I like your description of an improvement rather than night and day. Night and day statements make me switch off straight away.
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Surely if ripping to the space saving FLAC, converting to WAV just gives a different version of the FLAC?
The WAV contains all the data, the FLAC less so but enough to sound ‘the same’. Converting to WAV will only mean the same SQ taking up more space.
Obviously I stand to be corrected.
I ripped all my 300 + CDs to FLAC, not sure I made the right decision especially now that Roon is available for meta data (main reason I ripped to FLAC was better meta data).
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No no no.
A FLAC contains ALL the data, and can reconstruct the same bit perfect stream as a WAV.
A FLAC simply employs some lossless compression, which the player decompresses. Bit like a zip file. Most rippers use FLAC compression level 5, but you can also generate FLAC with no compression.
FLAC can be converted to WAV and vice versa with no loss of fidelity.
WAV sounded better than FLAC on naim gen1 devices as the extra work on the player decompressing affected (very slightly) the SQ. On gen2 devices we, and most others, hear no difference.
You made the right decision ripping to FLAC.
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Many thanks @IainO for completing my education on FLAC. So no advantage to re-ripping to WAV. Saved me many hours!
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If you want to experiment with formats either use server software like Asset which can transcode, or simply software convert between formats which takes no time at all.
FLAC has fuller metadata support and is more transportable. They also take less storage space (not so much of a concern nowadays).
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@PeakMan do you refer to the NSC222 as the new streaming platform? I haven’t tried it so I can’t judge. I’ve just tried the ND5XS2 and the NDX2. I’m glad if there’s no difference between FLACs and WAVs in the new NSC222.
@Guinnless unluckily I had no software for that conversion, ripping again was the quickest way!
@IainO good to know if I ever need to do that. By the way I agree with what you say here:
Despite all the theory, I still hear the difference. It’s subtle but it’s there, at least in my personal experience. Whether one chooses FLAC or WAV, both are great. It’s up to the single person to decide what to go for.
@Bjm when I made the comparison, this was my conclusion:
Thanks, I tried to be objective with what I heard. Also I did the test myself because everybody has a different perception of sound, Hi-Fi systems are different and we all prefer different sound presentations. You can’t take for granted anything you read around. And audio is very, very personal indeed.
“New one” refers to gen2, old classic later streamers.
ND5XS2, NDX2, NSC222 share same streaming board.
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Thanks, then I still feel the difference between FLACs and WAVs on the NDX 2, despite being a second generation streamer. Therefore I would say it’s very subjective.
There’s FLAC conversion freely available all over the Web. What did you rip with?
I used Exact Audio Copy, I think it’s quite popular here. Keep in mind that I needed to convert just few CDs… so I was quite lucky.
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Aah, I see. I had visions of hundreds+ 
Thankfully it wasn’t hundreds, otherwise I would have gone crazy! This doubt about FLAC vs WAV just happened when I had few CDs to rip.
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I must get around to doing this too… I have 5000 cds that need to be ripped and many of them aren’t available on streaming.
I do enjoy the ritual of taking a CD or record out to play it though. Certainly more sentimental experience for my older titles.
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funny
Not to me
Everything is subjective.
You’ll note above that I also used the word most…
Majority opinion from the forums over the years is that 1) on gen1 devices WAV sounded better 2) on gen2 devices it makes no difference.
But we’ve already heard two conflicting opinions on this thread - @spile disagreeing with point 1 and @Blacknote disagreeing with point 2.
Which simply shows that in hifi nothing is black and white!
Any differences when we had a 272 were very subtle, but you could hear them. When we got our NDX2 we experimented with and without transcoding and decided it made no difference. But we don’t use the NDX2 as the DAC so perhaps our unusual setup means our results don’t apply to the wider majority use case.
WAV and FLAC are both lossless formats so pick the one you prefer and enjoy the music.
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Old platform included NDS, NDX, ND5XS, 172 and 272. New platform is all the more recent streamers. I believe it’s to do with their processing power. With the older streamers, unpacking the FLAC file took a small but audible toll on SQ, or so it was said.
Roger
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That’s a good thought. Just rip a CD to FLAC and then again to WAV and see if you can hear a difference when they’re played back.
Roger
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@IainO yes, I noted that you rightly used to word most. The more you get deeper into Hi-Fi, the more you’ll understand that it’s not black and white indeed. Also the same things might change according to a specific situation. As long one is content with his choices, any format is good for me, what’s important is to enjoy music which is the ultimate goal.
@PeakMan This came up to my mind as well, it would be interesting to find out if the audio quality is the same as ripping directly to WAV (theoretically it should be exactly the same).
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I have to agree that on playback wav sounds better to me too.
As for the actual ripping process I strongly recommend using foobar2000. First you have the opportunity to semi-automatically grab track metadata from freedb or other sources, then you can specify exactly how you want the conversion carried out and save those settings. This includes structuring the output folders and files to match your storage, be it local or network.