Apple's Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) Now Open Source

Not a comparison James, different audio software v unzipping a file.  But I suspect you know that. :-)  Besides iTunes needs to auto sample rate switch to be considered a finished article replay wise.  It is a great free interface and works better than .....err some.  Never mind next release eh?

Prefer a non proprietary replay comparison (if they have stuffed ALAC use on this device as a policy decision).  As Gary and others point out, unzipping is off the scale tiny as an overhead.

>  If naim recommend Wav as their hardware is optimised for it then why bother using FLAC ?

Because I can get a lot more on my Vortexbox with no loss of sound quality. 

> So why isn't plain vanilla iTunes good enough as an audio player

It is if you are using a Mac unless the players change the bitstream then there will not be any difference in SQ -  iTunes is fine, but the Mac itself that has some shortcomings, albeit minor ones - jitter on its optical out (easily dealt with by using an async USB/S-PDIF converter and optical cable to the S/PDIF on the Naim DAC) and the noisy chassis/PSU can inject some noise as well, it is probably better than most PCs in this respect. That is the only way I account for difference between the VB and Mac and we are not talking huge difference. 

If somebody wants to believe there is magic software that makes its bit perfect bitstream sound different from another's bit perfect bit stream then by all means. I don't believe it and I've never heard any difference.

My W4S Sonos sounds different from a Mac, but that's probably because it up-samples.  

Still very interesting thread and hearing everybody's different views on the subject.

BTW why is it people enjoy music more if they wear a purple shirt during a listening session?

I've always found this curious ever since I read and article by Mr Belt.

It must be true because JMH said he could hear the improvement and he was a hi-fi journalist. 

All the best, Guy

Agreed.  When I started digitizing my vinyl a LONG LONG time ago, I played around with 24-96 transfers.  This brought a TON to the table.  It was about this time that I stopped using iTunes altogether as stopping the music to switch the sample rate was a deal breaker.

Yes that is a shortcoming - it would be nice if it switched automatically. 

plenty of apps that will do this for a few bob up to hundreds of pounds.

Simon

Will be interested to know if you think the new boards make a difference - I missed the cut off on my NDX by about two weeks - so if the change is just to play 192k files - then on the basis that I have only one of them I am not fussed.  I have all my rips as FLAC files.

I am more interested in the software drop to make the thing play any files properly.  Just got back from India - switched the NDX on listened to the radio for 10 mins flicked it over to uPnP and got the usual unsupported file error.  So frustrating.

Andrew

Agreed and oh boy that takes me back ...remember all the little bits of foil taped to radiators etc. LOL.

Why bother using Naim if it is sub-optimal for a major class of file?

Linn have published detailed measurements of their DS players showing that although there are different demands on the power supply when decoding FLAC against WAV these demands have absolutely no measurable effect anywhere on the DAC/audio side of things. Presumably because they have done things right.

Next you'll be saying that Naim is optimised for girl singers with acoustic guitar accompaniments!

So WAV and FLAC stream unpacking processes in NAIM are not identical then?

And why do we assume that full, bit-perfect unpacking occurs prior to DA-Conversion?

And what if DAC takes the raw WAV or FLAC stream for direct analogue conversion without prior unpacking???

Simon

I am waiting for the code drop to come through to see if that fixes the issues - I have said I will do the beta testing (I have an NDX and a Uniti). 

I am based in London so same laws apply as far as I am concerned.

I am however having the thoughts that Naim are spending time pushing new products out of the door rather than spending the time fixing the ones out there.  Ie. I was reading about a SuperUniti, 5 series streamer, etc which does make me suspicious about priorities.  Perhaps I am just an old cynic.

Andrew

Hi Simon -

I have a few random thoughts, and forgive me if none of them make sense.  Woke up to -5c, and forgot to switch the heat on before going to bbbbbbed.... .   I hate winter (which in this case, includes late autumn) and am, therefore, living in the wrong place.

First of all, I agree that DT79 did a nice job of summarizing the very long technical discussions from previous threads, and there is no need to rehash them here.  That's what the search engine is for.

Second of all, I rip all of music to FLAC level 0.  Saves some space, but more importantly, FLAC supports tagging that is well understood by the majority of streamers and playback apps.  But, just for piece of mind, I do instruct Asset to convert my FLAC files to WAV on-the-fly before they are delivered to my NDX.  Does it result in an improvement in sound quality?  Maybe.   I went back and forth a couple of times, and cannot claim to have heard any great advantage for WAV.   Maybe a tiny bit of extra clarity, but that's all.  And logic tells me that it would be no different at all if I converted my FLAC files to WAV files, since I would simply be asking Asset to stream the exact same thing.  (Assuming Asset does what it says on the tin, and really does convert to WAV on-the-fly).  I decided to leave the conversion to WAV on because the increase in network traffic was not noticeable by the end user population (of 2) in my home. 

Third, am trying to get my head around Apple's decision to make ALAC open source.  A very un-Apple-like thing to do!   I mean, with FLAC's widespread acceptance, I do not understand why the world needs two open source specs for lossless file compression.  I understood Apple's need for ALAC in the first place.  It met an important need, and it kept its owners in the proprietary fold.  But now, out in the open, is their something that ALAC brings to the table that FLAC does not?   Would think that FLAC has a very large head start in the size of support base, and I just don't think that folks will all of sudden start converting in mass to ALAC.   What's the point?  

Maybe Apple's next step is to support the "other" open source standard?  Maybe this is just the first step towards a unified standard?   By the way, I suggest we call that new standard FLAC, and be done with it. 

Hook

yes I do.

I meant to say that we constantly assume the bit perfect stream is delivered unpacked to DAC analogue circuit for conversion.

what if that is not the case? What if WAV and FLAC streams are NOT completely unpacked in digital section of the DAC but sent to the analogue section in a still compressed format instead?

Chaps - there is no black magic to this (or Foo !). An environment such as inside the NDX / DS / HDX etc is quite challenging, with high speed digital electronics combined with analogue electronics handling low level signals. At a given price point, due to design and engineering constraints you will get some interaction between those sections and so i can quite understand why you could get different results at the analogue outputs depending on the whether the streamer board is having to do some extra work decompressing a file such as a flac file compared to say a wav file.

I'm not arguing the fact that a file once decompressed and passed to the ram buffer is bit for bit identical to the original file. That's a given

Perhaps in the HD555 / ND555 electrical isolation will be taken to the extremes where engineering solutions aren't limited by cost. Until then i'm quite happy to stick to Naims recommendation on using uncompressed files. Storage is cheap.

Joe - i owe you a visit. We can test out various files - see you on FB. 

James

Trevor……whilst that is good news it is a shame we could not have been entrusted with this information a week ago; or sooner.

We have just turned down the opportunity to purchase an NDX (perhaps the last one) with the original boards precisely because we could not establish that an upgrade would be forthcoming; knowing that the new firmware would not work with the old boards.

None of the streaming products that you now produce are useable by us so this makes it all the more disappointing that after so many years we are forced to look to other manufacturers for a streamer to work with the rest of our Naim system.

I like many others here do find it difficult to understand the company’s apparent reluctance to inform the customer of what we may expect with the software/firmware upgrades in the near future. Is it really such an essential trade secret?

I should make it clear than in all other respects Naim is by far the best company I have ever dealt with…….bar none.

Regards

Peter