thanks for the advice.

Taking the phone out of the equation worked and the Wav/AIFF now sound the same as an apple lossless stream but there are some gain differences.

How do you check for ReplayGain tags?

What would your advice be for a ripping format, in order to preserve album metadata, if file size is not a consideration?

Thanks,
James.

[garym]

Re: Struggling to match Apple lossless

something is not right as these are all lossless and should sound identical. Are you sure that Apple Music or your phone is not adding soundcheck (volume adjustment) values to the files. Do the files contain ReplayGain tags? I Don't use apple music, but are you sure in the uploading to your phone that there is not some conversion being done (transcoding to m4a).

As a test, can you listen to these files on your Mac via headphones and compare. This will take the phone out of the equation for testing.

p.s. I assume you realize that Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV, FLAC are all lossless codecs, and there is no reason that on any relatively modern playback system (certainly including any iPhone newer than 10 years old), they shouldn't sound exactly the same. Other than creating larger size files and not having metadata (tagging) support as well recognized for WAV and AIFF, that there is no impact of making these changes. WAV or AIFF doesn't sound any better. These are not "hi-res" as compared to Apple Lossless. Apple Lossess, WAV, AIFF are all decoded to the exact same PCM file by your player for playback.

[james777]

Hi all,

I'm new to the forum and new to ripping in the pursuit of cd/high res quality.

I will shortly have an Astell and Kern SR25 mk2 with Meze Classics but until then until I've been experimenting with ripping/file formats on an old MacBook Pro (mid 2012 dual core i7 running 10.15) and Music (1.0.6).

The problem I have is that if I rip Wave, or AIFF, using db (17.7), then import into Music and save to my iPhone (15.5) the files do not quite sound as good as streaming the same tracks apple lossless.

I don't tweak db, merely change to Wave or AIFF, and keep the sample rate/bit depth the same as original. The file version sounds slightly more compressed, with less definition, less warmth and a lower output volume.

Am I missing something here?

Cheers,
James.