A well-known hi-fi magazine recently ran an article about how apparently
an uncompressed WAV file sounds better than FLAC.

Ummmm...

*facepalm*

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http://www.squirrelsolutions.co.uk/ Fax: (01453) 843773

Registered in England: 08918250

I understood that to play a flac the file has to be uncompressed a bit like
Zip. Thus it tends to need a lot of ram to be available. I wonder what they
were using to play the files.

What about some of the lossless formats that Apple and others use, are these
similar?

Often of course if the hardware is working hard then one might find some
issues with the extra processing needed to record and play sounds.
Brian

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From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Glenn Richards" wrote in message
. uk...
A well-known hi-fi magazine recently ran an article about how apparently an
uncompressed WAV file sounds better than FLAC.

Ummmm...

*facepalm*

--
Squirrel Solutions Ltd Tel: (01453) 845735
http://www.squirrelsolutions.co.uk/ Fax: (01453) 843773

Registered in England: 08918250

In article , Glenn
Richards wrote:
A well-known hi-fi magazine recently ran an article about how apparently
an uncompressed WAV file sounds better than FLAC.

Ummmm...

*facepalm*

Well, it may be that a particular device/system running particular software
gets something wrong, or struggles to run properly. That then gets blamed
on 'flac vs wave' or whatever as if that was the cause of a more general
problem.

Some years ago when doing tests using a version of audacious I found that
when I played 24 bit wave and flac files, the flac reached the dac as 24
bit, but the wave reached it as 16bit. Last byte of each value sent as a
zero.

Nothing to do with flac vs wave per se. All to do with whoever had
developed and built that version of audacity not getting something right
and not checking. Since I had a USB DAC with an spdif out and could capture
that stream I could find the difference. But I doubt the programmer could,
or would even think of it. And I doubt many hifi 'reviewers' would either,
alas.

The more general problem is when 'reviewers' say A differs from B and then
give entirely the wrong 'reason' as fact without even knowing how to check.

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Brian Gaff wrote:

Often of course if the hardware is working hard then one might find
some issues with the extra processing needed to record and play
sounds.

Apparently this was a hardware streamer connected via a digital output.
So the "processor introducing RFI into the analogue audio" hypothesis is
out.

--
Squirrel Solutions Ltd Tel: (01453) 845735
http://www.squirrelsolutions.co.uk/ Fax: (01453) 843773

Registered in England: 08918250

In article ,
Bob Latham wrote:
In article ,
Glenn Richards wrote:

Apparently this was a hardware streamer connected via a digital
output. So the "processor introducing RFI into the analogue audio"
hypothesis is out.

So either this is imagination (journalism) or the streamer was poorly
engineered. Nothing to do with flac at all.

Par for the course with many Hi-Fi mags?

--
*'ome is where you 'ang your @ *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Sounds like a marketing opportunity for Russ Andrews then.
Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Bob Latham wrote:
In article ,
Glenn Richards wrote:

Apparently this was a hardware streamer connected via a digital
output. So the "processor introducing RFI into the analogue audio"
hypothesis is out.

So either this is imagination (journalism) or the streamer was poorly
engineered. Nothing to do with flac at all.

Par for the course with many Hi-Fi mags?

--
*'ome is where you 'ang your @ *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Yes, that was what i was thinking. I've noticed several sound cards sound
different for all sorts of reasons, whether it be drivers, codecs or the
actual hardware.
If I recall, most of the sound cards made by Creative a few yeas ago
sampled at 48k, b then internally converted it to whatever you were trying
to use, which some people claimed was very audible, but I could not hear any
difference between it and other cards that did it other ways.
On the other hand, lossy compression like MP3 is pretty audible even at
quite high rates due to the phase problems that seem to occur. Its
acceptable on portable gear, just like tapes were, but in my view has no
place on modern high quality systems. and for goodness sake don't use it for
old 78rpm or hissy masters, as itis crap at noise presevation!
Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , Glenn
Richards wrote:
A well-known hi-fi magazine recently ran an article about how apparently
an uncompressed WAV file sounds better than FLAC.

Ummmm...

*facepalm*

Well, it may be that a particular device/system running particular
software
gets something wrong, or struggles to run properly. That then gets blamed
on 'flac vs wave' or whatever as if that was the cause of a more general
problem.

Some years ago when doing tests using a version of audacious I found that
when I played 24 bit wave and flac files, the flac reached the dac as 24
bit, but the wave reached it as 16bit. Last byte of each value sent as a
zero.

Nothing to do with flac vs wave per se. All to do with whoever had
developed and built that version of audacity not getting something right
and not checking. Since I had a USB DAC with an spdif out and could
capture
that stream I could find the difference. But I doubt the programmer could,
or would even think of it. And I doubt many hifi 'reviewers' would either,
alas.

The more general problem is when 'reviewers' say A differs from B and then
give entirely the wrong 'reason' as fact without even knowing how to
check.

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics
http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

In article ,
Brian Gaff wrote:
If I recall, most of the sound cards made by Creative a few yeas ago
sampled at 48k, b then internally converted it to whatever you were
trying to use, which some people claimed was very audible, but I could
not hear any difference between it and other cards that did it other
ways.

I'm currently using a Digigram VX222v2 which has balanced analogue in/out
as well as most of the digital ones. Secondhand ex BBC Bush House. I
thought I'd let them do the research. ;-)

--
*Strip mining prevents forest fires.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Tue, 03 Jun 2014 15:16:07 +0100, Brian Gaff wrote:

snip
And for goodness sake don't use it
for old 78rpm or hissy masters, as it is crap at noise preservation!
Brian


You mean that it's great at noise preservation - at the expense of the
content that you want, Brian? ;-)

On Mon, 02 Jun 2014 23:35:43 +0100, Glenn Richards wrote:

A well-known hi-fi magazine recently ran an article about how apparently
an uncompressed WAV file sounds better than FLAC.

Ummmm...

*facepalm*

I was puzzled by this too, so I listened to a file in both formats, using
sox to produce a wav from the flac.

Initially, the wav did sound a little better - until I realised that the
volume of the wav was slightly louder. Once I'd compensated by putting
up the volume a notch on my Quad pre-amp when I played the flac, I
couldn't tell any difference.

- Richard.