Newbie question: FLAC 24 bit with fb2k, have I made a serious mistake?
2010-01-02 00:09:26
Hi all First off, im not an experienced jetbrain when it comes to audio formats, but nonetheless about a ½ year ago, after a lot of research, I decided to rip my entire CD collection to FLAC in 24 bit with fb2k, to ensure the best quality possible for my music I could get without binding me to Windows/Leopard/etc. (I started out by using EAC, but it was to slow a process for my patience) I have an Auzentech audio card with 24 bit unit, therefore i followed what several guides recommended me to do and used the best resolution my soundcard would support in the fb2k setup under Output Bit Depth , which was 24 bit. This works superb with my SqueezeBoxes and my wonderfull DynAudio speaker setup and i have been so happy with the quality over my old mp3/wma's .Problem: Yesterday i bought a portable player for my FLAC's, a Sansa Clip+, so that I could take with me when running. The Sansa Clip+ claimed to support FLAC and is capable of playing FLAC's ripped to 16 bit, but not FLAC's ripped to 24 bit. I posted in the Sansa forum and got an answer telling me to convert all my 24 bit FLAC's to 16 bit, instead of waiting for them to upgrade the firmware. Also they claimed that this would NOT affect my FLAC's quality.Question: Can I convert my 24bit ripped FLAC's to 16bit without losing ANY quality of my FLAC files? I know that CD's only are 16 bit, but I thought that setting the Output Bit Depth to 24 bit, matching my soundcard, would give me some degree of better resolution when running the compression algorithms and encoding/decoding. I have ripped +1500 CD's to 24 bit FLAC, so it's a big job starting the conversion or restart the ripping/tagging. Please if anyone could enlighten me I would very much appreciate it, as im scared of messing up my entire collection when converting to 16 bit and having to start all over with the rips :S. If that is what you guys would recommend? Kind regards Christian