FLAC to WAV24 sound quality in 0.8.1

[castoffs]

Whatever my personal psychoacoustic model is I'm sure it doesn't change from 1 minute to the next and back again.

[mikejazz]

(08-04-2014 14:33)castoffs Wrote:  After many tests there is no question that there is a reduction in the audio quality from Minim after release 0.72. The current release is no better.

All servers produce a different sound. If you cannot perceive the difference I'm afraid the only reason can be that your hearing or audio equipment is not capable of discerning those differences.

I am very glad that either my hearing or my equipment never shown me differences coming from server software...

I would be very stressed before every upgrade!!!

[Jota]

(08-04-2014 16:57)castoffs Wrote:  Whatever my personal psychoacoustic model is I'm sure it doesn't change from 1 minute to the next and back again.

You maybe need to learn a little about hearing memory. Accurate human hearing memory is measured in goldfish memory spans. A handful of seconds.

Unless you have a switch that can do an A/B comparison within a second or two you cannot trust your memory of what you heard and no one should put any stock in what you've said. That's not being personal. That has been comprehensively demonstrated in proper scientific testing.

Go and read Harbeths designer Alan Shaw on the matter. As he himself states, he cannot and will not trust his own hearing memory outwith a couple of seconds when doing A/B testing.

Of course, after reading a few audiophile forums, I'm aware they believe themselves to be immune to normal human conditions.

[mccormw]

Also read Linsley-Hood's results from A/B blind testing, where even there HiFi journalist who claimed to have golden ears had trouble telling vastly different amps apart. They, of course, did the "sensible" thing and declared the tests invalid! You can't make this stuff up.

It's a bit like Homeopathy really.

I was recently browsing the NAIM forum and followed a discussion on FLAC v WAV and the consensus there was that WAV sounded better than FLAC. Now my first reaction was to rant & rave BUT the NAIM view was that FLAC requires additional processing and this 'could' raise the noise floor. Any views anyone?

Mind you there was some unbelievable gaffs from people posting on the thread that could not understand the difference between 'lossy' and 'lossless'. The view was that because FLAC shrunk files, therefore you had to add bits to the uncompressed PCM then it must be different.

See http://forums.naimaudio.com/topic/wave-or-flac-1

Anyway just to be sure I have downloaded MinimStreamer and set transcoding into place and will see if my 'cloth' ears can hear a difference. It's the great thing about HiFi always looking for a way to make it sound better. Be honest how many of you thought about buying blue marker pens to make CDs sound like LPs? I did but didn't buy, I gave myself a reality check.

btw I have these amazing blocks of wood for sale. They come from a part of my garden where fairies play on mid-springer spaniel night, only in this part of Kent where the lay-lines make a ban-the-bomb sign. They are only £120 ea plus VAT and will make a £500 HiFi sound like you paid £20,000 for it. Please note that these come with no guarantee, the fairies wouldn't like that.

ps I nearly forgot. Now I am transcoding to WAV24 I now see that Windows media player will play my FLAC files (ie transcoded to WAV24). Not sure if that is an advantage or not.
btw is there any problems transcoding everything to WAV24 or would I be better off using WAV. Most of my stuff is FLAC16. I assume that when transcoding FLAC16 to WAV24 if fills the 8 MSBs with 0s. But it will make my network work harder.

Right just off to cut some bits of wood up.

[simoncn]

(25-04-2014 10:03)mccormw Wrote:  ps I nearly forgot. Now I am transcoding to WAV24 I now see that Windows media player will play my FLAC files (ie transcoded to WAV24). Not sure if that is an advantage or not.
btw is there any problems transcoding everything to WAV24 or would I be better off using WAV. Most of my stuff is FLAC16. I assume that when transcoding FLAC16 to WAV24 if fills the 8 MSBs with 0s. But it will make my network work harder.

If your renderer can handle 24-bit audio, I would suggest you use WAV24 for everything.

The best way to find out whether WAV or WAV24 transcoding improves the sound is to "just listen" (as Linn would say). To my ears and with my equipment, WAV sounds better than FLAC and WAV24 sounds better than WAV16 (even when the original file is 16 bits).

[simoncn]

(25-04-2014 10:35)simoncn Wrote:  To my ears and with my equipment, WAV sounds better than FLAC and WAV24 sounds better than WAV16 (even when the original file is 16 bits).

To complete the picture, I can't hear any differences between:

• A transcoded WAV stream and a WAV file with the same content
• MinimServer running on different devices
• Different versions of MinimServer or MinimStreamer
• Different FLAC compression levels
• Compressed and uncompressed FLAC
  

[mccormw]

Looking forward to a listen later. I have to say that expecting to here NO difference but ya never know, at least I am starting with an open mind. Because thinking about it I don't think my NAIM Unit box has a fan (it's very quiet if it has) and so the cpu temp will rise if it is having to do more work, get Core Temp for your PC and you see what I mean.

The blocks of wood are doing very well!

Bill
Hotel Splendide, Nassau

[mccormw]

I have just had a quick listen using cans only, not so much for quality but just to see if it all worked.

Well I think that my worries about network bandwidth were well founded. Any sampling rates up to and including 96kHz were fine and dandy but above this I could see the buffer in my NAIM emptying and then it wold stop for a while.

I use tp-link ip over mains devices and I have the 210 (meg I suppose the 210 stands for) devices. One by my NAIM, one upstairs in my office and one by the NAS.

Now I assume this is a bandwidth problem but it could be because the processor in my NAS is not up to it.

Any ideas.

[simoncn]

(25-04-2014 11:53)mccormw Wrote:  Now I assume this is a bandwidth problem but it could be because the processor in my NAS is not up to it.

From one of your earlier posts, I believe you have a QNAP 412. This should have more than enough processor power to handle 24/192 transcoding. You can check this by looking at CPU usage under Resource Monitor in the QNAP admin console.

Can you try replacing the IP-over-mains devices by a long Ethernet cable as a test to see if this solves the problem?

[mccormw]

Simon your mind has worked along the same lines as mine. Unfortunately I do not have a long ethernet cable, so I will have to purchase one from Amazon. I have got the status screens up and this shows all sorts of things not just cpu usage and I have been running this for quite a while with Linn Radio plying and I was just going to stop the radio to see the changes and then I will slam on a 24/192 recording. Thanks mate.