[X4U] importing audio CD as AIFF

[Kirk McElhearn]

On Apr 30, 2005, at 4:53 PM, DZ-Jay 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.

Sorry to quote so much, but, for completeness, if someone comes in in  
the middle of the thread, it is necessary. And, yes, your argument is  
wrong. The whole point of digital music is that it is digital, and  
never gets converted to analog (except when you listen to it). That's  
why digital copies are the same quality as the originals.

It's not applications that access the raw data on disc; it's the file  
system and operating system.


Kirk

             Author of: How to Do Everything with Mac OS X Panther
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