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.