In the process of converting Flac files to Wav..have I gone mad!? Well, no actually..

[Gazjam]

Been thinking about this for a while, doing research on User opinion on various forums and MORE IMPORTANTLY listening with my own ears.

I started a thread over here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=75097.0

The usual snag with WAV is that you can lose Tagging information, however this is not a problem with Jriver.
Yep, I know that when a Flac is uncompressed IT IS THE SAME BIT FOR BIT as the original Wav file, no argument here.

After spending a lot og time experimenting with this stuff, my opinion is that its the "on the fly" conversion of Flac to PCM before it is sent to your Dac that makes the difference.
Its an extra process in the chain before the music file is sent to your Dac.
Why have it if you don't need to?

When I ran a Squeezebox Touch one of the more effective tweaks was to have Flac decoding done by the Server as opposed to the Touch itself.

I think this is a similar principle to what is happening here, albeit not due to hardware limitations as was the case with the Touch.
No, I think its the extra software decoding process that's doing something.
Whether its the Flac codec itself that's not 100% or its a Windows/CPU cycles phenomenon I don't know...
and having spent hours comparing with all sorts of different types of music I don't care!

there IS a difference - not night and day - but you miss it when its not there.

This is just my view, I'm not out to argue my case or justify what I think, just putting it out there for others to try or ignore.
Either way is cool.

So thats my strategy and I don't need to think about it anymore.
Fit(convert) 'n forget.
Use Wav for playback, use Flac for my backup.

Try converting a flac of some music you know really well to Wav..see what you think.

[AlfaGTV]

Your findings are similar to mine, and i fully agree with your statement that "something is missing" when playing losslessly compressed files, whether they are ALAC or FLAC doesn't seem to matter.
WAV and AIFF have some "air" and clearer definition of what going on in the music.

Regards Mike

[WAD62]

I've done a few experiments with FLAC, a SBtouch, LMS, and my M-DAC's 'bit perfect' test...

http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?t=21132

...from a data supply perspective one can't do better than 'bit perfect', into the DAC via asynchronous USB (with a galvanic isolator).

However there may be other factors affecting you sound quality Gaz, if your touch is transcoding (ie. working more), and you're not galvanically isolated from your DAC (are you using coax?) then perhaps that's what's degrading your sound...i.e. the secondary effects of transcoding, not the data itself, particularly if you're using a synchronous connection...Jitter? Interference etc.?

[Clive]

then perhaps that's what's degrading your sound...i.e. the secondary effects of transcoding, not the data itself.

Yes, I believe that's what he's saying.

I use JPLAYmini, there's another reason for me to use WAV - JPLAY converts flac to wav and stores both in memory. This in-memory player sounds best with smaller memory allocations so flac in this case just wastes space and degrades sound quality due to increased memory requirements.

[WAD62]

Yes, I believe that's what he's saying.

I use JPLAYmini, there's another reason for me to use WAV - JPLAY converts flac to wav and stores both in memory. This in-memory player sounds best with smaller memory allocations so flac in this case just wastes space and degrades sound quality due to increased memory requirements.

So it's rather dependant on your DAC's architecture, and connection type...

As I'm using an asynchronous USB connection I should be jitter free, and as I'm using a USB isolator, I should be interference free, and as I'm getting 'Bit Perfect' at the DAC I can't see where the improvement will come from

However in the interest of science I'll have a little experiment when I get some time

[Yomanze]

Hi Gaz, yep, I agree with WAV / AIFF sounding marginally better than FLAC / ALAC. As you may have read on another thread I verified this via Foobar2000's ABX comparator, so the naysayers couldn't hit back at me with the "yeah, but did you do a double blind test?" line...

[Clive]

So it's rather dependant on your DAC's architecture, and connection type...

As I'm using an asynchronous USB connection I should be jitter free, and as I'm using a USB isolator, I should be interference free, and as I'm getting 'Bit Perfect' at the DAC I can't see where the improvement will come from

However in the interest of science I'll have a little experiment when I get some time

It does depend on the details of the setup. I too use async but bit perfect can be a long way from jitter free (bit perfect just means you have all the bits present and in the right order, it says nothing about timing). It seems that most dacs do very little internal buffering (even though they often claim differently). So they are very dependent on the timing of the data arriving at the dac input. Breaking the data down into the smallest packets possible for a given PC seems IME gives the best quality. This is what JPLAY does, it does its level best to turn windows into an RT O/S so the data is properly timed.

[Gazjam]

So it's rather dependant on your DAC's architecture, and connection type...

As I'm using an asynchronous USB connection I should be jitter free, and as I'm using a USB isolator, I should be interference free, and as I'm getting 'Bit Perfect' at the DAC I can't see where the improvement will come from

However in the interest of science I'll have a little experiment when I get some time

My setup:
Server >asynchronous usb> Vlink192 >coax> Rega Dac
The Vlink has galvanic isolation as does the Rega.

(dont use a Touch)

There is an additional process in the chain when Flac is uncompressed before hitting your dac which you don't get playing from Wav...and to me this is where the difference must come from.

I agree bitperfect is bitperfect, not suggesting otherwise.

*Edit*
Converting to AIFF rather than WAV

[wee tee cee]

Loaded j river a few days ago....I have wav and i tunes losless tracks in duplicate for a few tracks. I was playing around last night and noticed a slight but noticeable difference between the two but thought it was just my imagination.....really should trust my ears more....

[Ammonite Audio]

My consistent experience is that WAV results in more musically satisfying reproduction than FLAC, particularly when I used Foobar2000 - the difference between FLAC and WAV narrowed when I moved to J River, but is still there. How much of the difference is simply due to different FLAC codecs and inefficient conversion? How can we be sure that we are comparing eggs with eggs, as it were? I can't be arsed with any of that, so I use WAV almost exclusively. J River manages to tag WAV files, so there are no problems with file organisation.