Sorry guys (and girls). I am not very technical and for some this may be child play and a really basic no brainer.I have done a search on the subject in the forum and it is possible I may have missed the answer (s).
I have an Olive music server which I have loaded with 300 CDs (with lots of effort and time I can assure you!). I ripped using FLAC although I had the choice of WAV because FLAC was the recommended/default method. I have been trying a UQ for a few days and the sound through the UQ's DAC is significantly better than through the Olive's!!!.
However, I have read in some threads here that WAV gives a better SQ than FLAC. My question is: can I convert my FLAC files into WAV? how easy is it to do and how long does it take? Is it worth doing if the improvement is not that great?
Thanks for your patience.
Posted on: 22 June 2011 by Peter_RN
Hello Christian
I think that the only person that can really answer your question on SQ is you. Some people say they can hear a difference between the formats other say not. Why not rip a few albums to WAV and make the comparison yourself? If you hear a difference you can then decide if you wish to do the conversion. I am nor familiar with the Olives operation but assume you would need a conversion program running on a computer to do this; Dbpoweramp is extremely good and quite easy to use, and is what I would recommend should this be the case. Time to convert, well I would select a few folders at a time and just let it get on with it, its not unreasonably long done this way.
Good luck
Peter
Posted on: 22 June 2011 by Alco
Hello Christian,
I also ripped my albums to flac and have never been able to tell any difference between WAV and FLAC. (I expect very few people being able to notice any difference in a blind listening test)
I do prefer flac because is saves about 50% HD space, compared to WAV.
Posted on: 23 June 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk
Hi Christian, yes I am cursed as being one of those who can definitely hear between FLAC and WAV with Naim. You do however have an option with some uPnP server software such as Asset to transcode to WAV when streaming, and you can even get Asset to transcode to WAV for your Naim and leave it as FLAC for any other network players you have...
BTW I opted to have my master rips as WAV as storage is so cheap.
Simon
