Disadvantage of 96/24 FLac´s ?

[mrfritzle]

Hello everybody out there,

could some of the rockbox team be so kind an tell if there is a disadvantage for the sound quality.
if I use Flac´s with 96/24 (I know that only 44.1/16 is possible with this dac)

I would like to buy a few studio masters and tried a few sample songs.
...but Iam not 100% satisfied with the result.

Will it be better to re-encode them to 44.1/16, then to play them native ?

Environment: Ipod 5.5 (120 GB CF) with Fiio E12 (Fiio L10) and AKG Q701 / Sennheiser HD 650

Best regards and many greetings from germany

MrFritzle

[saratoga]

Yes you will get better results if you encode your files at the sampling rate you run the DAC at.

[Julian67]

If your DAC can't support 96/24 then it makes no sense to buy it.  It may or may not be that it makes sense if your DAC does support it but that is another debate for another place.  When you play 96/24 on hardware that supports only 44.1/16 then at some point the bit depth is going to be reduced and the sample rate converted down.  You can 99.9% guarantee that the record company performs this task much better than your iPod or portable DAC so, unfortunately, what you are getting for the extra pennies spent on "Hi Res" can only be worse than if you bought the ordinary CD or 44.1/16 files.  If I had bought those files I would convert them on PC to 44.1/16 with a good quality audio tool like SoX and only then listen to them or copy them to my portable player.  Keep the originals of course as perhaps one day you will have a home audio set up where you can assess them, but for the moment they are not exactly beneficial or useful.

[mrfritzle]

Hi Julian, my Squeezebox Touch and my FiiO X3 supporting the 96/24 and so its nice for me to buy the best quality that is available.
...but i was not sure what the right process to bring the file to my Rockbox Ipod. Do you have good xperience with SoX ?

Greetinx MrFritzle

[saratoga]

Sox is fine.

[Julian67]

Do you have good xperience with SoX ?

Greetinx MrFritzle

To convert a two channel "hi res" file to 16-bit 44100 flac I use a script that automates something like

Code: [Select]

sox --no-clobber -G INFILE.flac -b 16 OUTFILE.flac rate -v 44100 dither -s

--no-clobber means sox will not overwrite the original file, so choose a suitable name for OUTFILE.flac.  Metadata will be preserved.

-G prevents clipping (otherwise happens often with this kind of conversion)

rate -v selects the best quality sample rate converter.

dither -s will use dithering and noise shaping to help preserve dynamic range and is recommended when downsampling.  SoX manual always uses 'dither -s' in examples for this kind of conversion so I imitate like a monkey.

I've never been able to hear the difference between the hi-res originals and my conversions but I don't have the kind of DAC or amazing amp and speakers or suitable listening room or even a quiet environment that would allow any difference to be heard if it existed.  The main thing is that it's 100% guaranteed that you won't find any deficiency on iPod and headphones.

[mrfritzle]

Hi Julian,

many thx for for the reply and the script ...., but (sorry i try to google it, but did found something for windows)
do you also have a script for converting the complete Folder in to an another ?
I bought a lot of files at hdtracks and its hard to converting them by filename
Many thx in advance

Thilo

[saratoga]

Unless you must use the command line I would use a GUI tool like foobar.  Its resampler is also very good.

[mrfritzle]

I tried it with www.justmastering.com/tools-soxgui.php‎ and it generate me the following batch file (drag and drop the files to the batch):

Code: [Select]

cd %~dp0
FOR %%A IN (%*) DO sox  -S -V2 %%A -b 16 "C:\SoX Output\/VHQ (LP) 16Bit 44100 TPDF.%%~nxA" rate -v -s 44100 stats
pause
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe "C:\SoX Output\"

...but getting an error message: sox FAIL formats: no handler for detected file type `flac'

In the End i downloaded db poweramp music converter trial and used the DSP Effects. So for me its just fine.

...but maybe someone also searching for the error and someone can post the answer. I didn´t found the helping hint.

ThX for all your replys and the helping hand

P.S: My OS is Windows