I've finally made up my mind about FLAC vs uncompressed...sigh. Hard drive makers rejoice.

[Avidlistener]

I’m running a maxed out Mac Pro 2013 running Jriver via an ethernet cable direct from the Mac (it has 2 ethernet ports) to an etherRegen and into a Directstream Dac/Bridge II.
I have always found that flac sounds worse than uncompressed. Even when using Jriver’s “load decoded file into memory” (64 gigs in the Mac).

Here’s the kicker. WAV sounds slightly better than Aif, and playing the file off a hardware based thunderbolt raid sounds better than playing the same file off a thunderbolt raid that uses softraid software based raid.

And all this is loading file into memory. It simply makes no sense, but it is audible on my TAD speakers.

I don’t convert all files to WAV, so I still have plenty of flac files around. I was recently listening to an album that sounded good but not great. Once I converted to WAV (I use MAX On OS X) the sound just became so natural and analog like.

I will try the suggestion in this thread for Mac software to convert to WAV.

 

[ayreman]

It would be great to read about your software choice
Reactions on WBF to these kinds of reported results are much more considered than elsewhere

I for one would appreciate reading your findings....

No, not publicly. Only through PM.

 

[christoph]

No, not publicly. Only through PM.

Please PM me?

 

[ayreman]

Please PM me?

Yes, if you wish.

 

[christoph]

Yes, if you wish.

please do

 

[Kingsrule]

No, not publicly. Only through PM.

OK please PM

Thank You

 

[Ian B]

I'm so glad I'm not the only "loony" who thinks that WAV sounds better than FLAC

Yes, I have figured out how to improve FLAC sound. All we need to do is DEcompress our FLACs. Another way of saying it is we need to convert our FLACs back into the original WAV and Bob's your uncle! Of course this raises the question what software we should use to accomplish this task. Originally I thought it didn't matter. I figured as long as we get our WAV - who cares how we done it. Oh no, no, no. How we do it matters immensely. In fact, some software I've tried did such a lousy job that I wish I'd never done that because the sound of those WAV-files sucked.

When I realized that the software we use to convert out FLACs back into WAVs makes a huge difference I began a 3-month long testing. I must've gone through almost two dozens of converter programs and did find the best of the lot I went through. I was so damn excited about it that I decided to share my discovery with fellow audiophiles on Audiophile Style. Guess what - those idiots pounced on me and accused me of advertising the software that I liked best. For this very reason I am not going to disclose my favorite software here. Instead I will repeat again: software matters immensely. So, go do your own testing and find your own favorite.

You are among friends...please spill the beans! I know the best converter is not dbPoweramp.

 

[Ian B]

Have you tried to covert flac to aiff offline and compare ? Let us know what

Yes, I used dbPoweramp and it actually created a bastard child that was worse than either first gen AIFF or FLAC. I need better software.

 

[Rick_B]

Yes, if you wish.

I, too, would appreciate knowing...

I've ripped in WAV format for around 20 years, thinking if I had a digital copy as close to what was on the CD/DVD, should better compression algorithms came along later then I'd have a better representation of the original file and this could only help improve the final product. Now with storage so cheap I have at least 4Tb of uncompressed files and easily that much free space. Most all the files I ripped are WAV and all the A2D recordings are 24/96 or 24/192 WAV using Vinyl Studio.

Over the years, though, I seemed to notice on my rips and A2D recordings that WAV sounded better than FLAC rips, downloads or shared files. I have used JRiver for several versions and have used it to rip CDs to hard drive or to make CDs for use in the car or other's systems. I have used DbPoweramp and Exact Audio Copy in the past, but using JRiver for everything makes it easier in cataloging my collection.

Sometimes I play the files from my HTPC over the Ethernet to the Squeezebox Touch connected to the Alpha DAC via SPDIF, but at other times and for DSD files I use a USB connected Chord Qute. Quobuz is usually streamed through the Touch, which passes 24/192 just fine, connected with wired networking instead of via wireless to my fiber optic fed Internet modem.

 

[Backpacker]

Please PM me.

 

[seeteeyou]

FYI - here's the converter and the original discussions seemed to be kinda nasty or something

https://www.audio-transcoder.com
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...software/page/3/?tab=comments#comment-1089215

Lots of fun to go through the entire thread over there.

 

[rando]

Not everyone has the same perception of what constitutes fun.

Look beyond the first level 'branding' and you'll soon find the majority of programs use SOX for conversion. So if you are capable of command line it is possible to just use SOX to do a high quality conversion.


There is one caveat to performing inverted quality conversion. Apple and seemingly nearly everyone else in the 00's produced a lot of... only issued as mp3 which some high end players refuse to license for playback. It can be handy to make a quick and dirty false lossless file of anything from music to podcasts to audio books on the rare occasion.

 

[analogsa]

Am I the only one thinking that converting wav > flac > wav has to always produce identical files, no matter what convertor is used ? Luckily, this is one of those rare occasions in audio where an objective answer is easily available

 

[Ian B]

Am I the only one thinking that converting wav > flac > wav has to always produce identical files, no matter what convertor is used ? Luckily, this is one of those rare occasions in audio where an objective answer is easily available

To be clear, we aren't talking about audio data. WAV may be a different story than AIFF because it doesn't hold metadata (though maybe some tags etc are changed). It also really sucks in a filing system, so I use AIFF which will inherit metadata/album art from FLAC and/or whatever the converter program generates. So in this case, the converter matters.

I did a comparison of AIFF>FLAC>AIFF vs WAV>FLAC>WAV on a 57Mb file. The WAV file size changed by 6 bytes, and the AIFF by 5 kilobytes. So definitely better to use WAV, but nothing is an absolutely perfect copy, at least with this program.

 

[analogsa]

To be clear, we aren't talking about audio data. WAV may be a different story than AIFF because it doesn't hold metadata (though maybe some tags etc are changed). It also really sucks in a filing system, so I use AIFF which will inherit metadata/album art from FLAC and/or whatever the converter program generates. So in this case, the converter matters.

I did a comparison of AIFF>FLAC>AIFF vs WAV>FLAC>WAV on a 57Mb file. The WAV file size changed by 6 bytes, and the AIFF by 5 kilobytes. So definitely better to use WAV, but nothing is an absolutely perfect copy, at least with this program.

This actually prompted me to confirm that "lossless" still means lossless. As so many everyday words and notions have dramatically changed meaning over the last few years

A sigh of relief.
wav > flac >aif > wav encoded and recoded using dbPoweramp results in bit identical wav files. Checked using Winmerge but countless binary file utilities can be used for the purpose.

Beginning from wav there was clearly no metadata involved. So what if we begin from a flac containing metadata?

flac > wav produces bit identical wav files as flac>aif>wav

No big surprises anywhere.

So, yes, the claim that a special converter can do miracles is still hilarious.

 

[Ian B]

This actually prompted me to confirm that "lossless" still means lossless. As so many everyday words and notions have dramatically changed meaning over the last few years

A sigh of relief.
wav > flac >aif > wav encoded and recoded using dbPoweramp results in bit identical wav files. Checked using Winmerge but countless binary file utilities can be used for the purpose.

Beginning from wav there was clearly no metadata involved. So what if we begin from a flac containing metadata?

flac > wav produces bit identical wav files as flac>aif>wav

No big surprises anywhere.

So, yes, the claim that a special converter can do miracles is still hilarious.

Hmm. I did the same process with dbPoweramp and the files absolutely changed. I'm not sophisticated enough to use a utility comparing the total data content, but each time the file size changed, plain as day.

 

[analogsa]

I have a suspicion that by file size you mean the amount of disk space your OS dedicates to the file. Different things.

 

[Ian B]

I have a suspicion that by file size you mean the amount of disk space your OS dedicates to the file. Different things.

On a Mac when you select "Get Info" on a item it shows both Size and the size "On disk", which tends to be a rounded up and higher number. I'm using only the actual size. The file sizes change through conversion/re-conversion, but substantially more with AIFF. The issue could be how dbPoweramp is set up to generate metadata and tags.

 

[Mikem53]

I recently spent some time ripping Some of my CD’s to WAV file while retaining the FLAC versions to compare. I do prefer the WAV file over the FLAC. I would attribute any differences due to the extra processing to convert the FLAC on the fly before playing. As mentioned above, FLACs will convert back to bit perfect WAV files.
The differences were subtle, and I’m not sure I could pick it out each time.. but I did perceive a slightly better SQ with WAV

 

[microstrip]

The reason for the differences in sound quality of these lossless formats in some DACs/servers is the computing power needed and the processing noise created for the extraction during playback. The process is bit exact.