Quote in conclusion on page 6
“Nonetheless, our results show that there is no FLAC compression setting that equals the SQ of the native WAV file.”
Not sure of how legit these guys are but if they did take the time to do all this its eye opening.
Getting sort of ticked off at the world right now as this is how much of the music people download use. Or even purchase. It really comes down to how much compression is used when ripped (I have to check what I have been using) and how good your playback system is.
Cool footnote #3 : “3 Direct evidence that this speculation is correct comes from the ability of the PS Audio DS-DAC used in these experiments to display actual sampling frequencies and bit-depths. All of the files showing compression ratios in excess of ~75%, while being marketed as 24-bit recordings, show actual bit depths of 20, 18 or 16 bits suggesting intentional or unintentional practices.”
it is.
it’s the processing / decompressing of FLAC within the streamer that adds noise etc (and non correlated noise mostly).
in fact it is a good argument for using USB to the DAC since that would separate the decompressing into a different t unit than the DAC and it’s stream clocking, though of course USB brings its own noise issues.
aamoi you can do the bit test yourself by taking an aiff, converting to flac (with as high a compression setting as you like) then convert that flac back to aiff. the two aiff files will be identical
@joma0711 How do you tell they are same besides size? Its not just the noise coming in from processing, these articles talk about during encoding CPU needed to do that can cause bad compression. FLAC 0-5 is another setting that can effect. Seems that there are many hairs on the FLAC codec. People read Lossless in title, but dont realize it comes with warnings.
Curious how Roon ranks with decoding the FLAC. I assume it decodes FLAC to PCM and then sends via RAAT. But I dont know for sure.
Thus implying, individual comparisons are likely to lead to varying results. Personally, I just ripped my CDs to AIFF, and skipped FLAC altogether. One reason was at the time I was in a Apple-Mac environ, and second at the time I was led to believe AIFF carried the meta data forward as well. Only problem, self induced, with AIFF is my server is full up. I plan on increasing its capacity this summer.
a checksum comparison of the files (requires some IT arm-waving) - before i started using flac i did the test repeatedly with different music files and different compression levels.
bit perfect every single time.
i use a mix of aiff and flac here, with no issues or SQ concerns, but i did put some effort in to keeping the cpu noise away from the dac (earthing and in some cases optical isolation).
it’s all good fun, and everybody’s experience will be different due to the cpu noise levels being so specific to each design of streamer and dac
Yeah that is best no matter what the format. Roon → sonore optical network → Dac via USB is what I use. I found the sound wonderful, but I dont have a good enough transport to A/B.
I used dBpoweamp Music Converter to convert all of the Apple Music files my kids had purchased and downloaded to the family iMac and my research indicated AIFF was, ironically (given Apple’s previous rep. and actions), the best truly lossless format that allowed for meta-data carryover and tagging.
When I committed to ripping and storing my CDs at the time, I jumped straight to AIFF and never looked back.
Obviously better than the native Apple files at the time and more practical than WAV… I have never had the desire to, and have not, compare AIFF files to other, truly lossless file formats.
My CD ripper (Naim Uniti Core) gives me the choice to rip to FLAC or WAV (no AIFF) The discussion above encouraged me to carry out a test, and aye! WAV sounds better spatially in general and more obviously in the mid-bass register. YMMV
Al, I had a nice round of golf, so I have a very calm mind, and I have Not started drinking the nice bottle of single malt yet.
All it took was one song. Yes, one song from an old Ana Caram Bossa Nova cd-ripping for me to tell the difference. There is no question AIFF sounded smoother and clearer than FLAC (8). In my system it is easy to hear, and yours for sure will make a more obvious difference.
Looks like I must delete all my FLAC files and re-rip them into AIFF. I mean, I cannot live with FLAC anymore. Luckily, the Euphony is new, so I only made a couple hundred CDs so far. Darn, still…
My understanding is WAV doesn’t support meta data as does AIFF. Depending on the application this may or may not matter. Sonically they are equivalent IME.
Apps from Naim and Roon allow me to manage my library (regardless of file format) and store data using either iPad or PC. Library and file data backup is scheduled to auto run every 4 days.
SQ should be awfully close if not the same, and I remember the two formats sounded a lot closer. I chose AIFF because all my other downloads were in that format.
For me, network media > Oppo 205 w/LPS. But getting there took a lot of work. Among many other tweaks, I converted my entire LAN to fiber and utilize too many LPSs than I care to admit. But it was/is well worth it! The DSD Bridge II is now as quiet as a full Sonore oR setup with the all-fiber LAN. And that is really something because it was incredibly noisy (almost as bad as a phono pre when cranked up) when I first started toying around. Not sure why more don’t convert to fiber LANs. It is one of, if not the most under-rated upgrades you can do for your home audio/video experience.
