dBpoweramp CD Ripper

I cannot hear any difference between "uncompressed FLAC" and "Level 5", however they both sound better to me when transcoded to WAV.

Still have no idea why WAV sounds better, for all the theory thats been made.

Graeme

I have visions of an NDX flashing up on it's screen "Huh, I see, feeding me FLAC again.  Why can't you give me a nice clean WAV?"

I'm trying to find if someone has actually tested the theory.  In theory, transcoding Lossless Uncompressed FLAC to WAV should make no difference, but that's just theory!

In the case of the plot I'm sure it's around there somewhere, perhaps hidden under a lilly pad?

No Huge I haven't,  I assumed the Synology transcoding problem of changing 24 to 16-bit depth was enough to degrade it - per my previous post I could detect it (or something)  

( are you saying uncompressed 'flac doe not change bit depth & will transcode thru Synology Media Server to 24-bit .wav? )

Also after some reading, my head tells me its harder to detect the differences in sample rates (192, 96 etal) whereas bit depth is more easily detectable. So I have it in my mind that the bit depth is important foundation of hi-res audio & would not want to compromise that.  

Mike, I was thinking with transcode off.

I also assume that the Synology transcode will defeat any change in FLAC (including uncompressed) and still reduce the data to 16 bit making a nonsense of the test.

Confused as ever  I think I stick with my current methodology 

Sorry Huge,  not thinking straight,  too much going on today, .......

.....   yes I've tried uncompressed .flac v .wav & concluded it was hard to tell & TBH I could live with both.   But one album swung it a month or ago, Elton's "GYBR" in 24/96,  Qubuz sent it in .flac & somehow it just didn't have the same whatever hard to put your finger on something as did the CD rip - not SQ,  but foot tapping R&R.    I converted it to .wav & it now seems to have whatever it was the CD rip had. It was far from conclusive in my mind & could just as easily be a mode change or the 3rd glass of Pinotage,  but I remain an avid .waverite

Mike,

Are you sure you weren't carried away and had a 4th or 5th Pinotage?

I carried out some tests quite a while back and was not able to hear any difference between WAV and uncompressed FLAC rips of a number of PCs.

I run a Synology NAS with the Synology Media Player and so can't transcode hi-res files on the fly. However, given the fairly uniform acceptance of the benefits of WAV on this forum, I may carry out some more tests on both my NAIM and Linn streamers.

Strange that very few people on the Linn forums recommend WAV over FLAC. 

Maybe its because the master recommends .flac

And the Studio masters are only sold as flac or alac

Kinda similar to Naim in a way - the masters say wav,  the faithful follow

it is possible, though I feel unlikely, that the Linn equipment as been optimised for FLAC decode and therefore there are no side effects to FLAC to WAV as some of us hear on Naim

The Studio masters on Qobuz can be downloaded as WAV. I never do this because of throughput limitations.

BTW on an unrelated matter - if the source CD is mono - it usually appears as two identical PCM channels on the CD and rip. However dBPoweramp lets you create single channel WAV or FLAC files that play perfectly on Naim (NDX), albeit at approx. 700kbps, and to me sound better for some reason than two identical PCM channels playing out as mono.

Simon