WAV vs FLAC

rbbert said:
Drive space is an issue for SSD's and RAMdisks, and for easy quick access to a large music collection.
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Well, you need to RAID your system with regular HDDs, the SSDs you just need for the playback. If you have a smart system, it will transfer the latest album request temporarily to SSD.

But keeping everything on solid states permanently neither offers a benefit, nor is it a very cost efficient approach.


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It's faster to decode FLAC to WAV (from a spinning drive to SSD or RAM) than it is to copy it. Try it yourself. Plus FLAC's built-in checksum gives you a heads-up if your data has been corrupted.
 
rbbert said:
Drive space is an issue for SSD's and RAMdisks, and for easy quick access to a large music collection.
Click to expand...


I suppose it depends on how much drive space you need. In my case, I have enough on each of my 2 TB SSDs that it would take me in excess of a year to listen to each and every track...I would need to just sit in a room day/night after day/night. I installed the 2TB in my McIntosh MB100. I have not violated the internals of my Aurender but have access to one of the 2TB drives. The other two are just backups. I have a 16TB Promise Raid but do not use it for steaming but just as a means for collecting data. Because RAID is not a back up solution. I have two additional separate drives [2 sets/different manufactures] off site as backups too. The RAID collects both audio and video. Cable directly connected to one of my OPPO BDP 105Ds. I do not bother with managing it over wifi/ethernet.
 
A bigger problem with FLAC and going directly into the Oppo is that even choosing the "gapless" option there is usually an audible transition at track breaks, but not that I have noticed with WAV or AIFF
 
Golucid said:
I suppose it depends on how much drive space you need. In my case, I have enough on each of my 2 TB SSDs that it would take me in excess of a year to listen to each and every track...I would need to just sit in a room day/night after day/night. I installed the 2TB in my McIntosh MB100. I have not violated the internals of my Aurender but have access to one of the 2TB drives. The other two are just backups. I have a 16TB Promise Raid but do not use it for steaming but just as a means for collecting data. Because RAID is not a back up solution. I have two additional separate drives [2 sets/different manufactures] off site as backups too. The RAID collects both audio and video. Cable directly connected to one of my OPPO BDP 105Ds. I do not bother with managing it over wifi/ethernet.
Click to expand...

It's interesting. I used to stream with different boxes like a Linn Klimax or Rosita Beta New, but switched to a direct USB cable connection from media storage to the DAC since I have the Aurender. I find the sound quality with a cable connection significantly better.


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rbbert said:
That was a confusing post. First, MQA is a lossy compression as opposed to lossless FLAC. Second, FLAC provides an internal checksum, verified by software than hardware, it is true, but the idea of anything being dependent on computer "hardware" is counter-productive.
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Was not referrencing Meridian's MQA.

The FLAC checksums you are referring to is for the integrity of the FLAC not the recording resolution itself. Anything can be upsampled and saved as a FLAC.

Rather these are new lossless standard definitions.

The definitions were developed by DEG, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the Recording Academy''s Producers & Engineers Wing, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group.

This is the problem I have currently with digital downloads. There is currently no catalogue certification process to ensure you are actually buying master recorded bits opposed to upsampled bits.
 
Interesting discussion! For the super slow :D, I still seem to be missing something: if the wav and flac files are "mathematically equivalent" and dac chips are very powerful and can easily handle this calculation, what are some reasons for the files not sounding the same? Why do so many folks in this thread prefer to convert their flac to wav?
 
If you are going to play your music from RAM but store it on a hard drive, FLAC is the obvious way to go. Because of FLACs built-in checksum, it's easier and faster for a computer to decode FLAC from a hard drive to WAV in RAM than it is to copy a WAV file from hard drive to RAM. If you are playing directly from a hard drive there are too many complicating factors to say why one might prefer one format over another, and you aren't getting the full audio benefit of computer playback either.
 
rbbert said:
Because of FLACs built-in checksum, it's easier and faster for a computer to decode FLAC from a hard drive to WAV.
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I’m afraid this is not correct.
There is no relation between the speed of decoding and this checksum.

At creation time the MD5 is calculated and stored in the header.
If you do a
FLAC –t FileToTest.FLAC
the audio data is read and the MD5 calculated again.
Compare this with the original value and you know if the data has been corrupted.
 
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All I know is that on both my computers it is faster (so I presume easier) to decode FLAC to WAV in RAM than to copy (or load?) WAV to WAV in RAM. Also I know that the process of decoding FLAC includes using the checksum. Do you have a different explanation for this phenomenon (FLAC is faster)?
 
Boogieman said:
Interesting discussion! For the super slow :D, I still seem to be missing something: if the wav and flac files are "mathematically equivalent" and dac chips are very powerful and can easily handle this calculation, what are some reasons for the files not sounding the same? Why do so many folks in this thread prefer to convert their flac to wav?
Click to expand...

The answer is that digital audio is digital as long as we talk file format (CD, file on a HD) or data transmission to a DAC. This is the domain of the bits. This is fully digital.

The moment we start to listen all kind of analog components in to play.
The sample rate is generated by a clock, indeed a crystal oscillating. This is about as analog as you can get hence there will be analog imperfection (intrinsic jitter).

Likewise any component does what is supposed to do, e.g. the head of a HD moving to read the data, but at the same time might generate some noise be if RFI, EMI, a ripple on the power rail, etc.
If this creeps into a DAC, it might affect sound quality.

Hence WAV requires very little processor power (almost raw PCM) but a lot of I/O and FLAC does exactly the reverse.
The result is still bit identical but the noise pattern produced in generating this bits might differ.

If your system in insufficiently isolated against this noise it might become audible.
That is the fun of memory playback, read a track into memory, hence do all the decoding and I/O before playback starts. This will eliminates all the FLAC/WAV differences.

It can, of course, not eliminate expectation bias :)
 
This topic has been discussed so many times with some pretty accurate testing taken place http://www.computeraudiophile.com/blogs/mitchco/flac-vs-wav-part-2-final-results-155/

But in the end most say they hear no difference, I know I can't using two diffident types of headphones, but then you still have those that say, "did you try other headphones" or the "test comparison software must be compared and it tested " just a never ending debate, like digital vs vinyl, USB cables and power cords and HMDI cables and Ford vs Chevy its just never ending .
 
rbbert said:
All I know is that on both my computers it is faster (so I presume easier) to decode FLAC to WAV in RAM than to copy (or load?) WAV to WAV in RAM. Also I know that the process of decoding FLAC includes using the checksum. Do you have a different explanation for this phenomenon (FLAC is faster)?
Click to expand...


It is very simple.
The amount of "power" needed to decode FLAC is very limited.
It is optimized for fast decoding.
The limitation is not the decoding speed but the I/O
Reading a WAV is simply reading a file say 30%-40% bigger.
This takes 30/40 % more time to read.
The decoding is done on the fly and as modern processors easily outpaces a HD, without noticable delay
 
Thank you so much. Sir. Best explanation I have heard to date.

Vincent Kars said:
The answer is that digital audio is digital as long as we talk file format (CD, file on a HD) or data transmission to a DAC. This is the domain of the bits. This is fully digital.

The moment we start to listen all kind of analog components in to play.
The sample rate is generated by a clock, indeed a crystal oscillating. This is about as analog as you can get hence there will be analog imperfection (intrinsic jitter).

Likewise any component does what is supposed to do, e.g. the head of a HD moving to read the data, but at the same time might generate some noise be if RFI, EMI, a ripple on the power rail, etc.
If this creeps into a DAC, it might affect sound quality.

Hence WAV requires very little processor power (almost raw PCM) but a lot of I/O and FLAC does exactly the reverse.
The result is still bit identical but the noise pattern produced in generating this bits might differ.

If your system in insufficiently isolated against this noise it might become audible.
That is the fun of memory playback, read a track into memory, hence do all the decoding and I/O before playback starts. This will eliminates all the FLAC/WAV differences.

It can, of course, not eliminate expectation bias :)
Click to expand...
 
Reading all posts here I still have to say that to me wav sounds noticeably better to me than flac. I'm talking about compressed flac, of course... Wav is more relaxed, more fluid, has better separation and microdynamics... It's half way between compressed flac and DSD! I guess software players, operating systems and transport in general matter a lot! :huh:
 
I recently downloaded & tried EAC as a ripping program for my A&K player, and using the optimal settings recommended by one Youtuber, I found the process very slow and cumbersome (pretty sure that was lossless, or maybe flac 0). Still it sounds like Flac lossless is the way to go, though i'm thinking I might try DB Poweramp. Is that a user-friendly program for newbies used to WMP?

Cheers,
 
dBPowerAmp is quite a bit easier to use than EAC, so I'd try that.
Also, I wouldn't rip to WAV or FLAC, but AIFF instead. No compression, and supports metadata, as WAV files don't, so you're stuck using the file name as your only source of information...
 
I do think dBpoweramp easy to use.
It uses 4 providers: AMG, GD3, MusicBrainz and FreeDB simultaneously.
AMG and GD3 are the more structured ones.

Flac 0 is simply the lowest FLAC “compression” level.
Not to be mistaken for uncompressed FLAC.

WAV tagging support is a problem.
dBpoweramp uses a kind of DIY standard that works nicely in combination with programs using the same convention.
http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/WAV_KB.htm

I use FLAC with “compression” 8.
If you don’t have a system ultra sensitive to noise, FLAC is an excellent choice.
If you do believe you can hear the decoding, use memory playback.
Memory playback eliminates all this kind of differences by design.
 
Vincent,

It still puzzles me why people bother fiddling with WAV or compressing things with FLAC, if AIFF is a perfectly functional format! Its only downside would've been the (extra) disk space requirements, but given the price of HDs these days, it's a non-issue...

But again, as everything in this hobby, to each his own...
 
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