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FLAC is brighter than WAV - Page 19

post #271 of 284
7/1/07 at 9:06pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Youngy View Post
..computers need to warm up?
lol.
A cold computer doesn't boot up when using low voltages. After it has warmed up you can reduce the voltage more.

You also need burn-in so you can overclock higher.
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post #272 of 284
7/1/07 at 9:13pm
I recently listened to some music on my computer and am shocked to report, FLAC is in fact brighter than WAV!!! I compared a song in FLAC and WAV format and FLAC did sound brighter! I let the computer warm up all day and made sure the voltages were rock solid with a multimeter.
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post #273 of 284
7/2/07 at 2:41am
I was obviously kidding guys
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post #274 of 284
7/2/07 at 10:21am
i think this may have something to do with the software decoding. wave WILL decode much better than FLAC.
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post #275 of 284
7/2/07 at 10:23am
Quote:
Originally Posted by clc220 View Post
i think this may have something to do with the software decoding. wave WILL decode much better than FLAC.
Pfffffttt. Only if your FLAC decoder is broken. Otherwise, the PCM data sent to the DAC will be identical.
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post #276 of 284
7/3/07 at 4:09am
This is the most pointless thread ever. Let's drop it now, all it is is a magnet for trolls.
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post #277 of 284
7/3/07 at 5:14am
Good God... is this thing still going??
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post #278 of 284
7/3/07 at 10:43am
This is an ID 10 t problem.
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post #279 of 284
7/3/07 at 3:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mojo View Post
This is the most pointless thread ever. Let's drop it now, all it is is a magnet for trolls.
I agree!
This thread is mostly pointless, and it certainly don't lead to any conclusions. It only attract trolls.
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post #280 of 284
7/5/07 at 1:38am
patrick have you tried changing ram command rates? from 1t to 2t or cas latency?

I do wonder if clocked my ram to atrocious timings if their would be a difference in sound? Probably not but I am bored and need to try something
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post #281 of 284
7/5/07 at 5:38am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by wanderman View Post
patrick have you tried changing ram command rates? from 1t to 2t or cas latency?

I do wonder if clocked my ram to atrocious timings if their would be a difference in sound? Probably not but I am bored and need to try something
I didn't experiment with the ram timings. But I tried 2 different brands and sizes, the different timings of the cheaper brand and smaller size could have been the reason for the worse sound. But I thought it was because my main ram stick has a metal casing around it which reduces EMI coming out from it.
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post #282 of 284
7/24/07 at 1:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by stevewm View Post
Some time ago I was messing around with the very old 8hz mp3 encoder. It had a utility included to add a .WAV header to any file and adjust it so it aligned on sample boundaries, thus making it look like a .WAV file. The reason for this was so you could run the file through a audio compressor, decompress it, and then view the results the lossy compression had on the file. Of course you could also run the converted files through ANY audio compressor.

I done just this with a few ZIP and large bitmap files. FLAC does quite bad compressing non-audio data, ZIP faired much better. This was not surprising considering FLAC like all lossless formats is designed specifically to operate on patterns within audio data. I did however get some interesting results with large bitmap files. They compressed quite well with FLAC. Nearly as good as actual audio data.

Nonetheless, once the FLAC compressed files where decompressed (using --decode in FLAC.exe) and then the .WAV modifications removed, the resulting file was 100% identical to the original. Had even a single bit been changed by the FLAC encoder, then the resulting decompressed file would have been corrupted. ZIP files don't handle corruption. A single bit change will throw off the CRC values and render the file useless. You would be unable to decompress any part of the resulting ZIP file. But it didn't in any of my tests which only means the FLAC decoder is 100% lossless.

So to re-cap: ZIP file -- > convert to WAV --> compress with FLAC --> decode back to WAV --> convert resulting WAV file back to ZIP. Resulting ZIP file 100% identical to original ZIP file, bit for bit. Same goes for every other file that I put through this process.

Off-topic, but somewhat relevant: WinRAR has a "lossless" format built in.... If you compress only .WAVs file in a RAR file, WinRAR will use a specialized lossless audio compression algorithm that achieves much higher compression than its standard algorithm does. It gets within a few MB when compared to FLAC. But it still can't beat it.
Good post
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post #283 of 284
2/22/12 at 9:35am

Almost the same , but I if I have to chose , always be wav . The same feeling when i taste wine . More expensive - better tasting !

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post #284 of 284
3/12/13 at 12:45pm

Wow, this was one long topic.

I will try to not beat on any dead horses here.

 

For me, trying out WAV vs Flac vs VBR MP3's I noticed that the biggest difference is actually between making a bit of effort in the MP3 making vs making simple low bit MP3's.

 

I have setup my dbPoweramp to rip to WAV - and from those files I make MP3's. Also, I have noticed a slightly better performance in some players between wav and FLAC but it seems that this is due to dated players having problems making the uncompression of the FLAC files and in today's stuff where FLAC is getting more and more common - I don't think anyone would hear the difference.

The reason for WAV is simply because I wanted a 1:1 backup copy somewhere and had heard taht wav were slightly better and that I got very far into ripping before figuring FLAC out ;)

Most listening at home is wav based. 

Another thing I noticed was that going from built in soundcard to a real DAC and Q701 make even MP3's sound great so the format should fit your needs. On smartphones and many mp3 players - you will be hard pressed to hear much of a difference at all since many ,smarthphones especially, simply sound not great to begin with.

 

To finish this, I wanted to thank everyone for a really interesting post - would love to read a dedicated piece on how to make the best digital files for listening for best quality, best sounding but smallest file size and something in the between. Also, for those that hear so much difference I either envy your systems - or your ears - or both ;)

 

Cheers.

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