Codec Wars: which do you prefer for sound/convenience/ storage

Posted by: Disposable hero on 26 February 2013

Following the fascinating reading on the matter of WAV versus AIFF when played through a Mac or Uniti and which has now become the Horsemeat scandal of the hi-fi world and audiophile fraternity, which codec would you personally endorse as being the most fine sounding, practical, convenient and best suited to your CD ripping and file storage.

It could be based on audible sound quality, the media player being used and its practicality and convenience for file storage. FLAC is often indicated as being a good option, thus requiring the right media player and another bit of software. Maybe WAV is your permium quality serloin steak, and everything else is just sub-standard contamination not fit for aural consumption.

For Apple Mac people I don't see why Apple Lossless ALAC would not do just fine (my current standard choice) - it is being sold on the Naim label too.

Would it be worth the effort, to start CD library ripping all over again with an alternative to ALAC (e.g. FLAC) if it meant more ease of use with some other media player or better (lower filesize) for hard drive storing?

Posted on: 26 February 2013 by Peter_RN

Well firstly there is no necessity to re-rip a file that has been already ripped to a lossless format, it is very easy to convert to another format without loss of quality.

Personally I use only Naim streamers and decided that WAV files suited us best and as storage it relatively cheap and dbPoweramp does a superb job of ripping and tagging this is what I have settled on.

I am certain that others have settled on a different strategy and are equally happy with their choice, there’s no one right way.

I use PC’s but as you use a Mac my choice of both ripping program and file format probably is not best suited to you. As long as you select a lossless format to rip your CD’s I see no reason to stress over it.

Peter

Posted on: 26 February 2013 by Simon-in-Suffolk

I agree with Peter, sort of a mute point.. Use what ever file format you like it, it really makes no odds, as I simply set the on the fly transcode to WAV for Naim, and I transcode to other formats for other vendor network players, like mp3 for wifi network players. It's all so completely hassle free you don't worry about it.

My NASes have several lossless file types.. wAV, AIF, FLAC, and its all hidden from me. As far as my Naim and Nstream is concerned its all WAV. If I thought AIF sounded better I would click the mouse button to stream that instead....

From a software point of view some program's only support a subset of the file format such as limited attributes or no meta data. So for example some software only supports the legacy canonical format of WAV, so can't support hidef or metadata, and some software has restrictions on what metadata it can read from FLAC. However most quality software avoids these limitations these days in my expierience.

Simon

Posted on: 26 February 2013 by Dan43

For me :

Unitiserve SSD, WAV, NAS serving an nDAC>amp/speakers. Cat6 cabling for the NAS.

Thats all I need, I am happy. (NDS next)

Dan43

Posted on: 26 February 2013 by PinkHamster

It is FLAC for me.

Best supported lossless format.

And I cannot for the life of me hear any differences between diffrent lossless codecs.

For mobile use I keep a copy of my library in AAC 160kbits.

I hope that in future also mobile players, phones and car radios will also accept FLAC and have sufficient storage space for lossless files.

Posted on: 26 February 2013 by Dan43

For mobile use I have a complete iTunes Apple Lossless library, for the car/work etc.

For the home its the US WAV build.

Dan43

Posted on: 26 February 2013 by Pev

Rip, tag and store in FLAC, Transcode to WAV for listening. Basically what Simon said.

Posted on: 08 March 2013 by DomTomLondon

I use Flac to feed my unitiQute. But use Alac and more recently DSD files for playing on a Mac with Audirvana... Just superb!

Posted on: 08 March 2013 by rca/sun

this has been flogged to death, listen and decide whats best for you

Posted on: 08 March 2013 by Disposable hero

Originally Posted by rca/sun:

this has been flogged to death

Not the DSD, this is something newer.

Where are the best places to go to, for DSD music?

Posted on: 08 March 2013 by Aleg

Originally Posted by Disposable hero:

Originally Posted by rca/sun:

this has been flogged to death

Not the DSD, this is something newer.

Where are the best places to go to, for DSD music?

http://dsd-guide.com/where-can...-dsd-music-downloads

Some overlap:

DSD Downloads

- 2L

- Blue Coast Records

- Channel Classics Records

- Cybele Records

- Downloads NOW!

- DSD File.com

- HighResAudio

- Premonition Records

Posted on: 10 March 2013 by Tog

This thread reminds me of all those stories of soldiers discovered to be still fighting, years after WW2 had been won. Codec Wars? Only a very small group of people are even remotely bothered about wav or aiff - flac or alac !! In fact in my experience all but the most ardent audiophile zealots (present company excepted) express bewilderment that anyone would really worry about using anything other than flac.

Tog

Posted on: 10 March 2013 by DomTomLondon

Went over to a friends place this afternoon and we had a listening session to see if we could tell the difference between PCM and DSD audio formats. It was very subtle, but the DSD just sounds more analogue, almost "Vinyl" like. It's a shame that only a handful of DACs can decode DSD files. Luckily he's got the Chord Company Cordette, which can.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qf15...3%2016%2059%2016.jpg

Posted on: 10 March 2013 by George Fredrik

Originally Posted by Tog:

Tog

Or WAV, or ALAC, or AIFF ...

AIFF wins for me ...

Posted on: 10 March 2013 by Iver van de Zand

Currently Flac which is transcoded on the fly into WAV. Works perfectly fine.

sometimes I create additional copies of 320kbs mp3 to store on the car's harddisk to enjoy music while driving.

iver

Posted on: 10 March 2013 by VladtheImpala

The Golden Rule is listen and decide for yourself!

FWIW I use FLAC at level 5. I can't hear a difference between FLAC and WAV via the Uniti2 and any DAC/streamer which can't handle the load of the codec isn't worth a carrott.

If use you the dBpoweramp, you can rip to any number of formats (including Apple-centric ones) and locations at the time of rip or afterwards.

TBH, the major problem I have is with classical music tags!

Vlad

Posted on: 13 March 2013 by OHL67

My system is a Superuniti with Ovator S-400 speakers, and I stream my music files from a synology DS212 NAS server. Ripping is done using XLD which runs on an apple macbook.

After playing around with various options (also with XLD alternative called MAX) I came to the conclusion that AIFF works best. With WAV there was a lack of transparency while encoding all the CD stuff to FLAC, it all sounded a bit too light (too much treble) for me. On my opinion, AIFF is very good, with much detail and superb sound quality, and it also offers the option to tag all the files (like it is possible for FLAC, MP3, etc.) plus, it is fully compatible to iTunes.

But I am also convinced, that the sound quality is not only a matter of the codec (when we talk about high quality lossless formats) but also a matter of the CD / computer drive which is used to read the CD. And last but not least, it is a matter of the quality of the ripping software itself. So the experiences of other members may differ from mine. I guess, there is no simple truth...

Unfortunately, I had no occasion to compare my own files with ones which are ripped using an Unitiserve. But I am working on it

Olaf

Posted on: 17 March 2013 by PureHifi

Just to throw a spanner in the works...try comparing FLAC to WAV conversion on different software/hardware.

On a PC I use DBpoweramp (useful because it supports writing the meta tags into the WAV) and on a Mac I use XLD (which also now supports writing tags in WAV)..

I was downloading from HDtracks in FLAC to save on download data...and then decoding to WAV for best sound reproduction (IMHO) - BUT - taking the same downloaded FLAC and converting to WAV I find XLD on our MAC sounds better than the job that DBpoweramp does.

I have no idea why but would appreciate other people trying it out and see if there is a difference for them as well.

Posted on: 17 March 2013 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Can you make the files available on a web site and I can compare the sample data to see if the two WAV files are identical?

Posted on: 17 March 2013 by Iver van de Zand

Hey Simon,

I am very interested on the outcome of your little "investigation" once the files are available for comparison to you. Could you please share the results with us once you have them ?

Cheers and thanks,

Iver

Posted on: 17 March 2013 by mikapoh

Mac Mini playing AIFF in Audirvana Plus integration with iTunes sound superb to my ears.

Posted on: 17 March 2013 by PureHifi

Simon-in-suffolk....Easy to try yourself without me supplying a flac & wav files.

Posted on: 19 March 2013 by totemphile

Originally Posted by PureHifi:

Just to throw a spanner in the works...try comparing FLAC to WAV conversion on different software/hardware.

On a PC I use DBpoweramp (useful because it supports writing the meta tags into the WAV) and on a Mac I use XLD (which also now supports writing tags in WAV)..

I have no idea why but would appreciate other people trying it out and see if there is a difference for them as well.

I definitely prefer ripping to WAV using XLD with the lights off. It seems to add more black between the bits and hence notes, lowering the noise floor quite substantially once you replay the file with the lights on....

Posted on: 19 March 2013 by winkyincanada

Originally Posted by totemphile:

I find that shortening the file names as much as possible to a linear hexadecimal sequence sounds better as it reduces the computational overhead on the computer doing the decoding. I have no album art for the same reason. Of course this means my music listening is now completely random .

Posted on: 19 March 2013 by Marky Mark

Winky, a bit drastic. You could have had a separate Mac Mini with VDfeckwit v7.12 and 2TB of RAM installed to handle the processing load from the album art.

Posted on: 19 March 2013 by Marky Mark

Originally Posted by PureHifi:

Just to throw a spanner in the works...try comparing FLAC to WAV conversion on different software/hardware.

On a PC I use DBpoweramp (useful because it supports writing the meta tags into the WAV) and on a Mac I use XLD (which also now supports writing tags in WAV)..

I have no idea why but would appreciate other people trying it out and see if there is a difference for them as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aZ2bdnG97A