ND555 Impressions

I am not surprised - DB can hear the difference - his system must have forensic resolving capability!!! ...... that S1 preamp is epic... I was surprised that I could hear the difference between non compressed flac and wav......... wav sounding more spacious with better low level detail (on NDS). I have quite a few tracks purchased from Melodishop ......... these are highly compressed flacs - surprisingly they sound pretty good god knows where they have come from - I suspect they are ripped cd's.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Richard, sorry that really is voodoo... akin to say listening standing on your left leg sounds better than  when standing on your right... sure in the limit the listener might be more comfortable standing on their left leg so it sounds ‘better’... but we are in the realms of unconscious and unsubstantiated subjective bias.

Actually, standing on your left leg will activate the right side of the brain, which is the creative side. Standing on your right leg will active the left side of the brain, which is the analytical. So that could affect how you perceive music.

My gut feeling is - any form of work that is required unpacking - on the fly - is liable to have some form of effect. When I rip CD's I always choose to avoid any form of compression. Hence my surprise - at some of the highly compressed flacs sounding so good ... I also avoid embedded pictures ...... 

It seems to me that a scientific look into this is required - and a standard set - so that when purchasing you know how the format has been compiled......

Try standing on both!!!

Richard Dane posted:

Simon, I'm just saying what has been reported elsewhere. The metadata may well be a red herring, or not. Maybe "voodoo".  I don't know. But the piece was certainly an interesting read. My point is that there must be more going on than we currently understand, otherwise how to explain it?

As I say, i haven't tried it myself - it would need a properly managed listening test - but if someone says they think it sounds better to them, who am I to argue with that?

None here has questioned the results reported by DB, to the best of my knowledge. But I certainly have questioned the conclusions that he has drawn from the results. The aim of ripping should be to obtain a faithful copy of the original, not one that most pleases our perceptions. In my view, of course!

Metadata might play a part. It's moot here because I have listened to filed ripped on the HDX and the same file ripped on my PC with dBpoweramp and heard no difference. If embedding is  significant, I would have hoped that Naim would have come up with non  embedded FLACs by now, but maybe this is technically impossible.

Richieroo posted:

Try standing on both!!!

Try sitting on your backside, everything sounds better like that to me!

Richieroo posted:

My gut feeling is - any form of work that is required unpacking - on the fly - is liable to have some form of effect. When I rip CD's I always choose to avoid any form of compression. Hence my surprise - at some of the highly compressed flacs sounding so good ... I also avoid embedded pictures ...... 

It seems to me that a scientific look into this is required - and a standard set - so that when purchasing you know how the format has been compiled......

If your NAS converts FLAC to WAV on the fly, you r streamer doesn’t know or care that is was stored as FLAC, let alone what level of compression was used. Go for maximum compression and you still have a lossless stream. 

Mike Sullivan posted:

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Richard, sorry that really is voodoo... akin to say listening standing on your left leg sounds better than  when standing on your right... sure in the limit the listener might be more comfortable standing on their left leg so it sounds ‘better’... but we are in the realms of unconscious and unsubstantiated subjective bias.

Actually, standing on your left leg will activate the right side of the brain, which is the creative side. Standing on your right leg will active the left side of the brain, which is the analytical. So that could affect how you perceive music.

That at least explains my incapability of finding any differences between identical rips: when I listen to music I'm typically sitting and both sides of my brain must be inactive!

Richard

Any chance of an issue date for this?

 I think HFNRR touched on this in one of the editorials a while back; where they felt that a WAV rip with no embedded metadata sounded better than either WAV or FLAC where metadata was embedded.

The Absolute Sound ran some pieces a good while ago about 'rips' with and without metadata too.  I'll try to find the issue dates.

In the early days of the HDX, Malcolm Steward and I did a huge amount of experimenting with differing rips of the same CD and found quite large differences in what we perceived to be the swing in the music.  We preferred the HDX rips. I had conversations with my namesake at Naim who suggested quite logical reasons for differences which unfortunately I've forgotten. He also scolded me for not documenting the versions of apps like dBPoweramp I was using as he quite rightly stated that the next version may be different.  I'm sure things have settled and we have all learn a lot in that time so absolutely no implied criticism of dBP an app I use regularly.

ChrisSU posted:

Richieroo posted:

Try standing on both!!!

Try sitting on your backside, everything sounds better like that to me!

Very true, just wondering would it be worth trying a Power Line on the Electric Reclining Listening chair ?

Dark Bear has probably one of the most resolving system of the majority of members here, so it can explain that he can hear differences.   Perhaps he has also very good ears....

This debate on different sounding cd rips was already be made, in part, at the debut of the uniticore.  I remember some finding differences between serve rips, core and dppoweramp.

With each upgrade I have made - on the Naim journey - I have been astounded at the level of detail leveraged ........ the S1 in particular is a terrific technical achievement - and I can well believe DB will hear an ant fart ........ 3 rows back in the orchestra pit..........!!!

Steve,

It just have been about a year or so back, but I can't recall the exact issue - I think it was HFNRR.  I've got some back issues stashed in a cupboard so I'll try to dig them out and see if I can find it.  It may be a while though as I've got a busy few days ahead..

It's an easy enough task to compare two WAV files back to back, with and without embedded metadata. I've done it.

If you can hear a difference there is a difference. If not, then not. Don't trust anybody else's ears, however golden they claim to be.

Harry posted:

It's an easy enough task to compare two WAV files back to back, with and without embedded metadata. I've done it.

If you can hear a difference there is a difference. If not, then not. Don't trust anybody else's ears, however golden they claim to be.

I beg to disagree. You can have two files which are identical and still sound very differently to you. This does not imply that they are different.

The reasons why two identical files can sound differently well known to us: by the time we listen to the second file, we have already listened to the first one. We are then different and, like us, our replay systems might be different as well. Panta Rhei!   

Phil Harris wrote 21.2.2018 here in the forum:

I did some "testing" on this when we first developed the Naim DAC as that could play both WAV and FLAC from USB and it was easy to keep the playback chain simple and consistent.

I had several identical memory sticks with a WAV rip of an album on some and a FLAC conversion of exactly the same album on others, a couple of roomfulls of willing 'victims' and the sticks labeled so that only I knew which were which. The sticks would be switched around (as there were multiple WAV and multiple FLAC sticks then it wasn't as simple as the victims seeing me swapping a stick and knowing that they would be getting a different file format) and the same track played.

The overall result was that although almost universally the victims could reliably tell when the file format changed between WAV and FLAC and vice versa there was no significant bias as to which "sounded best" or which was definitely the WAV and which was definitely the FLAC with different listeners consistently preferring one to the other in roughly equal measure.

nbpf posted:

Harry posted:

It's an easy enough task to compare two WAV files back to back, with and without embedded metadata. I've done it.

If you can hear a difference there is a difference. If not, then not. Don't trust anybody else's ears, however golden they claim to be.

I beg to disagree. You can have two files which are identical and still sound very differently to you. This does not imply that they are different.

The reasons why two identical files can sound differently well known to us: by the time we listen to the second file, we have already listened to the first one. We are then different and, like us, our replay systems might be different as well. Panta Rhei!   

So if you can't hear a difference there is a difference, and if you can hear one, there isn't. This doesn't work for me. But if it works for you, then by all means stick with it. Trust your own ears and draw your own conclusions. It's your money.

T38.45 posted:

Phil Harris wrote 21.2.2018 here in the forum:

I did some "testing" on this when we first developed the Naim DAC as that could play both WAV and FLAC from USB and it was easy to keep the playback chain simple and consistent.

I had several identical memory sticks with a WAV rip of an album on some and a FLAC conversion of exactly the same album on others, a couple of roomfulls of willing 'victims' and the sticks labeled so that only I knew which were which. The sticks would be switched around (as there were multiple WAV and multiple FLAC sticks then it wasn't as simple as the victims seeing me swapping a stick and knowing that they would be getting a different file format) and the same track played.

The overall result was that although almost universally the victims could reliably tell when the file format changed between WAV and FLAC and vice versa there was no significant bias as to which "sounded best" or which was definitely the WAV and which was definitely the FLAC with different listeners consistently preferring one to the other in roughly equal measure.

Interesting but anecdotal, as I'm sure Phil would agree. Something obviously going on but nothing to support any tentative conclusions based on a non controlled study.  Scientific rigour would not be impossible to apply to an investigation along these lines, but the size of the sample and the huge resources required to carry out standardised procedures and analyse the results probably wouldn't be justified. I'm sure that if someone thought they could make enough money out of it, they would stump up the millions necessary to do it right and get it published. Although this assumes a statistically significant finding and a plausible explanation for it. Neither are a given.

Harry posted:

nbpf posted:

Harry posted:

It's an easy enough task to compare two WAV files back to back, with and without embedded metadata. I've done it.

If you can hear a difference there is a difference. If not, then not. Don't trust anybody else's ears, however golden they claim to be.

I beg to disagree. You can have two files which are identical and still sound very differently to you. This does not imply that they are different.

The reasons why two identical files can sound differently well known to us: by the time we listen to the second file, we have already listened to the first one. We are then different and, like us, our replay systems might be different as well. Panta Rhei!   

So if you can't hear a difference there is a difference, and if you can hear one, there isn't. ...

No, that's not what I wrote.

What I wrote is that two files may be identical (and thus, necessarily, not different) and yet be found to sound differently.

I trust DB to have listened to the 3 rips very carefully and and in a very revealing system and to have found out the rips to sound differently.

This strongly suggests that the rips are actually different and therefore not all bit perfect. The logical possibility that the rips are in fact identical cannot however be excluded. This is because (again, to the best of my understanding) DB has only listened to the files but he has not compared them bit-by-bit for equality.

All these considerations would be rather immaterial if DB had not concluded that he would use the system that produces the best sounding rips to build his music collection.

This would be a very bad choice if the system that yields the best sounding rips turned out to generate rips that are not bit perfect. Is that system yields bit perfect rips for certain, then the fact that these rips sound better than other rips is not a problem, of course.

When I did FLAC (lossless) vs. WAV test it tooked 30 sec sample to realise that WAV is clearly better. I do not undestand this "maybe something happened" in ripping. dBpoweramp there is AccurateRip comparison and you can be 100% sure that it does not get any better no matter what ripping system you are using. Then use NAS FLAC to WAV conversion on the fly. Job done and all the speculation can be ignored.

Gandalf_fi posted:

When I did FLAC (lossless) vs. WAV test it tooked 30 sec sample to realise that WAV is clearly better. I do not undestand this "maybe something happened" in ripping. dBpoweramp there is AccurateRip comparison and you can be 100% sure that it does not get any better no matter what ripping system you are using. Then use NAS FLAC to WAV conversion on the fly. Job done and all the speculation can be ignored.

Hi Gandalf,
Nothing strange about your listening results. WAV doesn't need the "processing" that FLAC needs. "Processing" means "noise".
Both contain the very same information, no doubt about that. But the way those files are processed is not the same.

why not open a new thread like «  rips are rips? » or something like that?

I think this was the article.

"https://www.hificritic.com/flac-wav-sound-quality-research.html"

In "" to avoid Richard removing a link but Richard, if you're OK with a link to HiFiCritic please remove the "".

It's not a bad idea from French Rooster.  To avoid this ND555 thread disappearing down a rabbit hole, perhaps anyone who wishes to discuss differences with rips further could start a new thread in the Streaming Audio room.