Lossless - when is it not so?

[iVinyl]

I thought that lossless encoders were just that, bit perfect representations of the CD or source.  I got into a bit of an argument with a Naim user who had 'perfect rips' of the CD's onto their hard drive. He claims that the output of that system compared to say, the FLAC output of a Rockbox'd iRiver through its SPDIF will be different. His further claims suggested that not all FLAC's are created equal. When I mentioned ALE - then all bets were off.....

I guess the folks here, and at Rockbox should know more about these kind of things that I do. If we were to compare the SPDIF outputs of digital transports playing WAV, FLAC and ALE - would they all be the same?

regards
Chris

[evilnick]

As far as I know (and there are plenty of people who could be far more technical about this) all FLAC files are lossless - the difference in the compression levels just refer to the size of the compressed file.

If you rely on ALE then this might have changed your perceptions 

(ALE is usually referred to as ALAC)

[Buschel]

The formats themselves and the compression algorithms used are lossless. That means the output after decoding is 100% the same as before the compression. Example: Use a wav-file and compress it, then decode it to an output wav file. Both wav files have identical content now.
*If* there is any difference audible when comparing both units either the ALAC/APE/FLAC/WAV decoder is faulty or there are issues with the SPDIF connection.

[iVinyl]

thanks folks - I suspect this is Naim forum snake oil.

Chris