Posted 06/02/2007 at 10:45:07am

I really didn't find this article to be useful. Of course the two formats sound about the same coming from an Apple IPod. It is generally known that the Digital Audio Converter (DAC) used in the IPod is very limited, even compared to other MP3 players. Further, as another post indicated, headphones aren't very good for evaluating sound quality. I don't think any of the compressed formats are very good. To help you understand why I think so, let me explain the audio setup I use for listening. I don't use hand-held players when I really want to listen to digital audio. Instead, I use a SlimDevices Squeezebox playing uncompressed WAV (ripped from the original CDs) through its ANALOG outputs (I've tested them and they sound better than the digital outputs) through a Pioneer VSX-56Txi amp into a pair of large tower speakers. I also have a CD/DVD player connected through the same amp. On my system, a DVD playing uncompressed PCM 48/24 sounds much better than a CD playing PCM 44.1/16 (example: music tracks from U2's "Making of Joshua Tree" DVD vs. the "Joshua Tree" CD), so saying that these compressed formats sound as good as CD isn't saying much. There is an article in the Feb. '07 issue of Audio Xpress magazine that describes burning music to DVD in detail for this very reason. But moving onto the "Compressed as good as CD" question, I also have the two-disc DVD/CD/DVD-ROM version of the album "Forget Yourself" by The Church. When I play the compressed files from the DVD-ROM against the uncompressed content on the CD, I can hear the difference VERY easily. If you can't find a difference extending from 128K compression to 300K compression to uncompressed from CD, then I respectfully suggest that your testing methods may be flawed. There are a number of additional issues related to compressed formats that need to be covered. For instance, the media isn't covering claims from some in the audio community that "lossless audio compression" sometimes isn't really lossless because the codec algorithm, operating in real-time, is introducing audible temporal jitter to data stream going to the DAC on playback. Any chance MaximumPC could run a story on that? Anyway, I suggest that someone should improve these reviews. -- Thorn