Do digital music files degrade with copying?
Posted by: Rockingdoc on 19 February 2009
Another question from a computing ignoramous. Do digital music files suffer from repeated shunting around and between hard-drives?
Due to my iPoddery excesses, I often copy my iTunes music folders between devices and computers, and have certainly lost track of where the original rips reside. Is there any loss in moving files, or defragging for that matter?
Due to my iPoddery excesses, I often copy my iTunes music folders between devices and computers, and have certainly lost track of where the original rips reside. Is there any loss in moving files, or defragging for that matter?
Posted on: 19 February 2009 by goldfinch
Hi Rockingdoc,
Maybe I am missing something but I also wondered this in the past and I became to the conclusion the only important point is the ripping. After riping, you can still have data loss or damage for some reason (for instance, too much fragmentation in HD or mains interruption, so you need to make backups), but I think you couldn't play that track normally or you may see an error message when opening the damaged (altered) file. I think this is a real advantage of digital music, audio files don't suffer from repeated playing or copying (providing there isn't any hardware problem).
Maybe I am missing something but I also wondered this in the past and I became to the conclusion the only important point is the ripping. After riping, you can still have data loss or damage for some reason (for instance, too much fragmentation in HD or mains interruption, so you need to make backups), but I think you couldn't play that track normally or you may see an error message when opening the damaged (altered) file. I think this is a real advantage of digital music, audio files don't suffer from repeated playing or copying (providing there isn't any hardware problem).
Posted on: 19 February 2009 by Frank Abela
Provided the copy process is successful, the file should not degrade and should be an exact copy. There are checksums that guarantee correct copying. If this were not the case, we'd be in really deeeeeep trouble world wide. Come to think of it, maybe the bankers can say the files lost some bits leading to some zeroes going missing!
Anyway, back to copying, one thing that's usually a benefit of copying is that the copies tend to be put onto a cleaner part of a possibly new disc. In this situation, the files are often written contiguously which should mean that the copies are less fragmented than the originals.
Defragmenting a drive is always a nice thing to do, particularly if you play those files directly off the disc. The drive has a lot easier time of reading the files this way.
Anyway, back to copying, one thing that's usually a benefit of copying is that the copies tend to be put onto a cleaner part of a possibly new disc. In this situation, the files are often written contiguously which should mean that the copies are less fragmented than the originals.
Defragmenting a drive is always a nice thing to do, particularly if you play those files directly off the disc. The drive has a lot easier time of reading the files this way.
Posted on: 19 February 2009 by DaveBk
Unless something goes badly wrong which should be obvious you can pretty much guarantee that copied files are perfect replicas. Genuine faults such as bad sectors on disks can occur so you need to keep backups, but the slow degredation in quality than can affect vinyl and tape does not occur.
Posted on: 19 February 2009 by QTT
NEVER.
Posted on: 19 February 2009 by Bruce Woodhouse
I'm sure this is all true.
Only one thing, why is it that a particular original CD would not rip on my HDX whatever I did but a 'perfect copy' made on my PC ripped just fine! Spooky.
Bruce
Only one thing, why is it that a particular original CD would not rip on my HDX whatever I did but a 'perfect copy' made on my PC ripped just fine! Spooky.
Bruce
Posted on: 19 February 2009 by DaveBk
So you ripped the original on a PC, burnt a duplicate then ripped this with the HDX?
Could be a defect on the original media that the HDX did not like, but the PC ripper could deal with.
Could be a defect on the original media that the HDX did not like, but the PC ripper could deal with.
Posted on: 19 February 2009 by gary1 (US)
Bruce I'd let Naim know about this and perhaps send them the CDs for review to figure out what happened.
Your PC ripped/HDX ripped copy will not sound as good as if ripped from the HDX directly regardless of "bit perfect."
Your PC ripped/HDX ripped copy will not sound as good as if ripped from the HDX directly regardless of "bit perfect."
Posted on: 19 February 2009 by SC
quote:Originally posted by gary1 (US):
Your PC ripped/HDX ripped copy will not sound as good as if ripped from the HDX directly regardless of "bit perfect."
I'm not sure Bruce meant he 'ripped' it on the PC, but copied the original to a new CD, then HDX ripped this...?
Posted on: 19 February 2009 by Bruce Woodhouse
quote:Originally posted by SC:quote:Originally posted by gary1 (US):
Your PC ripped/HDX ripped copy will not sound as good as if ripped from the HDX directly regardless of "bit perfect."
I'm not sure Bruce meant he 'ripped' it on the PC, but copied the original to a new CD, then HDX ripped this...?
Exactly. My guess is that the disc has some element that does not get copied by the PC. Perhaps some form of DRM? It was odd that out of 350+ CD's nopw ripped by the HDX the only two failures were the same artist and label.
Bruce
Posted on: 19 February 2009 by SC
quote:Originally posted by Bruce Woodhouse:
...the only two failures were the same artist and label.
You really shouldn't be putting Take That onto your HDX you see...
Posted on: 20 February 2009 by 'haroldbudd'
If you are on a Mac, Apple advises not to defrag ever. Something to do with how leopard puts the files on the drive and looks for them, can't remember, but it's on their site. I thought that was strange at first but the explanation I read made sense. I think the no-defrag started with OSX, maybe some Apple expert here can confirm this.
cheers
cheers
Posted on: 20 February 2009 by Rockingdoc
quote:Originally posted by Frank Abela:
Anyway, back to copying, one thing that's usually a benefit of copying is that the copies tend to be put onto a cleaner part of a possibly new disc. In this situation, the files are often written contiguously which should mean that the copies are less fragmented than the originals.
.
So here seems to be the crux... does this affect the sound?
Posted on: 21 February 2009 by DeltaSigma
quote:Originally posted by Rockingdoc:
So here seems to be the crux... does this affect the sound?
Spreadsheets, word processing documents and other files look and behave just the same irrespective of how contiguously they are stored on the disk - why should music files be any different? At the end of the day, they are all series of 0s and 1s.