WAV versus FLAC

You need to rip using the right ripper (dbpoweramp). There is absolutely no difference between WAV and FLAC. I purposely bought a large hard drive to rip everything in WAV as I am a very fussy audiophile. I spent the better part of a month ripping the albums in WAV then FLAC, then did extensive, exhaustive comparisons between the two. Result, ZERO difference, no difference, zilch, nada, any other way I can say it? Anyone claiming anything different may know something I dont. I had no intention on using FLAC, but when doing the comparo, why fuss with WAV, it wont hold tags and uses more space, for what?

By the same token I also compared heavily in AIFF, again, ZERO difference.

As has been pointed out, WAV does not support metadata. This makes it a royal PITA to deal with if you need to restore from a backup, or move files, or want to share files. I refuse to use WAV for this reason alone. As far as one sounding warmer and the other brighter, I have never heard anything remotely like that myself, and find it very hard to believe that it actually occurs this way (I do not find it hard to believe that someone believes that's what they're hearing though). My own experience is that file types don't make that much difference (if we are talking about full-resolution, uncompressed formats - AIFF vs WAV vs FLAC etc.). The same files ripped with different software have certainly sounded different to me on comparison, but I don't think it would be a warm vs. bright kind of difference. That's one for the tabloids I think.

You need to rip using the right ripper (dbpoweramp).

Oh, sure! Please read my earlier post again, I did use dbpoweramp too.

By the same token I also compared heavily in AIFF, again, ZERO difference.

I am really happy for you!

Best,
Alex Peychev

To Simontju - as you can see, there are a variety of opinions on this subject. Some don't like FLAC and some find it perfectly fine. It is clear that many in each group went to lengths to compare for themselves.

So we're back to the earlier comment. Experiment for yourself and find out which format you prefer. Then go for it!

Expectation bias isn't necessarily caused by a conscious bias, it could be a subconscious bias. It's not a character flaw, and I don't believe in supermen without any biases. So you have to have some way to rule it out. With computer playback it's easy to do blind testing, so maybe you did that.

I'd like to know a lot more about how the files are being played back and through what equipment. It could be a software issue, or possibly RFI (I'm thinking of direct playback from, for example, a laptop densely packed with electronics).

Assuming you're getting a correct and clean s/pdif stream to feed your DAC and still hear a difference, my guess would be that the different formats are producing different amounts of jitter, and your DAC has poor jitter rejection.

Me, I don't hear a difference, but then I don't expect to. ;)

I know that with the Squeezebox, you can choose to have files decoded to PCM on the server end rather than the player end (the default is to send FLAC across the line and decode on the player end). Some people report better sound
with decoding done on the server end. Supposedly, the extra work of decoding in the player causes jitter in the S/PDIF output. But that's just speculation.