UntiServe SSD Options WAV vs. FLAC Rips

Keeping music in Flac format makes sense. As you note, tagging in Flac is much more complete and universally supported than Wav. If you use a upnp server that can transcode flac to wav then you get the best of both worlds.

Most people now agree that wav sounds better than flac. A few years ago lots said there was no difference, now opinion seems to have changed

Graham Russell posted:

Keeping music in Flac format makes sense. As you note, tagging in Flac is much more complete and universally supported than Wav. If you use a upnp server that can transcode flac to wav then you get the best of both worlds.

Most people now agree that wav sounds better than flac. A few years ago lots said there was no difference, now opinion seems to have changed

It's not that WAV sounds better than FLAC. The Naim white paper gave a possible reason why transcoding on a NAS before reaching the Naim streamer may produce sonic benefits and the reason they gave is the CPU in the streamer would be doing less work and therefore using less power from the power supply.

Since FLAC is designed to be easy to decode I'm not sure whether much CPU power is required to transcode it and how much power from the power supply is required.  This is the only reason I've seen suggested why transcoding upstream may produce sonic benefits

A Linn engineer said the following -

1. If we measure the power rail that feeds the main processor in the DS we can clearly see identifiable disturbance patterns due to audio decoding and network activity. These patterns do look different for WAV and FLAC - WAV shows more clearly defined peaks due to regular network activity and processing, while FLAC shows more broadband disturbance due to increased (but more random) processor activity.

2. If we measure the power rails that feed the audio clock and the DAC we see no evidence of any processor related disturbances. There is no measurable difference (down to a noise floor measured in micro-volts) between FLAC and WAV in any of the audio power rails.

3. Highly accurate measurements of clock jitter and audio distortion/noise also show no difference between WAV and FLAC.

The extensive filtering, multi-layered regulation, and careful circuit layout in the DS ensure that there is in excess of 60dB of attenuation across the audio band between the main digital supply, and the supplies that feed the DAC and the audio clock. Further, the audio components themselves add an additional degree of attenuation between their power supply and their output. Direct and indirect measurements confirm that there is no detectable interaction between processor load and audio performance.

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UnitiServe and NAS upnp variants like MinimServer transcode on the fly so no worries there. I have listened to FLAC/WAV comparisons and couldn't tell the difference but wasn't a blind test. From previous posts the US creates a WAV variant unique to Naim but assume the FLAC version is universal and completely transportable. 

WAV files and folders created by US SSD will be picked up by, say, Minim software. Taging will be incomplete though. 

iTunes will not play FLAC files. 

Late to this chat but my experience.

US-SSD WAV rips for CD collection, US-SSD now sold. All WAV rips and album art picked up by Minimserver and working faultlessly via Synology. My albums are all rock CDs, as such so no long tagging and even in other cheaper hardware such as a Marantz £200 spare unit it finds all the WAVs in my original folder I copied from the NAS attached to the US-SSD and plays them back fine.

BUT I am not a tagging metadata evangelist so long as I can see the track listing as per the rip and WAV plays back I am happy.

Now Qobuz WAV 24bit downloads are another matter :-)

Jota posted:

It's not that WAV sounds better than FLAC. 

Well, sorry and all that but on my system it does. Which is why I use WAV files as source files and have established what software is best at tagging them.  Some people don't hear a difference some do. If you do, then it doesn't matter why or what an hypothesis might claim. You hear what you hear.

WAV better for me, lot 'fatter' like a thicker negative from film, just more information, for me....

Yes I prefer WAV to FLAC. Currently using Asset although might be moving to new music server where that's not an option but Minimserver is. Dan43, do you know if Minimserver allows transcoding (from FLAC to WAV) "on the fly" as Asset does? Also, maybe a minor thing, but I like Asset's handling of artists beginning with "The" in that, if you set the option, it will always ignore "the" when sorting whether tagged as, for example, "The Fall" or "Fall, The".

Steeve,

Yes Minimserver does FLAC to WAV on the fly transcoding, the menu items to tick and select are on the Minimserver site.

I have this set as the Qobuz WAVs ZIPs unpack to an incorrect size and won't read directly so I have a copy as FLAC and Tra scode on the fly through Minimserver.

EDIT : link to user guide, scroll down to the transcoding section

http://minimstreamer.com/userguide.html

Thanks. The Qobuz WAV thing I think is just that they are not tagged fully or properly. I had to go through and tag them manually so I reverted to downloading FLACs from them on which the tagging is fine. 

The issue seems to stem from the size of the WAV file that is unpacked. Minim server flags up the size is different so won't mount the files, thats where I got with the issue.

The remedy found so far is to use FLAC which has no problems or use something like dBpoweramp to transcode WAV-WAV which 'fixes' the issue if you want to stick with WAV originals. Bit of a faff.

I keep all my music in FLAC and everything downloaded from Qobuz in FLAC had been absolutely fine. I transcode to WAV using minim and can detect no difference whatsoever compared to streaming native WAV files. 

So going back to the original post, my advice is rip to FLAC, download in FLAC, and transcode to WAV. Easy peasy. 

HH is right, I personally prefer WAV originals, but you can't rule out that when Qobuz deliver WAV they are a transcode 'on the fly' online through their software anyway, no way of proving that of course.

FLAC through the entire library will make metadata editing easier and WAV transcoding will address that side of things, but I still like to have WAV files as my audio Masters :-) Just me though.

I'm ripping my 3k of cds into my HDX/NAS in FLAC format. And also 320k MP3 for ipod incar/onbike use.

If I am *that* botthered about WAV versus FLAC, I will take the CD off the shelf, and put it onto my CD player and play it from there.

jon honeyball posted:

If I am *that* bothered about WAV versus FLAC, I will take the CD off the shelf, and put it onto my CD player and play it from there.

Except that on a CD player you won't be playing the WAV format, but the Linear PCM format...

So, given the cost (cheap) of storage these days, has anyone considered keeping 2 libraries?  A WAV library for purist playback on NAIM, archiving etc and a FLAC library for use with other systems (eg Sonos...)?  If so, is it possible to keep them mirrored, but one in WAV and one in FLAC?

Just a thought...

Mike Woodcock posted:

So, given the cost (cheap) of storage these days, has anyone considered keeping 2 libraries?  A WAV library for purist playback on NAIM, archiving etc and a FLAC library for use with other systems (eg Sonos...)?  If so, is it possible to keep them mirrored, but one in WAV and one in FLAC?

Just a thought...

Just store in flac and transcode to wav on the fly.