ALAC 192KHz / 24bit - when is this coming?

You should not lose metadata converting ALAC to AIFF.

Why don't you bother Apple about not supporting FLAC.

@nudgerwilliams: you are right - it works. Just tried with XLD. It was a misinformation on some other forum stating AIFF did not handle metadata like WAV. Thanks a lot.

@bananahead: how can you possibly know if I have or not "bothered" Apple about it. 

BTW I'm not sure a customers legit feature request should be called "bother"...

Anyway: the AIFF way is ok. But still I am sure there is no technical reason why ALAC is not supported. It's just a matter of allocating resources to do it. Please, I am not saying this is more important than other things, just, it should be tackled someday. And since ALAC was added 2011 IIRC, it shows NAIM has not bothered about it since a long time already!

mark

Best way around the Itunes Flac issues is to use Audirvana + in itunes integration mode - with Audirvana creating flac proxy files in the itunes library from your storage or NAS.

Works a treat - all itunes does is organise the files.

Tog

I looked it up in the dictionary

bother 

Did you notice any difference with say a 96/24- track?

just curious.

cheers

aleg

You could just keep all your music to 96KHz and acknowledge that you can't hear a difference between this and 192 anyway...

I did not yet buy anything in 192KHz AND 96KHz to compare - so I cannot say if there is any difference. My guess is no.

But how can I convert 192KHz tracks (I have a few LINN Rec downloads in this rate) to 96KHz? I'm not sure how the sample rate conversion works - will it interpolate the values or just skip every second sample? Won't converting make things bad?

Any program (dbPoweramp, XLD, foobar, etc) can do proper downsampling in discrete multiples.

Downsampling in discrete multiples (so 192 to 96 or 48) will just leave out intermediairy samples. This will not cause a change to the remaining bits.

Downsampling in indiscrete steps (so 192 to 88.2 or 44.1) will use interpolation to create new samlles and bits will be changed. This is not recommended.

My opinion is that downsampling from 192 to 96 won't make any difference, because most digital music files don't contain any information in the range that is handled by the increased sample rate above 96kHz. In my opinion the extra bits added by going from 96 to 192 are just empty.

If you look at a spectragram from a file with 192 samlpe rate it is all black above a certain frequency, and that boundary frequency lies within the capabilities of 96kHz sampling.

cheers

Aleg

That'll work.

I voted with my wallet.

So let's review: Apple makes portable MP3 players costing hundreds of dollars and naim makes HD audio streamers costing up to $11,000 USD and this is Apple's problem? Umm I think you have it backwards. Last I checked naim was a HiFi company supporting HD audio and Apple was not. 

That's a pretty good point

FLAC was released in 2001. Apple decided that they wanted to create their own proprietary lossless format and released ALAC in 2004. They finally made it widely available in 2011.

Apple do not make MP3 players. They make portable media players that initially supported it's proprietary AAC format. They eventually added support for MP3 so they do have a history or introducing support for standard formats.

Just transcode to wav.

Apple don't meet my needs because I can't easily play FLAC files on my iPod.

Naim don't meet my needs because I can't fit an HDX in my pocket and listen to it on the train.

FLAC was invented before ALAC; the iPod was the pre-eminent portable digital music player when Naim started releasing their streaming products (initially with no ALAC support at all).

It's pretty sterile arguing which one is more culpable for the current format compromises their customers are having to make to listen to their music, when they want, where they want, how they want.

Having said that, I'm pretty sure the open source principle is the direct opposite of an agreed standard that is "set in stone".  Which is presumably one reason why Naim recommend WAV (and built the UnitiServe around it) and a valid reason for a manufacturer to choose not to support FLAC.

Microsoft and IBM stand as guarantors of the WAV format

Apple stands as guarantor of the AIFF/ALAC formats

You can debate/be cynical about how reliable they each might be in that role, but who stands as guarantor of FLAC? 

Olly

Hi Olly, you could also try a different player than apple - like Astell & Kern - which support FLAC, mp4, aiff, wav, dsd, etc. and has very good DAC in it (and the high end one has TWO burr brown DACs!) for high quality playback.  Coming from an iPod this blew my mind with good in-ear headset (I have Shure 545) and now this is what I use on the road.  It can even drive my Audeze LCD 2s which are phenomenal.

The software is not great, but if you like to listen to albums or simple playlists and have an ear for quality, it can make a long plane ride a lot more enjoyable than an iphone or ipod.

I go with FLAC because I trust a huge  community of users/developers more than I trust any commercial firm whose only real concern is their bottom line.

Try this. Convert back and forth 10 or 20 times. See if you can tell the difference between the original and final sound. If not - you're good to go.

Yeah that's sounds pretty right.

The real test would be to take the same extract from the same piece of music at two resolutions and get someone else to switch between them 100 times and for you to note which was which.  If they were markedly different ( eg 128MP3 vs 24/192 or a Naim vs a Dansette record player, for older readers) you'd expect to get 100 right.  The closer the sources got the more difficult it is to discriminate, and if you just guessed you would get 50/50 (assuming a sample of 100 is enough, which it might not be).  If you got a clear margin in favour of one resolution over the other then you can hear the difference; it you don't well save your money!

Thing is, people never do this.  They just say they can hear the difference (and believe it I,m sure) but don't test it empirically.  So snake oil salesmen abound in hifi as they have for the 40+ years I have been buying it and will for the next 40 years too.  There are more golden imaginations than golden ears!

one way you can do the test that JSH mentions yourself is to use the usb input on the SuperUniti and play music back to back at different resolutions - for example I did this with The National's "Trouble will Find Me" album, comparing iTunes purchased (256k bit rate, 16/44.1 kHz resolution) and higher res version (lossless aiff, 24 bit, 96 kHz).  I did this with both my speakers and headphones.  To me, there is a clear difference in depth and presence.  Could be psychological, since I did not do this totally blind, but I did try to determine which type of file I was listening to without looking at what was playing, back and forth, across all tracks on the album, many times.   I do this to determine, is it worth HD tracks at $18 vs. iTunes at $9.99?  I say yes with the right equipment you can definitely hear a difference.  And you may not even care at the end of the day so that is what is important IMHO if you love it, who cares?