[Patrick82]

For a week I have complained of too bright sound, I couldn't find the problem in my system, I thought my system sounded neutral. But the brightness came from somewhere. Then I tried WAV and it was very smooth. When I went back to FLAC it sounded harsh, bright and fatiguing.

I think the problem is that FLAC takes 2-3% CPU power while WAV takes 0%. I'm hearing a similar reduction in resolution as from turning on a 2nd harddrive, except the difference is much smaller.

Too bad I don't have any disk space to convert all my FLACs to WAV.

Update: Found the problem! AC noise of computer was infecting my amp and DAC plugged into the same outlet!
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showpo...&postcount=252

 

[nibiyabi]

Care to try a DBT?

 

[Bizzel]

 

[cotdt]

your player is not playing FLAC correctly. they should sound the same.

 

[Patrick82]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cotdt /img/forum/go_quote.gif your player is not playing FLAC correctly. they should sound the same.

I thought they would sound the same, that's why I used FLAC in my system. The difference isn't huge, but it's significant enough for me. The difference between FLAC vs WAV is about 50 times smaller than 320kbps mp3 vs WAV.

Half of my albums are mp3 and I'm not bothered by them even though they have huge smearing. Lately everytime I listened to FLAC it sounded too bright and I rather chose to listen to mp3. But now when I tried WAV I heard the truth, WAV is smoother.

 

[Illah]

FLAC = WAV

FLAC is the same as using WinZIP to zip up a WAV file. The difference is that audio players can decompress FLAC on the fly.

In fact, some players like Foobar can decompress ZIP files on the fly as well, allowing you to 'play' ZIP files full of audio if you like.

--Illah

 

[Patrick82]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Illah /img/forum/go_quote.gif FLAC = WAV FLAC is the same as using WinZIP to zip up a WAV file. The difference is that audio players can decompress FLAC on the fly. In fact, some players like Foobar can decompress ZIP files on the fly as well, allowing you to 'play' ZIP files full of audio if you like. --Illah

It's the decompression that makes it worse because it takes more CPU power = more watts = more jitter.

 

[Morph201]

Set the priority of your media player to HIGH (or realtime?).

 

[Patrick82]

Here you clearly see the proof.

MP3 = 3% CPU power

FLAC = 3% CPU power

WAV = 0% CPU power

 

[Redo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrick82 /img/forum/go_quote.gif It's the decompression that makes it worse because it takes more CPU power = more watts = more jitter.

Care to back this up?

 

[JSTpt1022]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morph201 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Set the priority of your media player to HIGH (or realtime?).

Has anyone ever noticed any sonic benefits from doing this?

 

[Redo]

This sounds like a bunch of bunk to me. The decompressed PCM file goes to your sound card which stores the bits in a buffer before going through the internal clock. 0-5% CPU usage isn't going to effect the sound in any way, shape, or form. Maybe unless you have massive blitter sound leakage and a cheap onboard sound card that's insanely susceptible to blitter noise (which is only effected in the analog stage of the sound card)

 

[Apocalypsee]

I've tested on my system, APE file uses constant 1-3% CPU power when playing (same like FLAC), while WAV don't use any CPU power, but spike to 14-17% once in a while, but I don't hear any sound difference, they should sound the same

 

[Redo]

The other thing that could be at fault is some sort of replaygain.

 

[spongezone]

I highly doubt there is a significant power draw difference between 0% CPU usage and 3% usage, let alone enough to effect your PSU enough to change your sound card.

Anyway, try running something like Folding@home or prime95 in the background to get your CPU to 100% and see if there is a difference there.

It seems more likely that it's some software configuration issue.