Bug with FLAC ?

I haven't noticed any SQ issue when playing FLACs off USB stick (I don't have a NAS yet and WMP doesn;t reocgnise flacs so can't stream)

I had loads of artefacts on a sample track I downloaded. I downloaded it again in FLAC, in WAV but the artefacts are present on those too and in the same or very similar position in the track so I assume it is the recording. I certainly wasnt as low quality as MP3 (assume you mean quite low rate since you don;t specify)

Have you tried playing the track(s) on another player.

Could the track(s)be upsampled?

So the tracks are OK when converted /trancoded to WAV?

If it was a buffering problem, wouldn't there be dropouts or stuttering in playback, rather than a loss of SQ?

Sounds broken to me.

So the DAC interpolates missing data?  Sounds unlikely.

Does converting to WAV get them back on track?

Mige0 -

Much has been written about the subtle improvements that are possible when going from FLAC to WAV streaming using Naim network players.   But most of the speculation I've read is that the improvement is a simple matter of reducing the processing load on the player by not having to do uncompression, and thus reducing the amount of noise the processor generates.   I do not see this as a bug with FLAC, but instead as an optimization using WAV.

I rip all of my music to FLAC (level 0), and have my UPnP server convert on-the-fly to WAV.   But if I could go back and do it all over again, I would have used dbpoweramp to rip my CD's using its new "uncompressed" FLAC option.

If you have access to dbpoweramp, you might want to try comparing WAV to uncompressed FLAC.   I would bet you will hear next to no difference, but it would interesting to hear your results.

Good luck.

Hook

PS - Sorry in advance if you are referring to something completely different here.   I own an NDX -- and not a Uniti or UQ -- so I do not know if these two products have something wrong with their FLAC replay.   It is definitely not the case with the NDX.   Mrs. Hook has shown me that she hear a difference between streaming FLAC and WAV (we did a blind test), but I confess that I cannot!   On the other hand, she could hear no difference between WAV and FLAC converted to WAV on-the-fly.  I figure it can only help, and cannot hurt, to do this uncompression work on the UPnP server, as opposed to my renderer (so I've left this server option for on-the-fly conversion to WAV turned on).

Thank you both. It never occurred to me to convert FLAC to WAV but it's hardly a chore and worth investigating.

Perhaps another Naim type solution is to use an NDX to transcode to s/pdif and feed it into an nDAC?

If the hypothesis is that it is the extra processing required to decode FLAC that is responsible for an NDX sounding poorer with FLAC as opposed to WAV, has anyone tested whether switching wireless encryption off has a similar effect?