Aiff aficionado admits "flac sounds better" shock!

One lossless file more lossless than another shock.

Wired or wireless connection between uniti and your server ?

VB wired to router wireless to Uniti

Tog

Have you got a decent wireless signal. Just a thought - the aiff file is going to require more bandwidth than the flac equivalent which could account for the differences you are hearing given a marginal link. Try it with a wired connection to rule this out.

AIFF is not lossless but basically wav in a different wrapper. I believe it's being converted to wav before being sent to the Uniti and the Vortex is doing a rather poor job of sending an unaltered stream with a different wrapper.

The Vortexbox can't send aiff to the Uniti - my comparison is against aiff via optical from a Mac or UPnP from Eyeconnect. The VB produces the best sound.

Tog

quote:

Originally posted by Tog:
VB wired to router wireless to Uniti

Tog

Wire it all and report back.

Unless you are using obscure versions (like AIFF-C) both WAV and AIFF is just the raw PCM-data in different wrappers with some metadata. If they sound different with exactly the same hardware-path then its a problem with the metadata (or the software creating/interpreting that data).

FLAC is a more complex format (more can go wrong) but needs only half the bandwidth. But it is also lossless like WAV and AIFF.

If the issue was as simple as wireless v wired - I wouldn't have bothered with the post. The issue is that subjectively the Uniti seems to handle flac better than aiff streamed (half wired - VB to router / mac to router) or via toslink. The only difference is that aiff is transcoded by Eyeconnect.

Tog

Ok - so via toslink you're either playing the native flac file or the native aiff file - no transcoding involved or are you still having to transcode the aiff to flac on the fly (i dont use vortexbox hence the question)

Toslink - aiff / flac no transcoding
Stream - vortex box/ miniDLNA Mac/Eyeconnect

The flac files have more life, detail and sound louder at the same volume when streamed.

I know and have argued that digital files of the same basic type should sound the same. I don't think it's the wine!

Tog

Very strange - i'd expect given the lower processing overhead in the Uniti(less EMI, power supply demand) when handling the aiff files that they should produce better results unless there is an issue with how the uniti / vortex box handles aiff files ?

James

can Uniti play AIFFs? I think the difference could be because of the transcoding - Tog, are you sure you've disabled the transcoding on your non-Uniti part and that the only unit doing transcoding is the Uniti itself. There should be some option on the UPnP server regarding this. Why they are so different through toslink is very interesting. I'm waiting for my 3.5mm/Toslink adapter to arrive this week and I'll experiment with my macbook connected digitally to Qute and streaming from my NAS with FLACs.

Volume difference is really bazaar. The issue is in the transcoders before the uniti as I said earlier, regardless of where. That said, differences like this don't surprise me. It would surprise me that FLAC would win in a fair match.

Allen will not have this issue. If the UnitiServe's transcoder is similar to the one in the HDX, which I believe to be the case, it's quite seamless. Does a great job of on the fly bitrate conversion also.

I suspect that the culprit may be Eyeconnect which transcoded the aiff into Wav. The VB simply sends the flac straight to the Uniti.

Tog

Tog, I suspect the same. According to UPnP the server and the renderer negotiate which format the renderer can play natively and if the renderer can't play particular format the server COULD transcode this format in a format playable by the renderer. So, I think this is the reason you get different results - in case of FLAC Uniti plays them directly and in case of AIFF your server is transcoding them and sends the transcoded file to the Uniti, thus the difference. May be you can force the server always to transcode the files - it will be interesting, what will be the results in this case - equally "worse"?