File types

Fundamentally, at the bottom of the heap are 'lossy' formats which delete aspects of the music in order to fit the file on your phone. These include MP3, AAC, Ogg and others. Generally, avoid these for hi fi use - not much point in buying an expensive hi fi like an NDX and then putting poor quality files into it. If you must, higher sample rates are better (eg 320) but still there's something missing and they generally sound flat and lifeless. I think most people could easily tell the difference - certainly I have no trouble.

The critical thing is to rip or download in a LOSSLESS format. That way you have ALL the music. The two most common are FLAC and ALAC - the latter is an Apple standard. They are both compressed (generally) but, crucially, lossless. Think of them as being like a zip file, which is compressed for storage but then extracted to be identical to the original. Most people use FLAC, unless they're Apple fans in which case they use ALAC.

Supposedly the best in terms of sound quality is WAV, which is essentially the original music file. It is lossless and uncompressed, so a larger files size than FLAC or ALAC. It also has some issues with containing the data about album/artist/etc (called metatagging or tagging) which some people dispute or have overcome, and I won't dwell on. Again the Apple equivalent is AIFF.

I use FLAC because it's lossless and good for tagging. To get the best SQ I 'transcode' it to WAV, meaning that it's stored in FLAC but the NAS extracts it and turns it into WAV before it gets to the streamer. Various UPNP servers (software on your NAS) will do this, but it's certainly not essential, and many people can't tell the difference.

The most important thing is to use a lossless format, and as someone new to this, the easiest option is to go with FLAC unless you're an Apple fan in which case go for ALAC. You won't go far wrong.

So-called HD music is generally considered to be above CD standard. There is some dispute over whether there's an audible difference, but I would say it depends on the equipment and the ears. It's a nice-to-have really - CD quality sounds very good. All the above advice still applies anyway.

Not sure I agree with your last para, 24 bit is often better in my experience,  but otherwise thats a great summary

Thank you for your extensive explanation on the various file types.

Brilliantly explained and understandble for such a novice as me.

I guess the availability will expand in time, although at present it

does look rather limited and selective on the various sites I have

found. I am sure this will improve with time.

I wonder whether the megadata supplied with these downloads is

comparable to the cd sleeve and booklet information, one of the

joys of having a collection in cd form.

Anyway thank you for your very informative reply.

Downloads can offer significantly more information

Click the info tab on N Stream and usually you will get the basic info, a review, a detailed band biography and back catalogue as well as a list of similar artists and albums. Many links will also be clickable to see those artists and musician in more detail (and indeed to buy).

Bruce

Good to hear that there is sufficient information supplied with the cds.

Thanks for the information

Urs

The info is not on the CD but linked to the ripped file/download data tags assuming you are online of course.

Bruce

Question/observation.

Many times we have been told that the ripped replay is (often) better than the "live" play from a CDP, the reasoning being the CDP having to error correct and re-read etc.

So how come it's OK to re format data files from one type to another "on the fly" does that not add extra work to the re-play and possibly gradate the sound too?

The transcoding work is done by the NAS, not the streamer. So the streamer gets a nice WAV file, rather than having to decompress a FLAC file - less work for the streamer. That's the logic of it, though whether you can hear any difference in SQ is down to the listener.

My understanding is that, whereas CDP data is essentially played in the order of receipt, UPNP has built-in error correction and buffering to ensure that the data package is whole. Transcoding makes no difference to that.

The music file types are explained in detail here:

https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...am-and-eve-it-1?nc=1

You only need to read the last post (January 1, 2014 8:12 PM) from Meerkat incl. info from Tog.

This post includes some corrections about the above so called "Apple fan" formats, which are often not quite right understood from "PeCe fans"...