Am I crazy thinking wav sounds better than flac?

[DannyD]

If I recall correctly, XXHE converts to wav before playing so intellectually I think they should sound the same, but I swear wav file sound better, with better imaging in particular.  I was A/B’ing with a fairly golden-eared friend the other day and he agreed.  It’s relatively subtle, but if I had more disc space I’d convert all my flac files to wav.  Am I nuts?

[PeterSt]

You can be nuts allright, but maby not because of this ? It is the first time I have heard of it though.
So, assuming that your FLAC files are allright :

Theoretically the process of converting them may, say, screw up the memory, or possibly your PC gets in another "mode" (this is what I suspect W7 from). In order to avoid this (if so at all of course), you may do this :

Load an album into the Playlist Area (a FLAC), tick Unattended, and click play. When XXHighEnd has gone and the OSD Time is running, use alt-X to bring back XXHighEnd and next click Stop. Now click Play again. Now, because the conversion already took place before, it is not done again. The converted files are still available. Thus, this would be more "genuinely wav".
Notice that at Quitting XXHE while playback is not going on, the files are removed.

If you really want to make a job of it, you could reboot in between. In that case, use Alt-s to stop the initial playback, reboot, start XXHE and click Play.

?
Peter

[PeterSt]

There's also a test which works a kind of the other way around :

The output of the conversions goes to the drive where XX sits; Native WAV files normally stay where they are, and which is normally another drive. Now, when you tick "Copy to XX Drive", the native WAV files are *also* copied to the XX drive. No matter nothing needs to be done with them.
So, this eliminates another potential difference; now both the converted and the nor converted files play from the same drive. But keep in mind : "play" means copying them into memory before they are played ...

Peter

[pedal]

If I recall correctly, XXHE converts to wav before playing so intellectually I think they should sound the same, but I swear wav file sound better, with better imaging in particular.  I was A/B’ing with a fairly golden-eared friend the other day and he agreed.  It’s relatively subtle, but if I had more disc space I’d convert all my flac files to wav.  Am I nuts?

Hi Danny D! (Danny DeVito?)

Interesting observation. If you are right many audiophiles are gonna start crying because they just ripped their thousand CD's to Flac... [/evil laughter]
Me? I stayed in WAV all my life. Memory is cheap, after all.

But seriously: Flac compression works, among others, because it sumarizes Left/Right information if same amplitude (mono). Mono takes half the space as stereo. This is just a wild guess, but the Flac prosess might influence the most fragile low level signals? The ones who influences on the imaging, in particular.

Or the explaination can be hardware-playback related as Peter mentions.

[PeterSt]

but the Flac prosess might influence the most fragile low level signals?

Impossible when the original file and the converted and back converted are 100% equal.

The "process" itself (meaning, at doing it in real time) sure is another matter, but that just is the problem here (XX) ... that doesn't happen.

[pedal]

Impossible when the original file and the converted and back converted are 100% equal.

This is just a wild guess...

By experience I always caveat my speculations!

[mikelm]

I don't think ur crazy 

I noticed that WAV sounded better than FLAC on my cowon portable player - more relaxed and natural, actually just a more pleasant listening experience so I decided to save all my CD's as wave.

Perhaps this does not apply on XXHE especially if we have separate drives for OS & data but I am happy with my decision to go with WAV I can still get my entire ( modest ) music collection on one small portable HD or a few big SD cards.

[DannyD]

Thanks for the vote of confidence on my sanity.  I, too, keep all my music stored as wav... good for the economy, if nothing else.

[pedal]

Paul Miller, the editor of Hi-Fi Choice and an expert* in digital audio, resently wrote an article about this matter. He confirmed that FLAC and WAV will sound different because they demand difference prosesses from the PC. Basically, he confirmed what XXHighEnd is adressing and what XX users have experienced for a long time, that "bit-perfect" is a myth. Jitter will allways be an issue, creating small/big differences in SQ.

*Miller has his own research lab. He was among the first to study deep into jitter matters. In the process he developed his own software measurement/procedure which he has licensed to many a Hi-Fi manufactuerer and magazines like Stereophile.

[Ryrynz]

If there is that possibility of FLAC sounding different from WAV would it not be a good idea to have the player automatically decode the file fully to WAV before playing it back?

[manisandher]

This is exactly what XX does!

Mani

[Stanray]

Now my dedicated music pc is almost finished I'm about to copy my music files to the HDD on my new pc.

The files were ripped with dBPoweramp in flac on a temporary outboard HDD with a low level or no compression. The HDD in my new pc has lotta space.

I have 3 choices:

1. copy the flac files to the new HDD as they are.

2. convert the flac files to wav and copy them to the HDD. Less processor stress and not much more space needed (25%).

3. rip all CD's (1100) again to wav. This would probably result in a divorce 

I would opt for 2. What do you think?

Stanley

[PeterSt]

Two reasons to wait :

1. 0.9z-7 may solve the whole "problem" (but don't ask me when it will be around);

2. You can batch-convert the whole disc in one go by means of XXHighEnd. But, because there are a few bugs in 0.9z-6, it is *not* preferred to do that right now. Again wait for 0.z9-7 please.
(but maybe other means can batch-convert just the same)

Peter

[pedal]

(but maybe other means can batch-convert just the same)

dBPoweramp allready has a batch converter.

[Eric]

You can batch-convert the whole disc in one go by means of XXHighEnd. But, because there are a few bugs in 0.9z-6, it is *not* preferred to do that right now. Again wait for 0.z9-7 please.
(but maybe other means can batch-convert just the same)

Peter,
How "bad" is the problem, because I already "de-flacced" some albums (and indeed, for some tracks I get errors, but the majority goes fine)?

Cheers, Eric