P Floding wrote: > Yeah, well.. > Of course a lot of technical ignorants might listen for differences > that should be impossible. On the other hand, could you explain to me > how the FLAC gets converted to 16/44 inside the SB3 without -anything- > different going on compared to playing WAV?
Well, of course something different "goes on" - the flac data has to be decoded to PCM by firmware routines within the SB. i.e. 1. When you playback a .wav file natively, it is streamed to the SB as PCM data, received by the network "module" and fed to the DAC. 2. When you playback a .flac file natively, it is streamed to the SB as flac data, received by the network module and fed to an implementation in firmware of the flac decoding routines. This produces PCM data which is fed to the DAC. 3. When you playback a .flac file with server-side conversion, it is converted to PCM data on the server and streamed to the SB as PCM data, received by the network "module" and fed to the DAC. Either way, the DAC is (or should be) receiving *exactly* the same bits (since flac is lossless). The only ways I can think of that could possibly cause any difference are: 1. flac decoding routine in SB firmware is not correct - unlikely, and I seem to remember that it has been confirmed that the decoding is accurate by recording SPDIF data from the digital out and comparing to the original PCM data. 2. The decoded PCM data is fed to the DAC in a different way than PCM data received directly from the network with possibly differing clock stability and resulting difference in jitter. Again, unlikely. 3. The very act of running the flac conversion routine on silicon inside the SB causes interference with other parts of the SB (EMF, change in current draw, voltage drops, etc.). R. _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
