compression level

[jsaudio]

I suspect this has been visited before.
I use a Mac desktop to rip CDs with internal drive. I have been ripping to FLAC to my QNAP NAS which has Asset that then transcodes to WAV before sending to my NAIM streamer.WAV supposedly sounds better with NAIM gear and I don't know why I wouldn't just rip to WAV in the first place.
Someone told me to use the last compression option which is "lossless uncompressed " for best sound quality, while others said it doesn't matter and use the default level 5 compression. Confused. Thanks for replies

[Dat Ei]

Re: compression level

The compression level of flac doesn't effect the sound quality. Flac is lossless no matter what the compression level is (like wave). The compression of flac is like the one of zip and other compression methods. It has only an influence on the file size and the computing time to encode and decode the data. An actual hardware has no problems to decode the data in time.


Dat Ei

[mville]

Re: compression level

I have been ripping to FLAC to my QNAP NAS which has Asset that then transcodes to WAV before sending to my NAIM streamer.WAV supposedly sounds better with NAIM gear and I don't know why I wouldn't just rip to WAV in the first place.

Are you saying that you have configured Asset UPnP to transcode to wav, because it sounds better?

Doesn't the NAIM streamer support flac?

[jsaudio]

Re: compression level

Yes. This is sort of the consensus on the NAIM forums that WAV sounds better. Yes Asset transcodes to WAV and yes it supports FLAC

[mville]

Re: compression level

Yes. This is sort of the consensus on the NAIM forums that WAV sounds better. Yes Asset transcodes to WAV and yes it supports FLAC

The digital audio of a wav file and a decoded flac file, for the same extracted, bit-perfect CD track, will be identical.

So, unless the NAIM is performing some sort of DSP on the wav data stream, rather than the flac data stream, which I seriously doubt, then they will sound identical, when the volumes are identical.

Try it yourself. Configure flac as is, in Asset UPnP and have a listen.

[Dat Ei]

Re: compression level

A bit off topic: some years ago I've asked a secretary in our Company, why she does not use zip compression, when she sends large Word documents to email recipients. She answered, that the print-outs would look a kind of unsharp if the files have been compressed before.


Dat Ei

[jsaudio]

Re: compression level

I will when I have a chance but is there any disadvantage to transcoding to WAV. Should I consider ripping to WAV?

[Dat Ei]

Re: compression level

Yes there are disadvantages of wav vs flac. flac files have a check sum, so that you can check on a file basis if the file has been damaged. Second tags are standardised for flacs while they are still experimental for wav. Some wav player are not able to handle or play tagged wavs.

So it's easy to create an untagged wav from a tagged flac, but there is no chance to create a tagged flac from an untagged wav.


Dat Ei

[mville]

Re: compression level

A bit off topic: some years ago I've asked a secretary in our Company, why she does not use zip compression, when she sends large Word documents to email recipients. She answered, that the print-outs would look a kind of unsharp if the files have been compressed before.

good grief!

[mville]

Re: compression level

I will when I have a chance but is there any disadvantage to transcoding to WAV.

Maybe. There may be tag/artwork issues, but without a NAIM to test, I cannot say for sure.

Should I consider ripping to WAV?

Dat Ei's post mentions 2 advantages of ripping to flac.

Of course, you can consider ripping to wav, but personally I wouldn't.