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

[Tim]

I spent the best part of a couple of day's testing formats, especially FLAC and WAV before commencing the task of ripping my entire collection (its been discussed before as John points out). I settled on FLAC as I could not discern any difference. I'm not disagreeing that there may be an audible difference, just that I personally can't hear one, so for me FLAC is where I am and where I'm staying. I am more than happy with what I have and much prefer to spend my time listening to music

[dave2010]

Odd. We trod these paths a while back, and Stan asserted rather strongly IIRC that wav sounded better. There also seemed to be some who said that there was no difference, and quite a number who stated, and apparently verified, that bit perfect streams really work. If there is a difference, positive or otherwise, surely it must be due to secondary effects - timing, power etc. I queried the coding in the previous thread, but several said that the flac or alac coding had been well tested, so software problems were ruled out as a source of differences.

[bobbasrah]

Odd. We trod these paths a while back, and Stan asserted rather strongly IIRC that wav sounded better. There also seemed to be some who said that there was no difference, and quite a number who stated, and apparently verified, that bit perfect streams really work. If there is a difference, positive or otherwise, surely it must be due to secondary effects - timing, power etc. I queried the coding in the previous thread, but several said that the flac or alac coding had been well tested, so software problems were ruled out as a source of differences.

This is where we have perhaps been mis-directed Dave.
The motherboard components, OS, and critically player software coding, may account for the differences. The focus at the time of that FLAC/WAV thread looked to file characteristics etc as a logical reason for the difference, rather than the environment.

[Vincent Kars]

Many have done the test
WAV1 > FLAC/ALAC/AIFF > WAV2
All these test yield the same result: WAV1 and WAV2 are bit identical.
A testing method a bit rare is to record e.g. the SPDIF out. Now you capture exactly what has been send to the DAC.
This is a bit more complex but what I have found on the internet again is zero difference.
It is highly unlikely that the difference is at bit level.

Some time ago, there was some stir because of an article in TAS.
Guys did WAV1 > FLAC > WAV2 and where hearing a difference between WAV1 and WAV2.
Their conclusion: FLAC degrades the sound quality permanently!
Of course they were to ignorant to do a bit wise comparison between WAV1 and WAV2
This I do think a typical case of hearing differences simply due to our perception.
Our perception is horribly unreliable; it lures us in hearing differences that are not there.

A technical answer in my opinion is true memory playback.
If all I/O and all decoding is done before playback starts, we have a buffer with identical “DAC ready” output.
This should eliminate all possible differences due to software-induced jitter.

BTW: a nice example how I was fooled by my perception can be found here: http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showth...-my-perception

[SteveW]

As I have been a recent convert to using a Linn Majik DS outputting to a Beresford Bushmaster (quite outstanding sound quality..and elevates the Majik to a far higher level) I have spent a fair amount of time of late ripping CD's and downloading Flac files..all stored on a QNAP twin drive NAS thingy, as well as a few on a PC laptop.
This topic was of obvious interest, and I was also vaguely aware of the subject of transcoding on the fly.
So half an hour ago I downloaded MinimServer onto my laptop as I had been reading that a recent update has given it the ability to play wav files from flac. Then Linn's Kinsky pics up the server for the DS to play.
Sure enough.. Just listening to Julian Bream and John Williams 'Together' as a wav file transcoded from the original flac sounds better. Individual guitars have a bit more air and definition around them.
Still have to figure out how to get MinimServer onto the NAS..but seems like the way to go.