REVELATION! - WAV vs. FLAC
Posted by: Tariqv on 21 June 2015
After several years of listening to FLAC, I happened to stumble upon a WAV file while listening today and I "felt" it sounded fuller, more musical, deeper than usual. So I decided to convert the file to FLAC and compare both, and I later did the same for another song. It seems to me that there is a tangible difference between both.
So, searching the forum I realised that FLAC files can be transcded to WAV by the uPNP server; could you please help me do that?
I have a synology NAS drive feding an NDX via a wired connection.
Many thanks
Dear All, I would like to join the above reply. I think i did as it was instruucted and my NDX plays FLAC as always not transcoded to WAVE. Is it really beneficial to have it transcoded into WAVE?
Yes, my experience is Wav sounds best - Naim recommend it too.
I don't agree with Mike-B that you should convert the files; transcoding on the fly does the same thing with a lot less trouble.
I have installed last week.
it took me some time but i have succeded :-)
important: Minimserver you need to install on NAS and Minimwatch with minimstreamer on PC or Mac. Minimstreamer allows you to set transcoding from flac or mp3 to wav. Works fine now
There is a setting in the N-Serve app (desk top client) that allows me to change it to transcode all FLAC to WAV on playback - but the HDX is both a server and player, so it might be a different thing with the NDX - I'm not familiar with the NDX.
You may have to change a setting in your server - (QNAP or other) although some NAS do not offer the option with their particular server. Certainly a QNAP NAS running Asset does offer the option.
Originally Posted by supmario:
Dear All, I would like to join the above reply. I think i did as it was instruucted and my NDX plays FLAC as always not transcoded to WAVE. Is it really beneficial to have it transcoded into WAVE?
I have just converted my entire collection from wav to flac.
I can't hear any difference whatsoever except that the click or pop that I used to hear between tracks in Simple Audio has miraculously and blissfully disappeared.
Tagging, album art, etc all work much better with much less effort in flac than in wav.
When I first got into music streaming, everything about flac seemed better but my first server / streamer was an HDX and Naim were at that time peddling the virtues of wav so that's what I did. I wasted a lot of time fiddling with wav files to get them to work on streamers like Sonos and Simple Audio and I'd have had much happier results much sooner if I'd just gone with flac from the outset. Fortunately nothing lost in the long term - at least I have always been uncompressed and so I remain.
I say nothing lost but I got a shock recently when I ran a Perfect Tunes / Accurate Rip check on my collection and was informed that a surprisingly large percentage of my rips (the vast majority done on HDX) were inaccurate. I can't actually hear much wrong with anything and maybe it's just a bit here or there and nothing to worry about but I must say I had expected a better result from HDX rips.
Hi Tariqv, thats not transcoding correctly
- 24/96 should read 4608kbs, 3072kbs shows its playing 16 bit, this means you have a 96dB dynamic limit as opposed to 144dB for 24 bit
I advise to change your UPnP to Minimserver, the install is not so plug'n'play as you need to install the Java package (in Synology supplied package centre) before Minimserver. But apart from some easy extra installs, once loaded its a nice to use UPnP.
Hi Tariqv, thats not transcoding correctly
- 24/96 should read 4608kbs, 3072kbs shows its playing 16 bit, this means you have a 96dB dynamic limit as opposed to 144dB for 24 bit
I advise to change your UPnP to Minimserver, the install is not so plug'n'play as you need to install the Java package (in Synology supplied package centre) before Minimserver. But apart from some easy extra installs, once loaded its a nice to use UPnP.
Thank you Mike, have installed Minimserver, Minimstreamer and Minimwatch, Works fine now.
I have an issue though, album art is not accurate 100% anymore, so some songs have the right albüm cover while other do not; say Radiohead has Sade albüm art.
Is this a know issue and does anyone have a fix?
Tariq
It's solved wrong artwork issues for me.
1st clear both the app caches & try again
If that doesn't work, I'm afraid this happens, so welcome to the word of tag editing. What ripping software do you use ?? I can help more with dBpoweramp as that's what I use.
In each album you have a folder or cover .jpg, if you open Windows Explorer or whatever its called in Mac, find each album & open it so you can see all the tracks, the last line will be (should be) a "JPEG image" (a .jpg) called folder or cover, thats the album cover art
Using dBpoweramp or another, you then need to link each album to that .jpg.
If there is no .jpg in the album, you can get one on www & copy/paste it into the album
Or also with dBpoweramp or another you can search & find the album art on www, not so reliable if your www connection goes down.
If you do need to go into editing, a tip is to make sure that the cover images are large enough that they don't look blurry when browsing via the Naim app. I've seen 600x600 or above recommended, I try to use 1000x1000 nowadays.
+1 on rescanning the Minimserver Dave***t, probably a good idea even without these problems with a new UPnP