HDX file conversion

I don't remember what the particular arrangement is for the HDX. I do know that you can easily flip flop a file between different formats . As ever, a back up is advisable.

Tnx!

Hi Michel,

Just interested to hear how you found sound quality after the conversion to FLAC?

Also, did you try the transcoding to WAV once you had converted your files....if so what were your findings?

Many thanks

Jason 

Hi Jason,

After I've converted all my music to FLAC, I've set the HDX on "Transcode to WAV". IMHO I cannot hear any difference between those two file formats, but I'm sure others might have another opinion :-)

Many regards,

Michel

Jason,

BTW: did you converted your music to FLAC or do you still play the WAV files?

Many regards,

Michel

Hi Michel,

My ripped CD files remain WAV at the moment.  I have tested WAV against FLAC and I definately prefer WAV in my system.  I have recently tried ripping a CD in FLAC on the HDX and then setting it to transcode to WAV as it plays.  I need to do some more testing as this was only a very brief test, but it seems to be pretty close to the file being ripped as WAV in the first place.  Just wondered if you were still happy with the sound following the conversion to FLAC and whether you noticed a difference between playing the file as FLAC and playing the FLAC file transcoded to WAV?

Regards

Jason

A little late joining in here but, for what it's worth, I preferred WAV on my HDX.

However, WAV tagging didn't like my other devices for playback (Sonos in a second system for example) so after trying FLAC (converted on playback by the HDX)  versus WAV, I felt there was no difference in sound quality, so I decided to rip all future rips in FLAC, mainly for tag compatibility between other devices.

In changing the setting to "rip as FLAC", the entire existing HDX music library was converted from WAV to FLAC.

This is reversed if I choose to rip as WAV in the future - all FLAC files will be transcoded back to WAV. (According to the friendly people at Naim)

Ahh, I was wondering how the conversion was done, simply by changing the ripping option to FLAC then also converts all previous WAV rips to FLAC too, ok I see.

Still deciding what to do for the best really, but once I've done some more testing, if there really isn't a difference between actual WAC and FLAC transcoded to WAV on the fly, then I may well convert my library too.

Nice to have the option to be able to do this with very little effort too......nice touch Naim!

I don't think this is correct. I used to rip to WAV on my Unitiserve, then decided to change to FLAC. The existing WAV files remained as WAV. I keep meaning to convert everything to FLAC, but just haven't got round to it. Also, I may need some help from the Plain English Society to determine which setting to use to convert all remaining WAVs to FLAC.

Without changing any settings, I noticed that, according to the Naim app, FLAC files are played as WAV, so the US must have been set to do this by default - I was expecting to have to set this option myself, but again, I'm not sure which setting it is in the menu.

Blythe,

Fair enough, I've no idea why your settings and mine are different, but no matter. When I've got a bit of time I'll do some trial and error fiddling around with the rather vaguely named settings and see if I can figure them out. It's about time I got everything converted to FLAC.

Chris

I've just started the WAV to FLAC process with my uServe-SSD. I had to manually select all the albums in the desktop client, right- click and select convert to FLAC before the existing store started to convert.  Its a slow process, with minimal use of the uServe for streaming looking like about two weeks for approx. two thousand albums.

If you find the top of the tree, with all the albums beneath, one click will do the lot. 2,000 albums will take about three days. 

Hi HH, I differ on the timings. My RIPped store has 2,171 albums in it and with about twelve hours of playing music and ripping new CDs it has easily been going for ten days plus. IIRC it started with about 89,000 items in the encode list and as of now has about 9,000 to go. Which would make about forty tracks an album which is an eyebrow rising stat in itself. But 2171 albums looks about right.

After 10 days, I would take a close look to see if it hasn't stalled.  I did a big wav to flac conversion, and 1500 albums took more than 1 but less than 2 days.

Interesting, yeap I check it every few days and its still chugging. I'll let it finish and then have a look at how 2,171 albums led to almost 90,000 items in the encode queue, that strikes me as suspicious.

So checking my backup copy I took before the the conversions there are just short of 31,000 WAVs which seems sensible. No MP3 encoding going on, have recently deleted all of the LQ files and turned off the low quality transcode option. Something has gone awry somewhere, will let it finish and take it from there.

If there are (were) LQ files, at some point you told it to convert to MP3 as well.

Hi Bart,

The MP3 parallel encode I turned off a few days before doing the FLAC conversion, and after setting this to off.. I think I also right-clicked and removed the low quality version in DTC. I think.. can't remember for sure but 60/40 certain I didn't go and delete them manually from the NAS.

I specifically left if a few days after this assuming there would be some update process for it to mark the existing RIPs as not having an LQ copy before setting the encode to FLAC and then a few more days before manually selecting all the albums and transcoding to FLAC.

The LQ folder is still empty so it's not creating new MP3s and checking a few folders it has converted everything appears good. No duplicate files etc.

Part of me is intrigued part of me CBA! Will let it chug for another week or so and will then take a look.

Yeah . . . just let it keep going I guess!