WAV or FLAC & why

Streaming Audio
43

If you ripped with dBpoweramp on a Mac, then provided you had it set up right, you will have album art .
To check, look at the ripped files with dBp ‘edit’, if that shows you have the art, then you have it & the problem is with the Nova.
Another check is using dBp to covert a test file to FLAC, if that then shows you the art, that means it was there all along & once again it means the problem is with the Nova.

44

Ah ok in this way. Yeah the metadata is a mess. Gotcha.

Because Roon adds its own nondestructive layer of metadata over the files it does not bother me much. I can even add it on the Unknown albums in the Naim database.

But I understand now what you mean that if one was to play it on another system that needs embedded metadata it will be an issue.

But does that mean that Naim does better with the metadata when you select Flac?

45

Yes, if it rips to flac in the first place then metadata is embedded.

1 Like
46

Hmmmm interesting. Well I am not about to rip the whole CD collection so will live with it.

Wonder what it does with the unknown albums then if you rip to Flac.

47

I was going to use WAV but it would not play from an ms in my car.
Used Flac and am happy with the result.
I’ve played back up Flac files through the usb on my NDX2 and then streamed at the same quality through Qobuz and have trouble discerning which is which.

48

Simply because (it’s possible)? Don’t really see why you would though.

49

I would agree with you, but many here swear they hear a difference between WAV and FLAC. So I guess for them, the container format matters as well as the information contained therein.

50

Thats right, I ripped all my Flac files as “lossless uncompressed” via. DBPoweramp…

51

Flac has a bunch of settings for level of compression, uncompressed being one option, but it is non-standard. The standardized levels all use some compression as far as I can tell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC)

They are all lossless, but it changes the amount of work that has to be done for compressing

52

I read somewhere that if you compress to level 5 it sounds better than with no compression! While it sounds counterintuitive I took comfort in it as I already had thousands of albums in level 5 flac. I don’t imagine that dbpoweramp set their ripping default to level 5 for nothing, they seem to know what they are doing.

53

Well, it shouldn’t. It’s a lossless format, whatever the compression level chosen.

1 Like
54

There is a lot of misconception around FLAC.

The best source of information is its project page :

–> https://xiph.org/flac/index.html

In short :

  • FLAC is a container for music encoded in PCM.

  • FLAC provides a non destructive compression algorithm
    (meaning you can compress your FLAC with no quality loss).

  • FLAC has 8 level of compression.
    From 0 (no compression) to 8 (max compression).
    Again, with no loss of quality.
    The decompression processing time is roughly the same for all levels of
    compression.

  • FLAC offers many other cool features (like MD5 checksum, extensive tagging, etc.)

2 Likes
55

So given that storage is cheap as chips these days, why wouldn’t you choose uncompressed every time as presumably it is faster to deliver the music to your ears?

56

What do you mean by “faster to deliver the music to your ears” ?

57

UnitiCore

1 Like
58

Thanks, aschokker. I stand corrected. Are .wav files frequently so tagged? Is this more common with popular music?

59

It’s a question of where you source them and how you tag them. Qobuz for example does not tagging in WAV downloads based,on my experience in the last 12 months or so. If you’re ripping CDs yourself then the standard ripper apps such as dbPoweramp will find the metadata in the usual databases and tag the files exactly as they would FLAC or other files. The vast majority of my rips are WAV and all have tags. (My classical albums I use a simple tagging method, composer, work and artist(s), and rely on recognising the artwork of the cover rather using a more complex tagging system. I think it’s because I’m a child of the LP era and that’s effectively how I find classical LPs on the shelf.)

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60

At risk of sounding pedantic…FLAC level 0 is still compressed, so there are 9 levels to choose from! There is also an uncompressed FLAC option, not widely used, but it’s an option in DBPoweramp.

61

What is dBp edit? is it part of dBpoweramp (which I have paid for), as I cannot find an editing function in any of the menu’s? I also cant find an option in ripping to include (or not include) album art?

62

How is the SQ not compromised with compression- starter for 10.

and follow up
Why have 8/9 levels of compression plus uncompressed?