Not actually a streaming question but...

Try Korg Audiogate.

this I found to be one of the best for me 

Allan

Thanks Allan, but the reason for the post is not to try different software but to understand what's going on. Should not lossless all be equal (I certainly thought so) with just the "packaging" appearing different and the compression - but it doesn't sound like that. I have heard that people can tell a difference between file formats played direct from a computer or network player due to the real time decoding - Naim favour wav I believe, but from a cd strikes me as strange.

Something appears to be happening differently on how files are converted by Toast and Xld, but what and why is the part that's making me scratch my head.

Si.

Without elaborate tests it is hard to see what is happening in your setup. It might the transport jitter is different between the two formats when you write the CD. Of course it is possible your software is faulty, and you will need to re rip and compare to the original for no corruption.

However Flac correctly encoded and decodes does not corrupt the original payload at all, in this case the original PCM file.

Now Naim is happier with decoding wav PCM data rather than compressed FLAC as the process is less intensive and causes less power supply and other noise. I remotely transcode my FLACs and send as WAV to my Naim, and it works a treat, and is indistinguishable from native WAV- and I have tried to critically differentiate and failed, and my ears can the differentiate between the lack of ferrite chokes on my DC1 cable and my Ethernet patch lead.

Simon

Simon, it appears to be the introduction of Xld that is showing some difference - I've compared the disc burnt by Toast allowing Toast to do the conversion and it is identical to the original (well to my ears anyway).

I'll have to read up more on Xld to see if a setting is incorrect, but everything is set to defaults so it should work and give the same result as Toasts internal conversion (shouldn't it?) - it is also the software that's highly recommended in the Mac community (at least for turning cd to flac files) so assumed it would be as good going back the other way.

Think I read years ago some HiFi mag compared original disc to one that was a cdr copy and found the copy sounded better and thus concluded this was due to the copy having less jitter - what you are saying points that this might also apply to different conversion software solutions as well.

The reason I'm trying to understand this is that I intend to convert my CDs to lossless but also keep the option to convert back to CD in the future if needs be (just in case any of the originals get lost) - it goes without saying I would not appreciate any sound change. 

This exercise is turning out to be not as simple as first thought, still it's certainly not boring!

Si.

Hi Si, by the way CDR and even more so with CDR/W are notorious for high transport jitter on CD audio, so perhaps some people prefer a digital signal with higher jitter... 

Simon

I've noticed the speed difference on importing files to Toast prior to burn, flac taking the longer to convert than aiff (as you say greater effort required). Think my mistake was assuming Toast uses aiff as it's default prior to burning because they took next to no time to import, by using sd2 format then two conversions are being done if I first covert with Xld - that might explain the slight sound difference.

Last night I tried another album, just using Toast and compared original with copy (flac - toast - cdr) and could not hear any difference - think this may be my best option. Would like to keep file size to minimum so using flac satisfies that requirement, it was just the worry I could not get back to the original cd sound using cdr in the future if needs be.

Have not used iTunes due to flac incompatibility, also would I not have to convert first and in doing so get the same issues.

A week ago before I started messing around with various file formats I thought all lossless files and conversion methods were basically invisible as far as sound was concerned - beginning to think differently now.

Si.