Sound quality between wav and flac

[Louishlomador]

Has anyone noticed sound quality differences between a flac and wave file? I am certainly aware that flac is "lossless" however playback of flac files sound flat and dont seem to have great imaging effect on the sound than Wav. anyone?

[JJZolx]

Has anyone noticed sound quality differences between a flac and wave file? I am certainly aware that flac is "lossless" however playback of flac files sound flat and dont seem to have great imaging effect on the sound than Wav. anyone?

I don't hear any difference. Some people have claimed FLAC sounds better.

But if you do prefer WAV, there's no reason not to use FLAC for your library with Squeezebox. You can stream WAV (PCM, actually) to your player by having Squeezebox Server decode the FLAC files instead of doing it at the player. It will be equivalent to storing WAV files, with the added benefit of full tagging ability and reduced storage space. The downside is the increased network bandwidth needed.

[Louishlomador]

Its a strange one. I have squeezecenter 7.2.1 before upgrading to 7.4.1. There seem to be a difference when you play both versions of the file and listen to it instrument by instument. I'm have a strong feeling the firmware has been modified in a way for the SB to play in flac mode, maybe due to bandwidth issues with wave files. I have my music ripped in 24bit 48khz in wave. When you convert to flac and play it sounds flat, and you notice the stereo imaging is not that great. Very strange

[JJZolx]

I have my music ripped in 24bit 48khz in wave.

You rip 44.1 kHz redbook CDs to 48 kHz?

[Louishlomador]

Yes, there is a bit of a grey area here as if you had a cd player that was capable of playing at 24bit 96khz it will sound better than a CD player equiped with a dac capable of only 48khz, hence I rip at this resolution to extract every as much info as possible from the CD. The site below seems to do some great comparisms

http://www.tweakheadz.com/16_vs_24_bit_audio.htm

[pfarrell]

Louishlomador wrote:
>>You rip 44.1 kHz redbook CDs to 48 kHz?

> Yes, there is a bit of a grey area here as if you had a cd player that
> was capable of playing at 24bit 96khz it will sound better than a CD
> player equiped with a dac capable of only 48khz, hence I rip at this
> resolution to extract every as much info as possible from the CD. The
> site below seems to do some great comparisms

This is very hard to believe. You can't just claim that since 48 is
bigger than 44.1 then it sounds better if you convert from 44.1 to 48.

I would expect it to sound different, and worse than just using RedBook
rates.


--
Pat Farrell
http://www.pfarrell.com/

[Louishlomador]

you have a point there, however my understanding of how the Squeeze box works is all about the processing of whatever data contents you have in the file, whiles I believe the CD player will pickup the data in a different way. Maybe I'm wrong but the sound seems much better with a higher resolution, compared to 44.1 especially when you have an expensive audiophile kit. I use Shure E530 and the SB is connected to a headphone amp
Lehmann blackcube linear. They are all high end products. I will encourage you to try these formats. I'm very keen for someone to try these different formats.

[pfarrell]

Louishlomador wrote:
> you have a point there, however my understanding of how the Squeeze box
> works is all about the processing of whatever data contents you have in
> the file, whiles I believe the CD player will pickup the data in a
> different way. Maybe I'm wrong but the sound seems much better with a
> higher resolution, compared to 44.1 especially when you have an
> expensive audiophile kit.

It may sound different, and you may prefer that sound, I can't argue
with that part.

But there is nothing good about pretending that something can get 3.9
kHz of signal out of the air, 44.1 kHz is not 48kHz.

There is some claimed benefit to oversampling to an integer multiple of
44.1, say 88.2 or higher. But if the multiple is not an integer,
whatever is added is not music.

And any real benefit from oversampling or upsampling or other stuff is
because when you are working with higher rates, you can use simpler
analog filters that don't screw up phase as badly as the normal brick
wall filters used for anti-aliasing at 22.05 kHz


--
Pat Farrell
http://www.pfarrell.com/

[Louishlomador]

Very good point. It raises soo many questions as to why soo many ripping applications have these features of ripping CDs to this format readily available at that resolution, such as DB poweramp, or why some dacs will play normal CD at say 24bit 96khz resolution. I believe the squeezebox transporter and squeezebox touch can play at this format. I'm confused.

[pfarrell]

Louishlomador wrote:
> I believe the squeezebox transporter and squeezebox touch can play at this format. I'm confused.

Yes, they will play files in 48 kHz as well as 44.1kHz, and perhaps 88.2
and 96kHz as well (I don't keep up) but the question is not if the
devices can play the specific files, but rather if there is anything in
them that should sound better.

Long ago, Stereophile took a bunch of SACD and DVD-A releases, and did
spectral analysis on them. Most of them had exactly the same signal as
the RedBook audio versions, nothing over 20 kHz, even though the format
could have signal up into 40Khz or above.

As to why some software has features that do no good, well that is
another topic, just use MS Word as an example, it has zillions of
features and 99% of the users use less than 5% of them. The rest are
there for various reasons.

A DAC reporting RedBook at 24/88.2 makes sense, that is simple wider
oversampling. Saying it is 96Khz may be real or may be marketing puff.

--
Pat Farrell
http://www.pfarrell.com/