[X4U] importing audio CD as AIFF

[DZ-Jay]

On Apr 30, 2005, at 09:57, Kirk McElhearn wrote:

>>
>> But that's only because when you zip a computer file, you have access 
>> to its raw data via the filesystem, and you are encoding and 
>> compressing the original information bit by bit.  Audio CDs are not 
>> read directly by applications, not many commercial applications 
>> anyway; there are layers of abstraction in between, just to lengthen 
>> the gap between the digital information stored in the disc and the 
>> consumption of the user of it.  For many reasons, mostly political, 
>> mere mortals like us are not supposed to have direct access to the 
>> source material, at least not easy access that can lead to wholesale 
>> duplication, and hence piracy, by any tom, dick, or harry.
>
> I'm not sure I get your argument. Lossless compression is lossless; 
> you don't lose anything. When you decompress you have exactly the same 
> thing as the original music files. Whether it is Apple Lossless, FLAC 
> or SHN, they all work the same.

My argument is that when you compress/decompress, you are not (or might 
not be) operating on the original source bit-stream on the disc, but on 
a facsimile that is the result of Digital-to-Analog decoding by the 
sound card, re-digitized back into a bit-stream by sampling the decoded 
stream.  Therefore, you are not losing absolutely anything from your 
source -- but your source is not the original bit-stream on the disc.  
Granted, the Digital-to-Analog-then-back-to-Digitial conversion does 
not lose much that is perceptible by us humans (if they lose anything 
at all), but it is still not a bit-by-bit reproduction.

Of course, this argument is based on my original conception that many 
commercial applications have no access to the raw data on the disc, but 
to whatever the sound card -- or the drive's hardware -- feed to it.  
 From what has been discussed in this thread before, this seems to be 
the case, but if this assertion is false, then my argument above is, of 
course, wrong.

	dZ.

-- 
"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate"

	-- Occam's Razor