Flac or Wave?

[loneranger]

With Dbpoweramp i can rip my cd's in best quality Flac or Wave and stream this from my Qnap to a Pioneer N50A. But which is te best? A dealer said to me Wave is the best. What do you think?

 

[shadders]

With Dbpoweramp i can rip my cd's in best quality Flac or Wave and stream this from my Qnap to a Pioneer N50A. But which is te best? A dealer said to me Wave is the best. What do you think?

Hi,

They are for the purposes of playback, EXACTLY THE SAME. You may incur processing delay on flac, which may cause a difference in perceived sound, but the bits that are applied to the DAC are the same.

FLAC is a lossless compression of wav files - all it does is save hard disk space.

Regards,

Shadders.

 

[MajorFubar]

Shadders is correct. Your dealer could be implying the Pioneer's firmware is happier with uncompressed files, which could very well be the case. But FLACs decompress into their original source file without loss or corruption, so there is no sound quality difference.

 

[jjbomber]

With Dbpoweramp i can rip my cd's in best quality Flac or Wave and stream this from my Qnap to a Pioneer N50A. But which is te best? A dealer said to me Wave is the best. What do you think?

Rip a CD in both and see if you can tell the difference. My guess is that you won't.

Wave is compatible with everything whilst FLAC still has the occasional problem, so the dealer is correct from that point of view. However, in your system, this isn't an issue. FLAC files are a lot smaller than Wave, so take up less space on the hard drive. That is why most people use FLAC,

 

[spiny norman]

FLAC files are a lot smaller than Wave, so take up less space on the hard drive. That is why most people use FLAC

Well, that and the tagging, anyway.

 

[manicm]

And I'm up for a bit of troublemaking.

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/viewpoint/0716/Why_Do_WAV_And_FLAC_Files_Sound_Different.htm

 

[MajorFubar]

And I'm up for a bit of troublemaking.

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/viewpoint/0716/Why_Do_WAV_And_FLAC...

It's when you read garbage like that you realise it's very difficult to know who to trust in the industry. It's not right that people who genuinely don't know their arse from their elbow might look at sites like that to help them understand the ‘facts’, and they’re being fed bullsh-t. Here’s a good extract [from the link]:

Part three reported that a FLAC file sounded inferior to the WAV file from which it was made, and we found to our surprise that when these FLAC files were reconverted, the resulting WAV file did not recover the full sound quality of the original.

Totally misleading rubbish written by people too ignorant of the subject matter to understand why they are wrong. Either that or they have a crap FLAC encoder that's corrupting the data.

 

[manicm]

Major, it's very clear to me that you did not read the piece completely/properly. The gist of the piece is that repeated metadata application in the multiple conversions i.e. album art etc, could affect playback - and they did blind testing to back things up. Their recommendation was to apply metadata at the final file only. They tested with dbpoweramp.

 

[andyjm]

Major, it's very clear to me that you did not read the piece completely/properly. The gist of the piece is that repeated metadata application in the multiple conversions i.e. album art etc, could affect playback - and they did blind testing to back things up. Their recommendation was to apply metadata at the final file only. They tested with dbpoweramp.

manic, if you were to test a file compression programme, the first thing you might think to test is whether the wav to flac to wav conversion introduced any bit errors. This seems to have passed the writer of the article by. Instead he seems to be measuring the quality of the compression algorithm in inches which I have to admit is a new approach to me.

i am afraid I am with shadders in reaching the conclusion that the writer doesn't have a clue.

 

[shadders]

Major, it's very clear to me that you did not read the piece completely/properly. The gist of the piece is that repeated metadata application in the multiple conversions i.e. album art etc, could affect playback - and they did blind testing to back things up. Their recommendation was to apply metadata at the final file only. They tested with dbpoweramp.

manic, if you were to test a file compression programme, the first thing you might think to test is whether the wav to flac to wav conversion introduced any bit errors. This seems to have passed the writer of the article by. Instead he seems to be measuring the quality of the compression algorithm in inches which I have to admit is a new approach to me.

i am afraid I am with shadders in reaching the conclusion that the writer doesn't have a clue.

Hi Mr andyjm,

I do believe you have confused me with somebody else.

Regards,

Shadders.

 

[loneranger]

I had contact with a audio recensent and he also said that Wave is better than Flac.

 

[MikeToll]

Strangely enough I have just come back from a demo of the new Spendor D9 driven by a pair of Devialet 220's. The dealer just for our interest played the music several times, sometimes ripped as flac and sometimes in WAV. The RIPS were done from the same CD on the same equipment using dbpoweramp software. In other words a blind test with everything precisely the same and yes we could all tell which was which every time. Whether the difference could be heard on lesser equipment I have no idea but WAV was definitely better.

 

[abacus]

Providing the FLAC encoder/decoder is working correctly, and the ripping process does not rip at a lesser quality then the original, (CD is 16/44) then there will be no difference whatsoever between Wav & FLAC.

One thing I have noticed in all the tests mentioned, (I presume the blind tests were documented) is they all use dbpoweramp for encoding/decoding, therefore if you hear a difference, then its most likely that the dbpoweramp encoder/decoder is not up to the job. (I.E. Its introducing errors)

To check if the encoder/decoder is up to the job, convert Wav to FLAC and then back to Wav to make sure there is no difference in the Wav files. (This was also mentioned in a previous post)

Bill

 

[MajorFubar]

Major, it's very clear to me that you did not read the piece completely/properly. The gist of the piece is that repeated metadata application in the multiple conversions i.e. album art etc, could affect playback - and they did blind testing to back things up. Their recommendation was to apply metadata at the final file only. They tested with dbpoweramp.

You're right I read no further than the part I quoted, because even by that point it was misleading. Unless their FLAC encoding/decoding software was bugged and corrupting the data during transcoding or even when they tagged it, I'm more than 100% confident that if I performed a null test on the files they thought sounded different, the files would actually be identical.

 

[MajorFubar]

One thing I have noticed in all the tests mentioned, (I presume the blind tests were documented) is they all use dbpoweramp for encoding/decoding, therefore if you hear a difference, then its most likely that the dbpoweramp encoder/decoder is not up to the job. (I.E. Its introducing errors

thats a fair point I hadn't considered, but of course that means dbpoweramp is bugged and not fit for purpose, not that the FLAC files are actually different. To remove even that as a variable, the only indisputable way to prove or disprove the files are the same is via a null test. Anyone with a computer and an ability to download eg Audacity, can do it. No golden ears or blind testing required.

 

[andyjm]

Major, it's very clear to me that you did not read the piece completely/properly. The gist of the piece is that repeated metadata application in the multiple conversions i.e. album art etc, could affect playback - and they did blind testing to back things up. Their recommendation was to apply metadata at the final file only. They tested with dbpoweramp.

manic, if you were to test a file compression programme, the first thing you might think to test is whether the wav to flac to wav conversion introduced any bit errors. This seems to have passed the writer of the article by. Instead he seems to be measuring the quality of the compression algorithm in inches which I have to admit is a new approach to me.

i am afraid I am with shadders in reaching the conclusion that the writer doesn't have a clue.

Hi Mr andyjm,

I do believe you have confused me with somebody else.

Regards,

Shadders.

Apologies, I wrote half the reply then got distracted. I need to pay more attention.

I had meant to refer to the post from the Major.

I did read the article again, and to be honest it made less sense the second time round. The one thing they could have done to clear up the whole business, a comparison of the two files, they seem to have failed to do.

 

[muljao]

I can't say which is better, but if I listen to a cd and a FLAC as a comparison off a player that plays the cd and FLAC off a USB using all the same equipment, I can't tell a difference between the two. That says to me FLAC is good enough, and I can't see how WAVE is better except for maybe (I don't know) compatability or usability, likely not sound quality (my opinion only, not fact)