how does ripping a stream work? is it a transcode?

[airtas]

sites like purevolume, myspace, reverbnation, lala use streams obviosuly but when using a media catcher (not recorder) are you capturing the file as is or do their players transcode the file on the fly thus your catching a worse version

If you record from a sound card, you lose some quality (of course you can use lossless formats, but then you will waste hard disk space).

If you download stream or capture packets from a streaming media player, you get a perfect digital copy of the stream (without any quality loss).

[airtas]

Originally Posted by Stream Recorder

If you record from a sound card, you lose some quality (of course you can use lossless formats, but then you will waste hard disk space).

If you download stream or capture packets from a streaming media player, you get a perfect digital copy of the stream (without any quality loss).

but what if the player transcodes the original file?

or does that not happen

Originally Posted by airtas

but what if the player transcodes the original file?

or does that not happen

I don't really know what you mean by transcoding the original file.

[airtas]

like it the original file is 320 kbps is it possible the stream is outputting at 128?

Originally Posted by airtas

like it the original file is 320 kbps is it possible the stream is outputting at 128?

The original file can be anything... the output is defined by a streaming server. If you do not convert anything on the fly, you will download or capture the exact digital copy of the stream that a streaming severs sends. Streaming media downloaders and streaming media capture software gets the same data as streaming media players.