Oh dear well - I think its best if I leave this particular topic alone as it seems my audiophile type discussion has riled a few folk here and I can really do without that and I know everyone else can as well. I am very happy with my choice of formats (for me) and I was only contributing to what I thought was a interesting thread and offering up my personal findings. So final post...
>there's little to talk about here without a blind comparison being done >Do a true blind test and post the results >As of your last post, I don't recall a true blind test having been conducted. Have you had the chance to do that yet? OK - playlist of comparison tracks - various formats (not just FLAC and WAV) all with same title, sorted into track order (not format). Sit on sofa with SB display turned off, listen to tracks, zapp to zapped playlist tracks I feel dont make the grade (when switching backwards and forwards doing typical comparison as I would do with new piece of equipment or whatever). Whats left was WAV - 100%. This was with built-in decoding. I can barely hear any difference (and perhaps there isnt any difference) when doing this with PC side decoding - but cant do that blind as need another pair of hands which I dont have. >store it as FLAC and stream it as PCM (server side decoding). Thats actually a very good idea - I did try it and like I said in an earlier post I thought I could still tell a difference but wasnt sure - probably placebo - but space is cheap and honestly, really I dont mind using the extra space. > It is just plain silly and wasteful to use WAV when a solution like FLAC is available regardless of how much money you can spend on gear Please guys dont try to ridicule me for wasting space - its my space and it is cheap and who knows what compression format will be with us in five years time - I am happy uncompressed WAV - you choose FLAC I will choose WAV - no problem. >Bits are Bits, either they make it or they dont. You would have to have some serious amount of noise coming from that expensive equipment of yours to cause the bits to be scambled No, no, no - please, the bits are fine, the noise from the digital source (not the rest of the equipment) would effect the analogue circuitry (in the rest of the equipment). - doh! > And my favorite you mention exotic cable, LMAO. Sorry its the engineer in me. Not that this means anything on the Big internet, but I have a degree in Electrical Engineering, currently a software developer, and build my own speakers, and speakers for friends. I build my own speakers not because I am cheap, but because I can What you mean there isnt a measurable difference when you take two dissimilar metals (or whatever conductor you like) and join them (as in cable to connector via solder to circuit), no impedance change? No reverse electrons zooming back up the wire colliding with those coming down - in that case obviously there is also no advantage from a better or easy conductive load and no need to play with cable structure and build (as in Kimber cables excellent RFI dumping weave) or materials (as in carbon fibre mix or silver for vdh). Good luck with your speakers - try a bit of wet string to connect them to the amp > The reason I can't hear any difference between FLAC->WAV and WAV is that there IS no difference, it's nothing to do with how much my speakers cost. Mathematics trumps placebo every time. Rubbish! Math is a tool used to prove a theory - all you have proved is the theory that a WAV file is bit identical to a decoded FLAC file. Now use math to prove that a WAV file decoded on the PC sounds exactly the same as one decoded on the SB2. You might have to think out of the box here. Ok - I'm outa here...:-) (PS thanks to those who saw I wasn't trying to rock any boats - just stating my findings... :-) -- Timbo _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
