A short and pointless story with a moral (I'm sure others have been here)
I was merrily living my life away in the 'subjective camp' for a good few years now. "LAME mp3 @ 128 High quality is good enough for me, I can't hear the difference" I said.
They were happy days.
One day came along and I said "I've worked hard for my money. I'm going to spend a butt-load of money on some speakers, an amp and a good sound card"
I trotted off to my local audio shop and booked a few "listening"
I returned to my local audio shop the following week and was not impressed by what I heard
I went to the next shop further afield and booked a few "listening"
I returned to the next shop the following week and was not impressed by what I heard
After a few more weeks going more and more afield I was growing despondent, "If I'm spending this much money I want it to sound good" I cried
I went even further afield and found a shop that said they had what I wanted for about my budget and so I booked a "listening"
I returned to the shop the following week and was most impressed with what I heard, a grin formed from ear to ear. "This is the system for me", I said.
The shop assistant then told me the price and I said "but that's more than the budget I gave".
He said "You did not deal with me last week, I was on holiday. Who specified this system for your budget?"
I replied "That dumbass out front!"
He said "Oh. Yes. He is a dumbass"
I said "Can I go for a coffee to think things over?"
He said "Sure"
I walked around and I thought about what I had heard and finally I decided to take the plunge. "I could pay off the extra next month" I said.
I returned to the shop, paid the money, and left with a bit of paper telling me I had paid them some money.
I waited, and I waited, and I waited.
Finally, 7 to 10 days later, my purchase arrived and I did smile a smile of a thousand men.
I spent 4 hours unpacking, running cables, configuring settings and finally traipsed off to bed waiting for daylight to come and the volume to rise!
The morning dawned not a moment too soon, I ran down the stairs (well actually .... I walked down, had a coffee and a smoke, then another coffee, a sit, another coffee and a smoke, and another coffee), turned on my amp, turned up the volume (realised it was still early and turned the volume back down a bit), put in a "THX certified" dvd and pressed play.
Once again I smiled the smile of a thousand men.
Later that day ......
I returned to my new toy to choose some of my favourite tracks from my timeconsumingly(tm) ripped CD's, queued them up and pressed play.
Something was wrong.
These songs never used to sound like this.
These songs never used to sound this .... bad.
What could be wrong?
What is that stupid water sound I hear at the high end?
Is that ...?
Could that be ...?
A compression artifact?!?!
"Nooooo" I screamed into the sunset, "Now I have to rip them all again but use a lossless format!"
But as they say: Every cloud has a silver lining.
"At least I will save the excess of my costs by not 'going out' for a month while I rip my CD's again!"
Bottom line: You may not be able to hear differences now, but that's probably because your equipment isn't up to producing the range of sounds that the original copy contains. Spend the money on the disk space and save yourself time in the future by ripping losslessly. Personally I'm going to go with APE ripping in 'secure mode', probably because I've been with MJ/MC for a few years now and I can't imagine my support for them or their support for APE ever dropping