CD ripping - which format?

> You can't dismiss the possibility though that there may indeed be audible differences between compressed FLAC and WAV.

Hi TP

I would never say people who claim to hear a difference do not hear it. My argument has always been it is natural to hear differences and it is the cause cited, WAV vs FLAC, is not necessarily responsible for the effect. I think there are far too many variables if we base it on hearing to reach the conclusion WAV is better than FLAC or, in the case of Linn, FLAC is better than WAV if I've understood Peter K's post. 

The most convincing test I've read about is to play a FLAC and capture the output and then create the inverse of the sound wave pattern. Then play the WAV and at the same time play the inverse FLAC. The result according to the researcher was silence. As the FLAC and WAV produced identical sound so one cancelled out the other. I don't know how many times they tried this to verify the results were consistent - but, given I can't hear a difference, I was totally convinced.  

Everybody should listen and make up their own minds, of course. WAV is certainly no worse than any of the other formats so if there's disk space available then there is no downside to it. Except it takes longer to transfer over the network, more frames means more processing and more processing means more noise. So ALAC must be best, I guess. AAC could be even better, after all it only leaves out bits not worth listening to in the first place and the processing overhead is very low. (I don't really believe that). 

I think we can drive ourselves crazy with logic like this. For years, I was of the view that you didn't want to open the window to wide as lots of rubbish could get in. So a cut off at 20KHz was a good idea. Now one site is saying wait for 32/384 resolution. It'll all end in tears. 

I still read hereon that people claim XYZ makes better rips than iTunes (the only case I believe this can possibly be true is when the PCM data from an iTunes rip is different from that of the XYZ rip and I've only found this on a couple of badly damaged CDs and HDCDs which dbPowerAmp does a special rip on). 

My main thing is to say - folks should not worry about the ALAC, FLAC, WAV, AIFF debate - as you can go from one to the other. Everybody should just rip to what they prefer. The metadata may cause some people concerns as I know some prefer lots and other are content with enough to locate a track. 

All I really know is the NDS sounded great.

All the best, Guy

BTW - somebody told me that the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees, yet the other day I found one where they only added up to 179.9999999998752 degrees. So I'd never say there were not differences. But to me, if they exist then they are too small to get worried about. 

I'm listening, but I can't hear a thing ..... 

On the NDX to me ( and my family) WAV souunds preferable to FLAC, it sounds just more anlaogue llike or life like. Now as is stated the uncompressed payload of sample data data is identical between WAV and FLAC, but the work involved in unpacking compressed FLAC is quite a bit more than for unpacking WAV (or possibly uncompressed FLAC - I haven't tried) and it seems to cause side effects. Naim perhaps appear to have acknolwedged this in the design of the NDS where the streamer boards (which do the FLAC unpacking) are shrouded in a shield (Faraday cage)  to reduce EMI.

Interestingly this same attention to processing related noise also appears in the DSP code where the use of a simplified oversampling algorthim is used to mitigate processing noise.

It may be on the NDS there is no difference between FLAC and WAV and I guess that might be the benefit of more refined engineering which is what you are paying a premium for with the NDS.

Becasue of the soinc short comings of FLAC on the NDX I simply transcode FLAC on the fly to WAV  on my UPNP server. Really simple and easy and I get the result I want without having to get anal about the file type - I can enjoy my music and let they system do wthe work. If I could  hearr no preference I simply wouldn't bother with the transcode rule in my UPNP server. I simply set it up for what I best like the sound of.

Simon

Hi Guy, 

What you say makes a whole lot of sense and I am sure that for the majority of people your advice is very valid and probably a sane way of approaching this subject. Just to clarify, I am not too worried about this aspect myself but I am curious and do want to investigate it myself. I just haven't got around to doing it yet. I recently downgraded from 282/SC/250 to SuperNait/HC and hence I would expect that I will probably hear less of a difference now than what I otherwise would have heard before, if indeed I hear any difference at all. I currently have the ND5XS at home and am playing around with it and have kept my unmodded Sonos ZP90 as well. I am still undecided whether I will keep the ND5XS on SQ reasons or not but to give it a fair trial I do want to test various options, one of which being streaming and comparing both FLAC and WAV. Thing is I currently only have my MBP to stream from and obviously iTunes doesn't play FLAC. Hence my interest in running Asset UPnP with CrossOver. I will investigate this in the not too distant future. I am also keeping an eye out for a second hand RipNAS. I would like to see if using it as a ripping solution and storage results in any audible differences or not to my current MBP based storage.

There is no rush though, I am unlikely to make a final decision until after Naim have released a proper upgrade to nStream, which as I understand it wont be until the summer. As it stands its functionality is rather limited compared to the Sonos apps. 

I am still on a fairly steep learning curve, so it's all part of the fun. 

ATB

tp

> Thing is I currently only have my MBP to stream from and obviously iTunes doesn't play FLAC. 

Decibel will play it on your MBP (or you can use Play which is free from the same developers). It sounds just as good as using iTunes with AIFF/ALAC to me. Decibel does all the right things to get you the best sound from your Mac such as choose the right sample rate. 

iTunes is fine, but it can drive some USB DACs to distraction as if you are playing ripped CDs then it can change the rate to 24/96 this confuses the MF V-Link goes rather jittery and its clock starts to drift - setting the bit rate to 16/44.1 cures this and everything is rosy in the garden. 

I can imagine the same think could affect the SN. So worth matching the rate manually or using BitPerfect with iTunes. 

Decibel is basic, but it does a good job if you want to play MacFLAC. 

nStream is way behind the Sonos interface, but it is OK.

The Sonos is great product - the only user interface that impresses me more is the Soloos and you have to pay a fortune for that ... plus if I had it would I listen to music or just explore the links. 

I find the formats rather frustrating - I wish everybody agreed on one, but as they don't then something that doesn't care and just plays them is a nice to have. If hi-res is not important then the Sonos plays just about everything and wirelessly too. 

All the best, Guy 

Thanks Guido,

Will look into Decibel. Heard it mentioned here on the forum a few times now but have not checked it out yet. Same with BitPerfect, just didn't get around to downloading it yet. I still have my nDAC/PS555 so no issues with a USB DAC or the internal DAC of the SN.

Cheers

tp