Phil Leigh;570271 Wrote: > OK... > > Some people think they can hear a difference when sending PCM to an SB > vs a FLAC file... and others don't. No known measurement system has yet > produced any reliable evidence that they produce audibly different > results (in fact quite the opposite), yet peoples opinions still > differ. There are some credible theories as to why they might sound > different, but so far no proof that they actually do sound different to > a statistically significant number of people in a controlled test. > > How's that?
Hi there. Thx Phil for refering to me. ;) The issue behind all this flac vs. wav discussion is about system load originated non linearities, timing variations, PS irregularities and/or EMI/RFI. As everybody knows the PCM bits will be the same on flac or wav. Of course it requires quite good systems to hear the differences. One fact that seems to underline above is if you start streaming HiRes 24/96 in PCM which means x times more load on the communication interface the advantages from not doing the flac decoding locally will be wiped out by the extreme load caused by the 24/96 communication. 24/96 flacs locally decoded sound better then 24/96 PCM streams. Based on this you could conclude that the error on 24/96 will always be higher then on a server decoded 16/44.1 stream!!!! Got it? ;) Beside my flac to PCM recommendation for 44.1/16 I am also advise to turn off one Alsa channel - either analog or digital should be active. It will make a difference. Very subtle differences, much less then flac2PCM, though you'll hear or rather experience it. Don't get fooled by people claiming they have measured it. There is no difference. These people are just wrong about it or do follow other interests with these claims. I wouldn't have any other interest then sharing my stuff with the community. I am a graduated engineer by myself. Believe me I wouldn't make myself look like a fool if I couldn't replicate what I am claiming. If you look at Audio Asylum there are guys like Gordon Rankin from Wavelength. He claimed for years that there wouldn't be a difference if bits are bitperfect transfered. "He measured it all with +20k equipment." His problem: More and more people reporting very strange things about his "outstanding"?!?!? DACs over at AA. Sound improves if a RAMDISK is used, if services are stopped, if HDDs gets replaced with SSDs and so on and so on. Especially those people who are using now Amarra and PureMusic under OSX are cathing up now - slowly but surely. On the other systems you can achieve similar ( even better) performance free of charge. And Phil - please don't forget to mention that well known people such as John Svensson have confirmed what I am saying - he applied my tweaks. I do see more improvement potential for the Touch. Unfortunately quite some error sources are not easily accessible. The worst thing I think is the monitor. It would be great if we would be able to switch that one off. On my own headless rt-Linux systems I even hear clearly differences when streaming or playing locally from ramdisk. There is even a slight difference if I do realtime volumecontrol vs. offline volume digital control. ( I'd love to give SB server volume control a try. I am sure it'll sound slightly better. Afaik this is not possible.) Just to summarize the whole thing I'd say the whole discussion should not be about flac vs. wav. The data is the same. It is about reducing load on the audio client. Enjoy. P.S: I btw converted my whole collection from wav to flac to enjoy the tagging features. Since I am able to do "offline" or "remote" decoding flac is not considered a problem anymore. -- soundcheck ------------------------------------------------------------------------ soundcheck's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=34383 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=71321 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
