Lossless Files Vs CD's

But of course ripped files are sound inferior compared to it's sourced CD. I'm talking full WAV, of course, not even mentioning other, space saving, formats. There are allot of confusion and misunderstanding in these discussions because people either do not compare apples to apples, or they biased due to their involvement with the industry. However, I do agree with Audiogoner that playback from ripped files might sound coloured, but I believe that mostly due to the playback software “audio effects”.
Let's do very simple test and compare apples to apples, that you can witness said difference for yourself. Let’s forget about all your DACs, preamps, amps, speakers etc., you don’t need it because it just confusing the issue. All you need is a computer with CD ROM (might be USB CD ROM) and a pair of headphones.
Now, using any software of your choice, let’s rip any file(s) from any CD (your choice) to the HDD or SSD of said computer (BTW, SSD do sound better than HDD, but it doesn’t matter for this test). When rip is done, insert headphones directly in to the computer audio out jack, on the back of the comp and compare the sound of CD played back from the same CD ROM and ripped file(s), played trough the same computer playback/rip software. Don’t use different softs for playing back file(s) and CD, because different softs will sound differently. If your comp doesn’t have headphone jack (don’t use the one which is on CD ROM), then you’ll obviously need some receiver or something with headphone jack. BTW, guys, make treble sure that you are indeed comparing sound of CD to the sound of files, and not CD to CD and/or files to files, it gets very tricky when you playing back over and over again, same piece of music. Very easy to mess it up. If CD and files sounds identical then most likely you do compare CD to CD and/or files to files.)))
If you done everything right, you should easily hear that ripped files have a little bit less of everything i.e. less micro musical nuances, less airiness, different voice tembres, etc., compared to CD. It is similar to Xerox copy, i.e. everything looks the same (the writing is still there :~)) but a little bit less of everything, less clarity, less contrast etc. I wish I knew what causing it and how to fix it, but unfortunately I don't. (((

Audiogoner, Steven Are you in CA? I would love to come to your place that you prove me wrong. No, seriously, i would the happiest guy in the world if you prove that I'm wrong, and i swear i'll post about it. And i'm not even discussing rewritten CD-R. Just prove to me (by audition) that your own CD ROM with source CD won't beat files ripped from it. Deal?

Steven, this is not the point of the argument! This is exactly how people get derailed in their findings of the truth!) I'm talking about apples and you talking about potatoes. I'm not disputing jitter or whatever what is happening in playback. I assume (cause i don't know for a fact) that you right on that and if you had the original files which were copied to the CD by recording companies,it would play much better through comp because its jitter free or whatever. But this is not the point here. The point here is that you loosing the quality of the sound (SQ) right there when you ripping/converting PCM files from CD in to WAV on your comp. And said loss of SQ can't be compensated by jitter free playback. Whatever musical micro nuances lost in conversion they gone for good and you can't resurrect them by play it back by allegedly jitter free way.)

To: Audioengr, Pokey77 and Almarg: Guys, I think i know whats going on here,;~) but I won't be jumping the guns until i see Steeven at The show and listen to his "bit perfect rip" on his server and than we'll see if somebody really need a hearing specialist or something else is going on because of somebody's involvement with the industry. If, on the other hand, Steeven will show to me that i was doing something terribly wrong for the last 7 years) and CD and files are in fact sounds identical, i will gladly apologise to all of you guys and convert all my CDs to comp(we all know this wan't happening right ;~)). Until then there is no doubt in my mind or moreover ears))) that ripped files loosing micro(but very important ) musical information compare to CD it ripped from. Sound gets muddier, less separation, less air between the notes, voice timbres are not the same any more (DIana Krell "Quite Nits" rip comes to mind), the wind blowing less apparent, priorities and characteristics of sounds are different etc.

Electroslacker: The analogy of ripping to a Xerox copy is in audio dimension, not in digital one. I.e. it just to give a hint to all of you what specific loss of SQ i'm complaining about and what you should look for when comparing CD to files. I'm on my way to T.H.E. Show. Talk later.

The trip to T.H.E. show was complete waste as I expected. Apparently, Steeven (“Audiogoner”) commented on my posts without even having neither ability nor desire to compare "apples to apples" i.e. his “highly tweaked” comp/ripper does not have ability to playback CDs, only files, hence one can’t compare SQ of files to CD playback played from the same computer (which was my original comment about.). However, after coming back from show, I decided to do very final experiment just to be absolutely sure in what I’m saying, i.e. that SQ of ripped files indeed inferior to the SQ of the same cuts played back from the same CD/CDROM. This time I finally downloaded AccurateRip soft, which was suggested by many Audiogoners, but was, for some error on my part, not available to me on my Mac Book pro, hence I mostly used ITunes for the ripping hence all my prior comments were based on such experience. So, I downloaded AccuRip to my PC and did some ripping and comparing using headphones directly to computer analog out. Yes, SQ of files ripped using AccurateRip is significantly!!! better than those ripped on ITunes and now was almost (not 100% though) identical to the sound of CD. However files were still slightly less transparent compared to the CD playback and I still can blindly tell the difference if listening in headphones. However, all other problems, complained about by me earlier, i.e. voice timbre change, noticeable loss of extensions and transparency etc., were no longer there. Does that mean that my I-5, “no fan” PC, hooked by Illuminati I-90 cable to my Reimyo777 DAC beats or at least matches my (hundred years old, but finally fixed)) Teac VRDS-10 used as transport to the same Reimyo 777 ? No way! Not even close! Once again, to me, computer as a transport/player does make a sense only for free digital music downloads or as non-stop, rendom playing device (it freezes time to time though)) for non-critical listening.