Hi @fps1k, thank you very much for the report and the double check.
Transcoding seems to have a big impact, Naim products might prefer Wav to Flac to get the best sound (at least according to what other people say here in the forum). I haven’t tried a Wav file yet, but I’m keen on doing that sooner or later (I might convert some of my Flac files just for the sake of it).
I’m sure the Roon interface is pretty nice, but I always prefer to get the best audio result nonetheless.
But the basic Synology software, (not the Minimserver), isn’t it good?
I briefly home demoed a UnitiServe with similar results. Out of 10 discs it got 7 about right, 2 fairly wonky and 1 (La Roux, so not obscure) totally wrong. I promptly returned it and used dbpoweramp instead, the pre-rip metadata process is excellent, especially with multi - disc compilations.
When we sold tour HDX we had approaching a thousand albums ripped. Many of them had the original HDX tags. I expect there are still a few that I haven’t retagged yet.
A good way of overcoming this which worked for HH IIRC, is to batch convert to FLAC of equivalent resolution, thus putting the metadata in each file, where it should be. I have always been able to hear a difference between WAV and FLAC, in favour of WAV. So the FLAC option was not open to me.
It never occurred to me to convert some sample directories to FLAC, then copy them out of the music store and convert to WAV with dBpoweramp. That might have saved me a lot of time. But I didn’t mind doing it the manual way. It was therapeutic.
Not sure if it is true with the Linn Klimax DSM? I am playing Roon to the Linn DS right now, and my Linn Kazoo on my iPhone shows the following, and you see that as FLAC 44.1/16:
Linn products are not using RAAT (Roons own protocol) as they are not fully Roon Ready but they use the same method as it’s how the core has been designed to do all the heavy lifting converions. It’s also been clarified by Linn. You can find testement to this on the Roon forum.
As far as I know Airplay is the only exception as it sends ALAC tothose for better compatibility as airplay devices come in all shapes and sizes and have often wireless only. You are seeing what the source metadata is and this is what Roon is sending to the Linn as metadata. Same on other platforms but it’s sending PCM direct to the DAC. It would confuse people if they saw their source differently, the pcm conversion is all done behind the scenes to prevent this.
The HDX and Unitiserve can transcode FLAC to WAV ‘on the fly’ so in fact this option was open to you. It kind of means that you can have your cake and eat it - you get the reduced file size and more versatile metadata of FLAC, and the better sound quality of WAV. It’s not something that Naim promoted as far as I’m aware, and wasn’t mentioned in the manual, so was easily missed. Widely mentioned on the forum at the time, though.
I learned about this on the forum Chris. I tried it and didn’t adopt it, but I can’t remember the exact sequence of events now. The upshot is that native WAV played direct seems to suit my ears better. And DSD transcoded to PCM. No, I don’t know why either!
This IMO is one of the big advantages of streaming, if you have possession and control of the original files. There are a multitude of options to pick and mix. With so much choice there is a greater chance of there being something for everyone, in terms of what matters to each end user.
Is that Roon just telling you what the file on the server is? As opposed what it’s sending to the player?
Per the Kazoo display, I believe it is exactly what Roon is sending to the Klimax DSM. I also see WAV format if I play my local albums.
I use the Roon app (iOS and OS X) and there it’s showing me the format in which the files are stored.
Because your streamer is not Linn, Linn DSM does not use RAAT, it is only Roon Ready, i.e. it is Roon compatible.
The screenshot from my previous post shows the Qobuz original format.
It still is getting PCM it’s not sending flac to the streamer at all as I already explained and verified by Linn.
FAC, WAV are all just compressed PCM audio data formats, and I think this is what Roon sends the ‘compressed’ audio PCM data to the Linn Streamer.
Similarly, we can compress the same data file to different formats using zip, gzip, bizp2 and send the compressed file from one machine to another machine by ftp or scp.
No it sends raw PCM not encoded pcm as flac, wav or Aiff as that’s what DACs take they don’t handle encoded files wav they have to be decoded before it reaches the DAC stage, this either done on hardware or in Roon case it sends raw PCM thdirectly so no need for endpoint to decode for greater compatibility as all DACs accept PCM and no processing at all. As I said Linn have also said this is what happens with Roon the same as what happens with full Roon Ready endpoints. Via Kazoo without Roon it would decode flac to pcm on the unit itself.
Raw PCM is just ‘uncompressed’ PCM, similar concept as uncompressed data file on your PC.
FLAC, WAV, MP3 are just ‘compression’ techniques.
All DACs can accept PCM data in the form of FLAC, or WAV, or MP3 or AIFF, etc. and it can recognize the inbound PCM data as compressed or not, and it will perform appropriate decompressing (decoding) if needed and upsampling the data before converting it to analogue.
In the case of Roon, PCM data may be no longer compressed (encoded as you prefer). However, internet radios usually come into the DACs as MP3.
And my point is unchanged. Roon does not send flac, wav or whatever to your Linn. It’s raw LPCM as its the native format the DAC processes. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to but that’s how Roon works.
A minor point of order, WAV is not compressed, same for AIFF
FLAC & ALAC & others are compressed in a lossless format
Yes, you are right, I think that may be why some are saying their DACs sound better if they are sent PCM data in WAV.
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