newbie queastion

[Jon Gale]

Just starting hard drive full res library. Using my existing Rotel processor digital in. (external dac is next), should I start ripping wav or uncompressed flac? I will be using a wd tv interface w/external hdd. Anyone know if Rotel decodes FLAC?
Thanks!
Jon

[Spoon]

Re: newbie queastion

You would have to test the two formats, flac and wave (your player might not read the ID Tags).

[audiojim]

Re: newbie queastion

Feb 2012 issue of Absolute Sound has an article reporting on tests that compared flac and wav. They found flac to be worse sounding, and also to result in degradation of the sound quality even if you convert back to wav, and then use the wav files.....

[garym]

Re: newbie queastion

Feb 2012 issue of Absolute Sound has an article reporting on tests that compared flac and wav. They found flac to be worse sounding, and also to result in degradation of the sound quality even if you convert back to wav, and then use the wav files.....

<sigh> This is a completely bogus article. Almost criminal in the ignorance displayed by the authors. You should look at it online and read the discussion comments. See this thread for more discussion.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=92780

Very sad that this sort of thing could see the light of day. Under this theory, every time I copy a WORD file, the text will be a little different. Sorry, computers simply don't work that way. p.s. this is not the first time that Absolute Sound has been very wrong about digital audio. They try to use analog theory applied to digital. Sorry, two different things!

[garym]

Re: newbie queastion

Some other good discussion as to why the article is nonsense:

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=92168&highlight=Absolute+sound

[BrodyBoy]

Re: newbie queastion

<sigh> This is a completely bogus article. Almost criminal in the ignorance displayed by the authors. You should look at it online and read the discussion comments. See this thread for more discussion.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=92780

Very sad that this sort of thing could see the light of day. Under this theory, every time I copy a WORD file, the text will be a little different. Sorry, computers simply don't work that way. p.s. this is not the first time that Absolute Sound has been very wrong about digital audio. They try to use analog theory applied to digital. Sorry, two different things!

+1 Excellent response, garym. It's tiresome that that sort of misinformation continues to to get spread around.....

[mville]

Re: newbie queastion

<sigh> This is a completely bogus article. Almost criminal in the ignorance displayed by the authors. You should look at it online and read the discussion comments. See this thread for more discussion.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=92780

Very sad that this sort of thing could see the light of day. Under this theory, every time I copy a WORD file, the text will be a little different. Sorry, computers simply don't work that way. p.s. this is not the first time that Absolute Sound has been very wrong about digital audio. They try to use analog theory applied to digital. Sorry, two different things!

Yes, this sort of reporting just confuses the lay person more and more, and is very annoying.

[Jon Gale]

Re: newbie queastion

<sigh> This is a completely bogus article. Almost criminal in the ignorance displayed by the authors. You should look at it online and read the discussion comments. See this thread for more discussion.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=92780

Very sad that this sort of thing could see the light of day. Under this theory, every time I copy a WORD file, the text will be a little different. Sorry, computers simply don't work that way. p.s. this is not the first time that Absolute Sound has been very wrong about digital audio. They try to use analog theory applied to digital. Sorry, two different things!

Without re-reading the article, I believe they were using compressed FLAC, not uncompressed which dbpower now supports.

[garym]

Re: newbie queastion

Without re-reading the article, I believe they were using compressed FLAC, not uncompressed which dbpower now supports.

compressed vs uncompressed FLAC would have no relevance to what they did. The article remains ridiculous and wrong in so many ways I can't begin to list them. Take any valid FLAC file, even at maximum compression, and it will decode to a bit perfect copy of the original file, no matter what.

This said, there could be PLAYERS that struggle with the decompression of a compressed FLAC file. For example, for a while, 24/96 FLAC files at -8 compression caused some difficulty on some Squeezebox players. (-5 compression was fine).* But this has NOTHING to do with the file being bit perfect. It only means the PROCESSOR doing the decoding was struggling. So again, a FLAC file is lossless. Lossless is lossless. There is no question about this except from snake oil salesmen.

*Edit: and even this issue was solved with a firmware update. There are very few modern players that can't easily handle FLAC files compressed at 8 (maximum).

[Jon Gale]

Re: newbie queastion

Yes, this sort of reporting just confuses the lay person more and more, and is very annoying.

Ah yes, and there is the rub. I'm an "audiophile" of long standing, years ago was a reviewer, blah blah. While not new to computer audio, (2 itunes libraries compressed and lossless), I feel the time has come to try and incorporate an hdd into my high-end system. I have been using the Yamaha CDR-HD1300 for years which I feel was the pe-cursor to modern hdd usage. Time to move on.
I have a buddy who has been using the Western Digital WD-TV unit as the interface for the hdd and his outboard DAC. I was planning to slowly step into the arena in this same manner. My initial question was if my ageing Rotel processor, RSP 1068, would be able to decode uncompressed FLAC. (Of course it won't do hi-res, outboard DAC will be added soon). But after reading the helpfull posts, I will be ripping in WAV.
I will be purchasing dbpower and hdd TODAY! I did not want to get halfway through my extensive collection and have to revert. Oh how I wish my XA9000ES SACD player had a digital in!
Thanks again for any and all replies! (And yes, I too have a love/hate relationship with TAS!)
Jon T. Gale

[Jon Gale]

Re: newbie queastion

What I "think" they were referring to was the cpu working harder in decompressing the file upon playback. But one has to admit it is a very exciting time to be an audiophile right now. A brand new dawn and so many cool things to learn.

[garym]

Re: newbie queastion

No, they were explicit in saying that they could HEAR a difference in quality. This was with listening via the exact same playback chain, to a WAV file and then to a different WAV file from a file that had been a WAV, converted to FLAC, then back to WAV (all lossless of course), and the resulting WAV file was bit perfect to the original. This is of course impossible and insane to believe.

p.s. You will of course do what you want (as you should), but in my opinion WAV is a bad way to go because of no standard tagging method. And if you are doing this because you think WAV sounds better than FLAC, well, you have my opinion on this. But at least the WAV files can be later converted to FLAC or other lossless with no loss of bits! ;-)

[Jon Gale]

Re: newbie queastion

p.s. You will of course do what you want (as you should), but in my opinion WAV is a bad way to go because of no standard tagging method. And if you are doing this because you think WAV sounds better than FLAC, well, you have my opinion on this. But at least the WAV files can be later converted to FLAC or other lossless with no loss of bits! ;-)[/QUOTE]

Nice sane reply. Presently I'm not convinced there will be a sound difference. But of course I can't have an opinion as I have not tried both in my system yet. But as I won't be able to add a hi-res DAC for many months, I initially wanted to feed my Rotel and make music. And yes, I do want better metadata support!
I think I'll just rip a few samples of both and see.
Jon

[garym]

Re: newbie queastion

Nice sane reply. Presently I'm not convinced there will be a sound difference. But of course I can't have an opinion as I have not tried both in my system yet. But as I won't be able to add a hi-res DAC for many months, I initially wanted to feed my Rotel and make music. And yes, I do want better metadata support!
I think I'll just rip a few samples of both and see.
Jon

as you should. try a few different albums ripped both ways and mess around a bit. Of course I'm in favor of at least single blind comparisons of the WAV vs FLAC, otherwise many well-proven biases creep into our comparisons. Foobar2000 (as a computer player) has a very nice, easy to use ABX component for doing double blind ABX comparison tests. As you dig deeper, the keys in my opinion (on the digital side) are:

(1) a well-organized lossless library of well tagged files (and the codec is less important, FLAC, WAV, APPLE LOSSLESS, etc.) so long as your players can handle the files and tags.
(2) A robust local network to connect everything
(3) Good quality network music player (I use lots of Logitech SqueezeBox stuff)
(4) A good DAC
(5) after the DAC you're then in the analog domain, and you're well experienced I'm sure with amps, preamps, speakers, etc.

And its of course all about the music. Enjoy!