Why or why not Flac

AIFF happens to play well with iTunes, FLAC does not, or did not when I tried — I do not use iTunes much these days.

I do think AIFF seems to sound better on my NDX than FLAC does — no idea why, though.

Nick

I don't think any of us could give toddler level explanations for why an of our HiFi system bits and pieces sound great so I'd not hold my breath on this one.

Does it matter?

Just enjoy your music as you enjoy it, and don't worry what everyone else thinks. I've done the FLAC WAV comparison incidentally. My ears told me whatever they told me, I'd not tell anyone else what they are or are not hearing personally.

Bruce

(This should probably be in the HiFi section not Music Room, in there you'll find replies far more helpful than mine. Maybe)

Bruce Woodhouse posted:

I don't think any of us could give toddler level explanations for why an of our HiFi system bits and pieces sound great so I'd not hold my breath on this one.

Does it matter?

Just enjoy your music as you enjoy it, and don't worry what everyone else thinks. I've done the FLAC WAV comparison incidentally. My ears told me whatever they told me, I'd not tell anyone else what they are or are not hearing personally.

Bruce

(This should probably be in the HiFi section not Music Room, in there you'll find replies far more helpful than mine. Maybe)

Some interesting thoughts here, but I personally have a counter view. I would say everybody on this forum is capable of giving a toddler level opinion as to why WAV sounds better to them or indeed FLAC.  Rather than a thesis on the effect of this or that Cap or the result of distance on sound waveform, or the medium they are passing though or reflecting from.

It matters because an exchange of views or opinions is one of the primary reasons this forum exists, and such exchanges drives interest and participation in our hobby.

I do enjoy my music or I would not be a member of this forum, but I also have a thirst for knowledge and value other forum members opinions, as by default of forum membership they also enjoy their music. I also value yours, and I am disappointed you won't share the results of your own FLAC WAV comparison tests with me and all the other forum members. What was the result which sounded better to you and why, or for you was there no difference? Which of the two did you settle on and use or do you flip from one format to another willy-nilly? I am certain I am not the only forum member that would value your constructive input as its obviously an area of our hobby that interest you, or you would not be a member of this forum or indeed have conducted your own comparison tests.

As for which section I posted into I thought this the most suitable and still do, if I am wrong I feel certain a moderator will move it accordingly.

I'm a MAC user and up to the OS version I have in my computers FLAC format is not fully supported so  I decided to use AIFF which is a natural format for MAC OS. I could have used ALAC which is lossless compressed but as space was not an issue I went uncompressed to make replay easier for the cpu.  As I use Audirvana, FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF , .... are OK.   

Weeks ago a tried to replay some files directly from a USB stick into the nDAC and it didn't work. Naim support told me that AIFF was not the best format for what I was doing, I reformatted the files to FLAC and the replay worked fine, same thing when I formatted the same files to WAV.

I'm not able to distinguish any difference replaying with A+3 the same file formatted FLAC, ALAC, WAV or AIFF in any of my kits. 

SteveW posted:

... There are multiple post's expressing the view that Flac files fail to express music in an emotional way, ... My question is does anybody know why, can anybody give an understandable explanation why so that a 5 year old like me can understand it?

If you seek an explanation as to why flac is 'emotionless' or any other lesser comparative, I'm afraid I can't help as my extensive listening tests on ripped and purchased files led me to conclude flac was my top choice. And it had nothing to do with emotion. An ever-so slightly softer presentation in flac plus smaller files and less redundant data being zipped around (two naim units are wireless) one permanently wired led me to choose flac over wav. I realise with a   system / component change my findings may become 'wrong' if I re-test and I'm not emotionally invested in any outcome. I welcome the day I upgrade and can squeeze even greater fidelity from my music.

My understanding is that files are played as PCM (wav), and that compressed files like flac need decompressing first. That places an extra load on a player doing that 'on the fly', and with some players - of which the Naim streamers are said to be included - don't do as well as when presented with the wav file itself. The reason usually proposed is the additional load placed on the processor, which would seem to be a reasonable explanation.

People who transcode from flac to wave on the fly in the server (NAS) seem to find that solves the problem, believed to be because the NAS has sufficient spare precessing capacity.

With Chord Dave DAC I have compared wav and flac and have not detected an audible difference (through Bryston 4Bsst2 power amp and PMC EB1i speakers, and through ATC EC23 active crossover, Musical Fidelity P270/P170/P170 power amps and PMC EB1i bass speakers +ATC SM75-150/Scanspeak D3004_660000. Whether that is my ears, my room, my system(s) or Dave not sounding different I am unable to say.

Remember FLAC and WAC is meaningless to your Chord DAC, you will need a streamer or such like to create the sample format framing... SPDIF or USB..from the WAV or FLAC. Therefore you have decoupled your DAC from the transport, and so any perturbations from WAV or FLAC decoding from your transport will be significantly reduced to being none existent. I also decouple my DAC from my streamer, and the effect of WAV and FLAC decoding ivery much diminished to being none existent.

Simon

Thanks, Simon, for picking up my nonsensical statement. (Must be the wine!) Restating: using Audirvana as renderer on my Mac Mini (Core i5/2.5GHz/16GB RAM), I could tell no difference between wav and flac (played through Dave and rest of system as my last post, same corollary).

SteveW posted:

Bruce Woodhouse posted:

I don't think any of us could give toddler level explanations for why an of our HiFi system bits and pieces sound great so I'd not hold my breath on this one.

Does it matter?

Just enjoy your music as you enjoy it, and don't worry what everyone else thinks. I've done the FLAC WAV comparison incidentally. My ears told me whatever they told me, I'd not tell anyone else what they are or are not hearing personally.

Bruce

(This should probably be in the HiFi section not Music Room, in there you'll find replies far more helpful than mine. Maybe)

Some interesting thoughts here, but I personally have a counter view. I would say everybody on this forum is capable of giving a toddler level opinion as to why WAV sounds better to them or indeed FLAC.  Rather than a thesis on the effect of this or that Cap or the result of distance on sound waveform, or the medium they are passing though or reflecting from.

It matters because an exchange of views or opinions is one of the primary reasons this forum exists, and such exchanges drives interest and participation in our hobby.

I do enjoy my music or I would not be a member of this forum, but I also have a thirst for knowledge and value other forum members opinions, as by default of forum membership they also enjoy their music. I also value yours, and I am disappointed you won't share the results of your own FLAC WAV comparison tests with me and all the other forum members. What was the result which sounded better to you and why, or for you was there no difference? Which of the two did you settle on and use or do you flip from one format to another willy-nilly? I am certain I am not the only forum member that would value your constructive input as its obviously an area of our hobby that interest you, or you would not be a member of this forum or indeed have conducted your own comparison tests.

As for which section I posted into I thought this the most suitable and still do, if I am wrong I feel certain a moderator will move it accordingly.

if you fancy a deep trawl in the search you may find my personal conclusion but it was neither long or profound, and it was some time ago. A huge amount of discussion on this topic will have superceded it. I stand by my comment that what worked for me that day in my room with my system may not be relevant to others. Interestingly the recently departed CEO and general Godfather of Naim (Paul Stephenson) shared my views about the formats. I don't recall him offering an explanation, though I may be wrong.

My hobby is music, not understanding music replay or HiFi equipment. I never tweak with my kit, and I virtually never post subjective reviews of equipment (as opposed to music). There are varying reasons why we are members here, or enjoy the Forum. Reading the HiFi corner threads is almost never one of them for me

I definitely don't need to know why my system sounds great. or more importantly why that recording grabbed and engaged me on that day. I'm just happy that it does.

I have a feeling that this issue is a bit like quantum physics; anyone that believes they completely understand it is almost certainly likely to be wrong.

Bruce

I have a cheeky suggestion for a trade. Share your 'Records of the Year' in the thread of that name  with some descriptions and details of what you have enjoyed and why and I'll share my WMV FLAC comparison.

Deal Bruce, but first I need to understand the meaning of 'Records of the Year', time pressures mean I may be a tad tardy.