I may have a hunch why both your tracks sounded poorly. If you're doing the track processing on your computer, the sound card plays a huge role, and by using low sound quality sound card will have very bad results, and it does not matter if it is 320 or 128, it will all sound like poo. And none of the X-Fi cards qualify for good sound for music. You need at least a Xonar. When processing, X-fi cards degrade the sound too much, and with Xonar I havent noticed any loss.

 

sound card is a creative audigy zs, and the rip is from the rebirth cd which i bought...after you mentioned the music I liked it and decided to buy it. Can you share one of your rips so I can hear the difference in quality...I have no problem replacing my sound card if it's noticeable. As is though the track was not switched at 2:10 or close to that time.

 

actually let me clarify...the cd is a burned copy from a club DJ. It cost me $5 bucks, but all this guys stuff is direct cd to cd rip...though i didn't witness it. It's possible that that track is not cd quality. The first track is from the original CD though, as I have the Alpine test disc. Anyway, on my equipment it seems pretty clear that there's no audible differences.

 

Sounded fine to me and i have a xonar essence stx (300.00 sound card) and denon d5000 cans. Sasha, if you can share your file, i'd love to compare them myself.

 

Not sure if I can explain it properly, but it seems on lower quality sound cards, you could have a good sounding rip, and then you can process it into 320 and 128, and the original file and 320 and 128 will sound pretty much identical, as it the card is playing back all files at its own quality limitatiuons, and that sound may not sound better then 128.

To people who havent experienced Xonar D2, Xonar Essence, or HT Omega Halo, you havent experienced music on your PC. It is night and day. Even if someone has a Xonar like alphadog to play back the file, the file sort of is limited to 128, but if you have a prooven good rip and use Xonar to process the file, I am willing to bet the changes will be very noticable. Audigy is prolly worse than X-Fi. Xonar D2 is minimum requirement, and pc music experience will be changed forever. Most musicians/dj's/producers use crap for cards, and their music sounds like crap. Laptop dj's sets sound like real crap in clubs unless they use high quality stand-alone cards, and very few realize it. I dj and make mixes at home using my pc with Xonar, and people are blown away by the quality difference. Denonite, get Xonar, if not for the purpose of this test, but if you care about your music hobby and SQ, I do and I only use high quality gear as much as I can.

 

that should only affect the playback and the processing of the compressed(lossy) portions. Since it's all digital the wav/lossless portions should remain bit for bit exact. Therefore, the difference should be even greater with a poor or lower quality sound card as it would do a poorer job of compressing the information. The only portion that can cause a problem here is the mixer because it's filters or components could bestow it's own signature into the track that we may not know about...however, since it's doing the same thing to both the lossless and the lossy...you should still be able to hear the difference.

 

Not sure if I can explain it properly, but it seems on lower quality sound cards, you could have a good sounding rip, and then you can process it into 320 and 128, and the original file and 320 and 128 will sound pretty much identical, as it the card is playing back all files at its own quality limitatiuons, and that sound may not sound better then 128.

To people who havent experienced Xonar D2, Xonar Essence, or HT Omega Halo, you havent experienced music on your PC. It is night and day. Even if someone has a Xonar like alphadog to play back the file, the file sort of is limited to 128, but if you have a prooven good rip and use Xonar to process the file, I am willing to bet the changes will be very noticable. Audigy is prolly worse than X-Fi. Xonar D2 is minimum requirement, and pc music experience will be changed forever. Most musicians/dj's/producers use crap for cards, and their music sounds like crap. Laptop dj's sets sound like real crap in clubs unless they use high quality stand-alone cards, and very few realize it. I dj and make mixes at home using my pc with Xonar, and people are blown away by the quality difference. Denonite, get Xonar, if not for the purpose of this test, but if you care about your music hobby and SQ, I do and I only use high quality gear as much as I can.

 

I took a listen to it and I believe I could hear changes around :33 and 1:43, the change at :33 was noticeable with a change in depth or deepness of the voice.

The change at 1:43 was hard to detect, maybe there wasn't even a change, hard to tell.

I did my listening thru the PC with Winamp out thru the line outputs connected to an old JCV intergrated amp and Sennheiser HD437 headphones.

 

the one at :33 you should notice...but that doesn't count as I mentioned it when I posted the file...

"it might take a while to download since it's a wav file that's 47 mb. A couple of notes,
the first 33 seconds is the period where i'm synching the two tracks and they are summed, so the bass is noticeably boosted (the mixer is in the center position playing both tracks). At 33 seconds I switch to lossless...and from there...you have to tell me at what times I switch to the 112 kbs track. Post your times and I'll tell you if you're right. Simple!!"

...sorry no change at 1:45.

 

Just as a little fyi....track 1 has 9 changes after :33 seconds from lossless to 112 and back...track 2 has 3 changes except for the obvious one at :33 seconds.