Wav, Flac - download questions

DBPoweramp's format converter retains existing metadata when converting FLAC to WAVE.

Adam Zielinski posted:

There is no difference in sound quality between AIFF and WAV. 
Popularity of WAV most likely stems from a wide-spread popularity of Windows based systems.

There is no SQ difference in any lossless file formats as such whether they be wav, FLAC, ALAC, AIFF etc. However there may be difference in sound performance from the software extracting to the PCM from the file or media data structures.

As far as metadata, WAV has a very rich metadata construct, more so than regular FLAC, and so you might find in converting from WAV to FLAC that more specialised metadata is omitted. There is a setting in FLAC encoders that can allow the special encoding of non native Ogg Vorbis Comments metadata, but not all FLAC decoders will be able to handle this.

Simon

Hmm, interesting thread.  

So any Synology NAS users out there know how to set up the software to convert/transcode the flac file to wav?  Then it would playback as a wav file on my NAC 272, right?

I'm open trying this out.....

What's nice with this transcoding that for example I do have some albums in ALAC 192khz and they can't be played via ND5XS ( in this particular format up to 96khz)

I switched transcoding on - marked only ALAC and now I don't have to convert them to FLAC anymore. Buying Audio Converter Pro at appstore was waste of money :-P

blownaway posted:

So any Synology NAS users out there know how to set up the software to convert/transcode the flac file to wav?  Then it would playback as a wav file on my NAC 272, right?

 

Good choice,  many forumites do it that way.

It depends on what UPnP media server you are using.   If its Synology's own Media Server,  open webpage>Media Server>DMA Compatibility & "check" the box for transcoding & for FLAC.        But beware,  the Synology Media Server transcodes OK,  but it does not transcode gapless.   

The alternative is Minimserver but I am not so familiar with this to remember how to set transcoding,  but it does play gapless.  

Mike-B posted:

blownaway posted:

So any Synology NAS users out there know how to set up the software to convert/transcode the flac file to wav?  Then it would playback as a wav file on my NAC 272, right?

 

Good choice,  many forumites do it that way.

It depends on what UPnP media server you are using.   If its Synology's own Media Server,  open webpage>Media Server>DMA Compatibility & "check" the box for transcoding & for FLAC.        But beware,  the Synology Media Server transcodes OK,  but it does not transcode gapless.   

The alternative is Minimserver but I am not so familiar with this to remember how to set transcoding,  but it does play gapless.  

So it's better to use transcoder  for ALAC or convert ALAC to FLAC?

(Synology DS214)

I don't really understand the question.  Transcoding sends a WAV stream to the player irrespective of the stored format.  I've never used ALAC (I'm all PC (no Mac)) so I can't comment on that much.  I have tried FLAC v WAV & to my ears on my system WAV sounds better,  I've tried transcoding FLAC to WAV & compared that to straight WAV & I can't hear any difference.    However (& the point of my note to Blownaway) is that Synology's Media Server does not play gapless when transcoding,  whereas Minimserver does.   And I no longer use Minimserver simply because I only have WAV (& DSD) & have no need to transcode,  plus I prefer the simpler Synology presentation. 

Mike-B posted:

I don't really understand the question.  Transcoding sends a WAV stream to the player irrespective of the stored format.  I've never used ALAC (I'm all PC (no Mac)) so I can't comment on that much.  I have tried FLAC v WAV & to my ears on my system WAV sounds better,  I've tried transcoding FLAC to WAV & compared that to straight WAV & I can't hear any difference.    However (& the point of my note to Blownaway) is that Synology's Media Server does not play gapless when transcoding,  whereas Minimserver does.   And I no longer use Minimserver simply because I only have WAV (& DSD) & have no need to transcode,  plus I prefer the simpler Synology presentation. 

Well in the past I was using my MacBook as a music source so all hi-res flac files I had to converted to ALAC (iTunes doesn't read flac). Now I don't need this solution any more because my ND5XS can stream up to 192khz (except ALAC- up to 96khz). I'm thinking what would be the best - transcoding at Synology ALAC to WAV or just convert those ALAC files back to FLAC.

If you use MinimServer as the Media Server then by all means get it to transcode the ALAC stream to WAVE stream.  If you use Synology Media Server convert the ALAC files to WAVE files (to retain gapless).

Kacper posted:

I'm thinking what would be the best - transcoding at Synology ALAC to WAV or just convert those ALAC files back to FLAC.

I can't  comment on ALAC as I haven't used it other than convert whatever I had in ALAC to WAV.      Converting ALAC to FLAC will save on storage space - depending on the compression level you apply in the conversion.    Then use your Synology to transcode FLAC;  but as I said in my previous post, Synology's Media Server does not transcode gapless.   However I posted another thread this morning that Synology have now reintroduced Minimserver as a 3rd party UPnP & that does transcode gapless.

Also in your post you said your ND5XS can stream up to 192khz (except ALAC- up to 96khz).    Don't be tempted to upsample any format;  converting a 96kHz file to 192kHz is just taking up more space half full of nothing,  convert as source.

Mike-B posted:

Kacper posted:

I'm thinking what would be the best - transcoding at Synology ALAC to WAV or just convert those ALAC files back to FLAC.

I can't  comment on ALAC as I haven't used it other than convert whatever I had in ALAC to WAV.      Converting ALAC to FLAC will save on storage space - depending on the compression level you apply in the conversion.    Then use your Synology to transcode FLAC;  but as I said in my previous post, Synology's Media Server does not transcode gapless.   However I posted another thread this morning that Synology have now reintroduced Minimserver as a 3rd party UPnP & that does transcode gapless.

Also in your post you said your ND5XS can stream up to 192khz (except ALAC- up to 96khz).    Don't be tempted to upsample any format;  converting a 96kHz file to 192kHz is just taking up more space half full of nothing,  convert as source.

What I meant is that most of music library which I have had in my MacBook was ALAC 24bit/192khz, ND5XS can't handle that size in ALAC. That's why idea to convert those files to FLAC, By the way ALAC is the lossless format the same as FLAC.

Mike-B posted:

I don't really understand the question.  Transcoding sends a WAV stream to the player irrespective of the stored format.  I've never used ALAC (I'm all PC (no Mac)) so I can't comment on that much.  I have tried FLAC v WAV & to my ears on my system WAV sounds better,  I've tried transcoding FLAC to WAV & compared that to straight WAV & I can't hear any difference.    However (& the point of my note to Blownaway) is that Synology's Media Server does not play gapless when transcoding,  whereas Minimserver does.   And I no longer use Minimserver simply because I only have WAV (& DSD) & have no need to transcode,  plus I prefer the simpler Synology presentation. 

Hi, I'm using minimserver with my Synology.   I'm not clear on how to set it the minimserver to transcode my flac file to wav before it lands at my NAC272.  Do any minimserver users out there know?  I didn't see anything in the minimserver watch program to change this.  Hmmm...

blownaway posted:

Mike-B posted:

I don't really understand the question.  Transcoding sends a WAV stream to the player irrespective of the stored format.  I've never used ALAC (I'm all PC (no Mac)) so I can't comment on that much.  I have tried FLAC v WAV & to my ears on my system WAV sounds better,  I've tried transcoding FLAC to WAV & compared that to straight WAV & I can't hear any difference.    However (& the point of my note to Blownaway) is that Synology's Media Server does not play gapless when transcoding,  whereas Minimserver does.   And I no longer use Minimserver simply because I only have WAV (& DSD) & have no need to transcode,  plus I prefer the simpler Synology presentation. 

Hi, I'm using minimserver with my Synology.   I'm not clear on how to set it the minimserver to transcode my flac file to wav before it lands at my NAC272.  Do any minimserver users out there know?  I didn't see anything in the minimserver watch program to change this.  Hmmm...

Hi,

It's not completely straightforward and I suggest you check out the MinimServer, MinimStreamer and MinimWatch user guides to direct you through the process.

You will need to install MinimStreamer on your NAS if you haven't yet done so. Once you have done this & restarted MinimServer using MinimWatch on your PC, a couple of additional fields will appear in the Systems tab of MinimWatch Properties on your PC. One of these additional fields is called "stream.transcode'. Enter the following in this field if you want to transcode from Flac to WAV:

flac:wav  

Check out the user guides if this isn't clear to you.

Thanks for the reply.  I'll install the minimstreamer now.