HDX rip better than iTunes rip?

quote:

Originally posted by jazzfan:

Unless I am mistaken, they may all be claiming to hear a difference, but I have not read anywhere that they are hearing the same differences

Well I think that most on here that can hear a difference ARE hearing the HDX rips to be "better".

quote:

Originally posted by jazzfan:

My position is the same as before - listeners may claim to hear differences between identical files,

Despite there being no rational reason as you can see it, they are still HEARING a difference. You cannot discount this.

Once again, whether bat ears, placebo, hallucinations or self-fulfilling prophecy are at work, they are still having a different experience.

Gettier aside, they could even claim Knowledge of these differences, in having a true, justified belief of hearing a difference.

Why does it matter to you what the source is, that makes them hear a difference.

You can put an eyelash in each of my hands. Surely they have different masses. But I could not tell you which one is heavier. It is below my threshold. If there was no technology that would allow for a measurement, it would be postulated that they are the same.... because human perception says they are.

There is no definitive test to say how you or I "hear" something, then intellectually process that information, in order to verbally describe that experience.

Why do you think some people prefer the CD5X with a Flatcap over a bare CDX2, and vice versa? Because of their completely SUBJECTIVE experience.

If an HDX rip sounds better to someone, it is.

quote:

Originally posted by pcstockton:

If an HDX rip sounds better to someone, it is.

And if an iTunes rip sounds better to someone, is it better also?

quote:

Originally posted by pcstockton:
Well I think that most on here that can hear a difference ARE hearing the HDX rips to be "better".

That's not the same as ALL hearing the same difference, so my point stands.

quote:

Originally posted by pcstockton:

Despite there being no rational reason as you can see it, they are still HEARING a difference. You cannot discount this.

Once again, whether bat ears, placebo, hallucinations or self-fulfilling prophecy are at work, they are still having a different experience.

Gettier aside, they could even claim Knowledge of these differences, in having a true, justified belief of hearing a difference.

Why does it matter to you what the source is, that makes them hear a difference.

What matters to me is whether those differences could be identified in "blind" listening conditions. If (as I expect) they are not identifiable under those conditions, they do not exist anywhere outside of the listener's mind.

Anyway, I think we are beginning to go around in circles and, unless a new aspect of this discussion emerges, I'll drop out at this point.

quote:

Originally posted by jazzfan:

Anyway, I think we are beginning to go around in circles ....

I am in complete agreement - although I would never have expected otherwise.

Still a few loops out of the circle.

Peter, isn't the fact that no one ever claims the lesser-pedigreed rip is better suspect? I mean ever? We have in the history of audio all sorts of varying preferences, often for "worse" over "better." Some like the Ittok over the Aro, some like the CDX/XPS over the CDS, others wouldn't have one at any price, some would take an LP12 over anything, some say a Rega P3 is better than a VPI TNT, and so forth. Yet no one thinks itunes rips are better than HDX?

Another loop.

I am not so daft as to say that an HDX rip can not sound different than an iTunes rip in any given playback instance as some have said.

However, I am absolutely certain that if I have understood how bits get thrown around a computer and eventually come out as sound, any difference is not because of the rip. It simply cannot be.

Put it another way. You can listen all you want, but you are not listening to the difference in the rip, because there is none to listen to.

That's not ideology. I welcome any correction to the following. In computer audio, there is no time clock until a bitstream is reconstructed from the bits by the soundcard/controller. But the bits, when stored on a drive, or transmitted in network packets, are just bits. They come off the drive, they go in a buffer, they get fed to a soundcard buffer. Then the soundcard makes a timed stream of them with a clock and sends it to a DAC.

What happens to the bits before they leave the buffer of the soundcard--who ripped them, how many times they were converted or transferred, is irrelevant as long as the bits are unchanged, and we know that they are unchanged.

To believe otherwise is simply to not understand how a computer works.

quote:

Originally posted by pcstockton:
Quantum mechanics does not allow the possibility that the two files could even be exact.... ipso facto, the files could sound different. IN fact all files should, given a hearing threshold high enough to perceive it.

Peter, this is the same fallacy as David's above.

There is a platonic set of data, of 1s and 0s. Then we make a physical representation of it. That representation, like all things physical, is analog. So we develop a system to make sure that the representations of 1s and 0s don't get confused. The disk drive reads an analog wave and makes 1s and 0s out of it--and it does this extremely reliably, or else the entire world as we know it would come crashing down.

So the quantum states of the matter on the disk drive don't matter. Yes, a file written by one drive, or on one media, will have a different physical being than another. But we've engineered these difference out of the system, so they have no effect on the 1s and 0s that hit the controllers and CPUs.

quote:

Originally posted by jazzfan:

And if an iTunes rip sounds better to someone, is it better also?

Yes, now you are catching on!!!

Regardless of any differences or identities, "better" is completely subjective and owned solely by those who feel it.

quote:

Originally posted by Eric Barry:
isn't the fact that no one ever claims the lesser-pedigreed rip is better suspect?

Erin,
if by "lesser pedigreed", you mean iTunes, well there are plenty on here who think the iTunes rips sound superior to EAC.

I personally dont hear that myself, and I think they all sound the same....

I haven't seen anyone say that iTunes rips were better than EAC, but I'll take your word for it.

quote:

Originally posted by avole:
What are you trying to prove?

The existence of dark matter.