[ev13wt]

also is there an advantage for listening with foobar2000 with ASIO or WASAPI using Win7 pro 64 bit OS.

If you do "nothing" Direct Sound is used as it is Windows default.
Drivers like ASIO or WASAPI allows you to bypass the Win mixer.
This allows for a bit perfect transmission from media player to an audio device.
You can find a bit more detail on my website: http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/WASAPI.htm

People still do that? Didn't know.

 

[bigshot]

The reality is that I want to use the same file format in my vehicle and in my home system ... so I'm looking for the best format.

I use AAC 256 VBR in both my home system and on the road. Works fine. MP3 LAME 320 would probably work the same.

 

[NorCal]

I'm most of all surprised that the FLAC24 is almost identical to FLAC16
The only reason I can conjecture up is that the FLAC24 is a 16 bit recording packed in a 24 bit format hence bit 17-24 are zeros.
Normally the lower bits are random noise and FLAC is not able to compress random noise.

Sounds reasonable to me.
Ripped again to double check ... same results, using flac-1.3.2-git-20171020-x64\flac.exe
Parameters: -s --ignore-chunk-sizes -0 - -o %d

Used "Highest BPS mode supported" 16 when using "Output bit depth:" 16-bit,
and "Highest BPS mode supported" 24 when using "Output bit depth:" 24-bit.

 

[Roseval]

Ripped again to double check

Thanks for doing so.
But this is not what I had in mind.
If you take the original 24 bit recording. Is there any information below -96 dBfs?
If there isn't , the result wil be the same as if it was a 16 bit recording.
You can check this using a spectrum analyzer on the original file like https://www.xivero.com/musicscope/

The reality is that I want to use the same file format in my vehicle and in my home system

I have a different approach.
I prefer lossless where possible.
I use MP3 on my phone
I don't want to maintain 2 libraries.
I solved this by using transcoding
My media player syncs a play list with my phone, converting on the fly

 

[NorCal]

Thanks for doing so.
But this is not what I had in mind.
If you take the original 24 bit recording. Is there any information below -96 dBfs?
If there isn't , the result wil be the same as if it was a 16 bit recording.
You can check this using a spectrum analyzer on the original file like https://www.xivero.com/musicscope/

The reality is that I want to use the same file format in my vehicle and in my home system

I have a different approach.
I prefer lossless where possible.
I use MP3 on my phone
I don't want to maintain 2 libraries.
I solved this by using transcoding
My media player syncs a play list with my phone, converting on the fly

All rips are from CD, so a 16 bit original recording.
It's interesting that the size of the ripped 16 and 24 bit flac files stayed the same, (which seems like the correct way to go), while the 24 and 32 .wav files grew, even with the 16-bit recording.
Thanks for the link. That spectrum analyzer does look nice.
The way you're using transcoding sounds really cool, (maybe someday I'll get a smart phone). But since I'm currently using a 128G USB stick, I just copy the files from my computer's hard drive, and update, for variety, ever once in awhile.
Thanks!

 

[castleofargh]

All rips are from CD, so a 16 bit original recording.
It's interesting that the size of the ripped 16 and 24 bit flac files stayed the same, (which seems like the correct way to go), while the 24 and 32 .wav files grew, even with the 16-bit recording.
Thanks for the link. That spectrum analyzer does look nice.
The way you're using transcoding sounds really cool, (maybe someday I'll get a smart phone). But since I'm currently using a 128G USB stick, I just copy the files from my computer's hard drive, and update, for variety, ever once in awhile.
Thanks!

your numbers make a lot more sense now. when you convert a 16bit file into 24bit, all you do is add a bunch a zeros at the end of every sample(no math required). FLAC being a compression boy, will look at the data and write the equivalent of "all the stuff at the end is zero" in the file. which doesn't take much space to write down.
while WAV that doesn't compress anything will dutifully keep writing down each extra zero for all the extra 8 bit multiplied by all samples. in short your WAV file doesn't know that you've been recording only 16bit of signal, and the file is effectively as big as a 24bit one. it would be the same if you recorded silence.

but in any case, there is little meaning in converting a 16bit file into a 24bit one in the first place ^_^. so that was not a realistic example. your 16bit results are more relevant to show the typical compression of FLAC.

 

[71 dB]

Since I prefer to have one format for both home and vehicle, I'll stick with .wav at 16 bit.

Yes, do that. Rip .wav-files at 16/44.1 and use those files "everywhere."

There seemed to be such a preference for .flac over .wav by many of the posters in this thread, I wanted to find out why, i.e. maybe it would be worthwhile to have everything in .flac on my laptop, and then convert to .wav, .ogg, or mp3 for the car ... but a lot of unnecessary work without some advantage. edit: Plus likely more disk space used supporting two formats.

People like FLACs because they take less disk space. That's all.

BTW, these are some CD to file, rips I did earlier, of the 1st track of Rush - Presto ... Show Don't Tell [Lyrics remind me of Sound Science]. Shows about a 1/3 less disk space used by the 16 bit flac, compared to a 32bit .wav file.

These numbers are exactly as expected. The sound quality of ALL these files is identical, so that makes 24 and 32 bit WAVs rather stupid waste of disk space with added zeros (silence).

 

[Roseval]

People like FLACs because they take less disk space. That's all.

There is another advantage.
Tagging support in WAV is haphazard.
The WAV standard lacks a couple of tags like album and cover art.
The alternative, writing ID3 tags in a info chunk is not a formal standard.
A bit more detail can be found here: http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/WAV_KB.htm

In case of FLAC you have both lossless and excellent tagging support including custom tags.