my flacs don't sound right

[Phillip Kerman]

>
> Spot on Stephen - I think this is what Sketchmaster is seeing.
>
> For reference, with pitch set at 100% and playing though an
> external hifi DAC using the digital output, my flacs sound very good.
> (almost as good as my high a high end CD transport with all
> sorts of modifications to improve its sound.)
> If you are playing directly out of the analogue outputs, then
> you must bear in mind that the Squeezebox internal DAC is a good, but
> not upto high end hi-fi standards.
>
> Once you reset to the correct pitch (and left alone) you
> should be very happy!
>
> Adrian

So, Adrian, you're saying this 93% pitch thing only applies when playing
Flacs through SB's DAC... when doing digital outs you leave it at 100%?

I'm playing Flacs via the digital out and can hear a difference when I drop
the pitch--but can't say it's "better" or worse for that matter. If it's
not 100% pitch though my receiver's DAC resets every time--and periodically
suffers the L/R swap flaw.

I'm getting confused.

Thanks,
Phillip

[Triode]

No, appologies if I confused you. The DAC bit is unrelated, just wanted to say that Squeezebox can play flacs very well at the
correct pitch.

For the moment (until the bug is fixed):
1) set the squeezebox to 100% pitch [so that the server stores this as the setting for the player]
2) reset the squeezebox - hold down power off on the remote for a while
3) happily flacs and *never* change the pitch again!!!

Re the L/R problem. This appears to occur when the Squeezebox changes from PCM to MP3 mode. If you are a regular player user of
mp3s and are able to stream to the squeezebox as pcm without dropouts, then I would recommend configuring the server to decode the
mp3s, rather than leaving the squeezebox to do it. I think we concluded a while back that something like the following would work:

mp3 wav
[lame] --mp3input --decode -t --silent $FILE$ -

(NB I've just made this up again and not taken it from a working config as I don't have any mp3s and so don't use it!)

Adrian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Phillip Kerman" <lists (AT) phillipkerman (DOT) com>
To: "'Slim Devices Discussion'" <discuss (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com>
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 6:41 PM
Subject: [slim] my flacs don't sound right


>>
>> Spot on Stephen - I think this is what Sketchmaster is seeing.
>>
>> For reference, with pitch set at 100% and playing though an
>> external hifi DAC using the digital output, my flacs sound very good.
>> (almost as good as my high a high end CD transport with all
>> sorts of modifications to improve its sound.)
>> If you are playing directly out of the analogue outputs, then
>> you must bear in mind that the Squeezebox internal DAC is a good, but
>> not upto high end hi-fi standards.
>>
>> Once you reset to the correct pitch (and left alone) you
>> should be very happy!
>>
>> Adrian
>
> So, Adrian, you're saying this 93% pitch thing only applies when playing
> Flacs through SB's DAC... when doing digital outs you leave it at 100%?
>
> I'm playing Flacs via the digital out and can hear a difference when I drop
> the pitch--but can't say it's "better" or worse for that matter. If it's
> not 100% pitch though my receiver's DAC resets every time--and periodically
> suffers the L/R swap flaw.
>
> I'm getting confused.
>
> Thanks,
> Phillip
>
>

[kdf]

Quoting Phillip Kerman <lists (AT) phillipkerman (DOT) com>:

> >
> > Spot on Stephen - I think this is what Sketchmaster is seeing.
> >
> > For reference, with pitch set at 100% and playing though an
> > external hifi DAC using the digital output, my flacs sound very good.
> > (almost as good as my high a high end CD transport with all
> > sorts of modifications to improve its sound.)
> > If you are playing directly out of the analogue outputs, then
> > you must bear in mind that the Squeezebox internal DAC is a good, but
> > not upto high end hi-fi standards.
> >
> > Once you reset to the correct pitch (and left alone) you
> > should be very happy!
> >
> > Adrian
>
> So, Adrian, you're saying this 93% pitch thing only applies when playing
> Flacs through SB's DAC... when doing digital outs you leave it at 100%?
>
> I'm playing Flacs via the digital out and can hear a difference when I drop
> the pitch--but can't say it's "better" or worse for that matter. If it's
> not 100% pitch though my receiver's DAC resets every time--and periodically
> suffers the L/R swap flaw.
>
> I'm getting confused.
>

I went and looked up the original notes for the pitch control. Dean
specifically stated even then that it was experimental and ONLY worked for MP3.
Clearly it then suffered from obscurity; the lack of support for non-mp3 was
forgotten. Pitch control is clearly NOT VALID for FLAC. The way to deal with
this for now is to set it back to 100%, then unplug your squeezebox and plug it
back in. After the reboot, it should play at its proper speed.

-kdf