I've become a "computer audiophile"!

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by jh901, Jun 19, 2021.

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  1. jh901

    jh901 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    PARRISH FL USA
    Appreciated, but I always want fully uncompressed files and there is no downside to WAV with respect to metadata. Tagging is just fine using dBpoweramp. I can use Roon's metadata as well. It isn't necessarily a fact that flac and WAV sound the same.
     
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  2. jh901

    jh901 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    PARRISH FL USA
    Thanks. The thread veered off course, but I trust we are back on course.
     
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  3. Spy Car

    Spy Car Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    You are misinformed as to audio quality (and tagging) of Wav files. If you want to waste hard drive space for no reason, at least don't say you were weren't warned.

    Bill
     
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  4. jh901

    jh901 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    PARRISH FL USA
    No doubt. And I'd add that mentioning a computer takes that assertion to another level. Of course, try to discuss doing computer audio right and, well, somehow people become insecure. They are missing out on an opportunity to learn and experience something new.
     
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  5. jh901

    jh901 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    PARRISH FL USA
    Please complete your gear profile, Bill. I'm not wasting anything. I don't need a warning, lol.

    This thread isn't about the inferiority of compressed codecs versus the very best (WAV) and possible explanations for it.

    Metadata? Seriously? Who cares. The tags saved on my 4TB SSD are perfectly fine. Further, Room has its own metadata layer.
     
  6. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    This is the third arrogant response I have gotten while every time I am just trying to explain to you, the general thought processes of people you never met, who you still seem to blame for doing their job. Their job, is not to cater to a specific sector of an audience you have no understanding or empathy for. It is to find the largest sector they can please with the most-universally-appreciated strategies. I am trying to show you the empathy of my understanding of a field I have been working in since 1979, which I also do not like as far as it applies to my preferences, personally. I use the term "drones" because these are the specific terms we use when we refer to the everyday listener who is not critical on their music, but more focused on a task that takes most of their concentration.

    You can assume they appreciate "better variety", but then they have also been messaged for decades, they are getting that, every time we assure them of it. Does it make them happy when they hear the same song they appreciated yesterday? NO, they probably do not...unless, they are focused on another task that is more critical to their paycheck, and it's a nice song anyway, and look, here comes another one, therefore their radio station did its' job.

    BUT...EVERY different listener has a different idea of what that "better variety" constitutes, and we in radio are trying to please, like I said, the most amount of people, who honestly have a smaller musical vocabulary than you can assume, with all your expertise of critical listening, audiophile desires for a better experience and the wherewithal to get it, they do. This is why the majority of the most successful Classic Rock stations you cannot stand, may have an "on-air" library of over 800 songs...but you still get 300 of them consistently, day-in, day-out. It is because, as I've often said, there's always another person tuning-in right after the person who just tuned-out and went into his job...who wishes they'd play that one song, the other guy just heard a minute ago.

    I don't care WHERE you are. You don't care "where everybody else is". And there are simply more "everybody else"s, than there is you. And a mass medium, doesn't care if they didn't get a chance to hear a song you thing everybody else is interested in hearing, just because you haven't heard it in awhile.

    That's where you put on your Audiophile pants, and satisfy yourself, while an astonishingly-immense sector of our audience, is still just as happy getting "Don't Stop Believing".
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2021
  7. jh901

    jh901 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    PARRISH FL USA
    Ok, that is the final word on radio, which I have zero interest in.
     
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  8. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    I can see that.

    But, in the computer universe, hardware and software go hand in hand. Such as the discussion of Roon and other software.

    I worked in a computer store back some four decades ago, when computers were new to people. Some would ask, "If I buy a computer from you and take it home (or to my business), what will it do for me?". I would tell them "nothing"...

    Curiously, I would make a comparison to a stereo. I would explain that if you bought a stereo, it wouldn't do anything without records. Then I would explain what software was.

    I guess the whole PC or dedicated device thing depends on the functionality of what you require the device to do.

    Actually, it would more than all right with me, if I never had to set up another server in my life. When I say this, I am speaking of the software involved. Which I view as a never ending and eternally annoying task...
     
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  9. Spy Car

    Spy Car Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    I think most so-called "computer audiophiles" care about having good metadata (and not wasting hard-drive space).

    FLAC and ALAC are lossless audio formats, despite your ignorance.

    You will learn (or not).

    Bill
     
  10. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    For me, extra metadata, is not "wasting" hard drive space, it's being able to do more things with the files by extra complexity. As far as "wasting" hard drive space on the files themselves, to me a waste is using only what you need, as opposed to what else you could do if you backed-up everything you didn't think at first, you'd ever want.

    I think "computer audiophile" and "audiophile" can easily co-exist, once the practitioners understand...they're both doing the same thing. Only, one involves extra technology the other doesn't think is relevant. But, they still do the same thing with it: using the technology they have chosen for their result, to get the best experience possible. Geez, this is so close to the CD-vs.-LP debate it's not even ironic anymore...

    I'm more of the "backwards audiophile", in that first I survey the tech I have on hand, and try to get the most out of what I have I can, without adding as little more of it, to my arsenal as possible. So, I'm not looking for insane amounts of expensive gear to get the best result: I'm looking for the best result I can get with the least extra investment. I get given things; I receive "castoff" gear others think I can make something of. I haul out old stuff I never thought I'd use, until suddenly I found I had some gadget I could plug into that, and see if I get a "whoopee" out of that unexpected combination. But...all the while, I'm still investigating new music, new sounds, and adding it to the sounds I already enjoy, on the gear I already use.

    So, the opportunity and potential, is what makes me "audiophile"...the stuff I listen to while I figure out if Tab A fits into Slot B...is what makes me, "music fan" first.
     
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  11. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    :wtf:

    There aren't enough "golden ears" types in a library-full of lettercols in every audio magazine in the stacks, that can approach decisively backing that claim up.
     
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  12. Spy Car

    Spy Car Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Having good metadata is vital to having a great digital library experience IMO. Definitely not a waste of hard drive space.

    In contrast, using WAV or AIFF instead of FLAC or ALAC results in a huge waste of space. Not smart.

    Bill
     
  13. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    Text type metadata takes up almost no discernable hard drive space. An album cover, a bit more. Earlier on compression was brought in because hard drive or SS memory was at a premium. Now it is plentiful and dirt cheap. No longer issues to most.

    I would think that the presence of metadata would enhance the PC experience, with no drawbacks? I suppose that the metadata would not have to be necessarily contained within the music file itself. It could just as easily be contained within another data file that the software can access along with the music file itself. This is just a relational database.

    But since we have file formats like FLAC that are lossless, take up half the room of a WAV file and contain the metadata within, why not use a file format like this (or similar type)?
     
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  14. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    It is certainly a fact that they contain the same identical information, just stored more efficiently.
     
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  15. BruceS

    BruceS El Sirviente del Gato

    Location:
    Reading, MA US
    Someone thinks that *LAC files are lossy? (I'm not gonna go back though multiple pages to see where that started.) Data compression is a wonderful and elegant thing; lossiness .less so. I thought that was a given here...not that lossy necessarily sounds bad.
     
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  16. Spy Car

    Spy Car Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    The thread starter is under the misimpression that WAV files are audibly superior to FLAC (or ALAC), when he is just wasting massive amounts of hard drive space unnecessarily.

    What can you do???

    Bill
     
  17. Reckoner

    Reckoner Made in Canada

    I've been a J-River Media Center user for quite some time and am in my first year as a Roon user. My front end is a Dell desktop with 2 dedicated Music hard drives, the main one being a 1 TB SSD (65% full with 17000 files) and I have a 2 TB SATA HDD that I use as a back up for what's on the first one. Over the years I've read many articles like this one found with a quick google serach... How can I tune a Windows PC for best audio performance? | Audinate | FAQs ... where the Windows settings are tweaked to have the quietest and quickest path from the source file data through the USB port (bypassing the soundcard completely) to the Topping D90 DAC where, supposedly, all of the important magic happens before it gets sent to my integrated amplifier.

    I can't be sure if all of the tweaks I've done as well as making sure I'm using the right audio drivers (ASIO, WASAPI) in my playback software improves performance and I'm often doing A/B switching between J-River and Roon, which connect to my DAC through USB, and with a Sonos Port I have hooked up to the DAC with a Coax so I can compare my .Flacs with the streamed files that bypass the PC altogether from Tidal. The main differences I have found are with the source file where a Tidal Masters album or a remastered album that I don't own that's on Tidal through the Port will sound better/different than my Flac version on the PC. But, depending on the source file, I'm concentrating very hard to find these differences.

    For me, being a Computer Audiophile means trying to maximize the partnership between sound quality and conveniences like whole home streaming, Metadata and Playlisting/Smartlisting and discovery algorithms that software and streaming services offer. What irks me most in the analog/digital debate is the either/or binary idea that exists. Our amps have multiple possible source inputs so we can easily keep our Vinyl collections and analog turntables plugged in the phono jacks and our PCs and streamers in another input and have the best of all worlds and enjoy the experiments of comparison across sources while having access to 75 million songs along with our beloved physical media. They are different listening experiences and personally, I love having the option of choosing either of them.

    File tagging and metadata make all the difference to me. I have friends who regularly come over for listening sessions and when I can use J-River to Tag a song with "FriendA" when we find tracks we both like and then over time, when I know FriendA is coming over and I can tell J-River to play a Smartlist with a rule that says "Only Tracks tagged FriendA" I can be sure that we're getting variety with tracks we mutually enjoy. I think that's really cool. Plus, there's crossfading and volume levelling settings, I can display all the lyrics or a photo stream from the band on the TV while we listen, and make changes instantly using the Ipad/Iphone remote apps without getting off my beer-swilling butt.

    Another great computer audiophile thing is linking your music management and streaming services with your last.fm account. It's so cool to be able to see what you're playing and having it counted and trended through scrobbles while having the last.fm service give you more recommendations similar to what your streaming services do.

    Lots of fun tinkering to do within the digital platform.
     
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  18. jh901

    jh901 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    PARRISH FL USA
    Please kindly save the metadata details for another topic.

    Also, those who are fine with data compressed lossless can have it. In a separate topic. See, there's a choice. I could not care less about how large WAV files are compared to compressed. I have 4TB and I won't get over 3TB for at least a year. And guess what. SSD will be cheaper then if I want more space.

    Final word. Thank you.

    The topic is intended to encourage members like @Bill Hart and provide a space to share findings with others. Genuine, sincere audiophiles will be at home here. Ok. Thank you.

    Just pretend this the "Audio Note only" space for the audiophile computer audio front end.
     
  19. jh901

    jh901 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    PARRISH FL USA
    Precisely. Thank you.

    I will say that I picked a lane that I felt was adequate to enjoy my stereo as never before, functionally at least, and get hands on experience. I did have the fortune of also landing on a lane that delivers better sound quality than I've had.

    Is network player/Roon endpoint my final destination? If so, then which network player will easily best my DMS 700? That's rhetorical for now. The dCS Bartok is too pricey.

    Or USB DAC with a server/transport in front of it?

    Those are the two main configuration decisions.

    I've got my redbook collection mostly on the SSD and backed up. I'm adding hires downloads that make sense. I'm troubleshooting a DSD situation, but I'll have 400+ Sacds in DSF within a year. I'm also using Qobuz as I anticipated and I'm loving it.

    Hope to round up more of the forum members who share my audiophile sentiment. Come on in!
     
  20. Forget about WAV files wasting space.
    It's a non goer.
    What does have legs is that they're less efficient to deliver across a computer network.
    CD spec is not much of an issue, but transmitting 24/192 files across a network is just asking for buffering issues - they're frigging enormous.

    The WAV/FLAC sound quality argument is tedious.
    If they sound different then somebody needs to learn what to do to set their equipment up properly.
     
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  21. jh901

    jh901 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    PARRISH FL USA
    If your network can't handle hires WAV then fix the network. No one should avoid large files on this rationale. Good grief. DSF files are large. Again, this will be no problem for a proper set up.
     
  22. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    Metadata issues is precisely the one area of the subject I came here to, because it is relevant to my experience. I find Reckoner's post informative and definitely the sort of component that makes this thread valuable to me.

    Exactly how many relevant subjects would you like to keep us from talking about just because they don't interest you personally? Would you also like to edit our conclusions and opinions for you to better match what you wanted us to say?

    This is a discussion board. We are not all here to agree with you on the basis that you started the thread. Perhaps you should start a fresh one, state your criteria ahead of asking for participation, and see how far that gets you.
     
  23. robertash

    robertash Forum Resident

    It's the noise generated that's the problem, not the bits.

    This is helpful.
     
  24. FrankieP

    FrankieP Forum Resident

    At this day and age, are people really concerned about hard drive space? Physical drives are cheap as hell.
     
  25. Brother_Rael

    Brother_Rael Senior Member

    This. Ignoring metadata and relying on 3rd party services to make their assumptions is just work later on. Better to understand the need now. Requirements up front and understood, etc.
     
    Spy Car likes this.
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