|
Post by frednorc on Sept 9, 2019 22:19:41 GMT 10
Have seen previously that some consider wav files superior in SQ to flac files. Others have mentioned flac uncompressed is better due to metadata info. What have people here found best?
|
|
|
Post by ROWUK on Sept 10, 2019 4:55:12 GMT 10
I find that we have to use the original resolution and format of the recording for best results. Even although we can mathematically change from 44.1 to 48K or even multiples, the result is garbage. Proper red book CD playback at 44.1 can be incredible. The world (except for Sony with patents) never needed 48K.
I get great results from WAV, FLAC, AAC, OGG and raw files. I have no preference.
|
|
|
Post by Audiophile Neuroscience on Sept 10, 2019 8:40:01 GMT 10
I go with the format and resolution of the recording where possible. My otherwise format preference is for wav and at least 24@96 but I am not convinced I can always hear the difference between flac and 16@44 depending on, and with the quality of the recording and mastering being exponentially more important.
On a practical note I keep at least 1TB of less listened music in flac to save space (on SSD drives). For converting to wav, when desired, I use JRiver. JRiver also appears to retain all the metadata in "sidecar" files if I am not mistaken so you overcome the problem of lack of embedded metadata in wav.
David ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song." - - Louis Armstrong
|
|
sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021)
Global Moderator
Posts: 226
About Me: Retired ex Principal Telecommunications Technical Officer with 43 years at Telstra (Australia)
I am also a Moderator in Hi Fi Critic Forum
Electronics hobbyist for >65 years with DIY projects including Loudspeakers, Stereo FM tuner, S/W Regen Receiver, Superhet AM ,
Synchrodyne PLL AM tuner (Phase Lock Loop),Stereo Tape Deck, Amplifiers including I.C. types, Class A, Class AB 100W/Ch. (ETI5000) 240W/Ch. Mosfet (AEM6000) ,several DACs , numerous PSUs including VERY low noise (<4uV) types etc.for myself and friends
Audio Industry Affiliation: NIL
|
Post by sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021) on Sept 10, 2019 9:09:46 GMT 10
I find that we have to use the original resolution and format of the recording for best results. Even although we can mathematically change from 44.1 to 48K or even multiples, the result is garbage. Proper red book CD playback at 44.1 can be incredible. The world (except for Sony with patents) never needed 48K. I get great results from WAV, FLAC, AAC, OGG and raw files. I have no preference. Robin Are you even able to hear the difference between a recent well recorded 24/96 or 24/192 recording with genuine frequency response to past 50kHz and the same music converted to 16 /44.1 ? I am able to do so despite my age and hearing damage, and recently a member of another larger forum tried to make a fool of me . It appears that most people apparently preferred the same file down converted to 16/44.1 from 24/96 and then back to 24/96 again. I had no problem hearing the improvements with the genuine 24/96 version, and accurately described the differences with the original 24/96 file.
Are you aware that most DACs these days upsample , mainly to push artifacts well out of the band immediately above 22.05 kHz which results in much less aggressive filtering needed? MANY people these days even prefer material upsampled to DSD, or better still, recorded in DSD. ( Blue Coast Records etc.) Even my old highly modified Musical Fidelity X-DAC V3 upsamples everything to 24/192 even though it can only do natively to 24/96. However, I have found that to get the best out of the high resolution formats you need to markedly improve the accuracy/stability of the Xtal oscillator. Barry Diament has found that this also applies at the recording stage with his modified Metric Halo ULN8 3D version.
I get markedly improved results at 24/96 with this DAC by using a .1PPM 24.576 MHz TCXO powered by a very low noise +5V supply . (see attached photo) Within. a few minutes of switch on, you can hear a marked improvement as the TCXO fully stabilises. To get the best out of high res you also need to use wideband electronics, including the Power Amplifier Way back in about 1955 we were taught in the Postmaster Generals Department (now Telstra) from British PMG Dept. Engineering books, that the bandwidth of an amplifier should be 3 to 5 times that of the highest frequency to be reproduced. This means that with genuine musical content to 50kHZ , the amplifier should have a usable bandwidth of >150kHz. In fact, I have found that in my DIY Class A Preamplifier, that it sounds better way past that, and in fact Videoguy (Bill Wilson) measured it as -3dB at 1.5MHZ
Regards Alex
P.S. I just saw this from David " I go with the format and resolution of the recording where possible"
I do not upconvert any material that I play through my main highly modified version of a Silicon Chip designed DAC which is used in my main system.
|
|
sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021)
Global Moderator
Posts: 226
About Me: Retired ex Principal Telecommunications Technical Officer with 43 years at Telstra (Australia)
I am also a Moderator in Hi Fi Critic Forum
Electronics hobbyist for >65 years with DIY projects including Loudspeakers, Stereo FM tuner, S/W Regen Receiver, Superhet AM ,
Synchrodyne PLL AM tuner (Phase Lock Loop),Stereo Tape Deck, Amplifiers including I.C. types, Class A, Class AB 100W/Ch. (ETI5000) 240W/Ch. Mosfet (AEM6000) ,several DACs , numerous PSUs including VERY low noise (<4uV) types etc.for myself and friends
Audio Industry Affiliation: NIL
|
Post by sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021) on Sept 10, 2019 9:30:47 GMT 10
Have seen previously that some consider wav files superior in SQ to flac files. Others have mentioned flac uncompressed is better due to metadata info. What have people here found best? Hi Mark I have always found that .flac files sound a little degraded compared with the original .wav file, the amount of degradation appearing to be mainly due to how electrically quiet the PC is. This minor degradation may also occur at the time of conversion to .flac by the Record Companies/HD Tracks etc. In fact, I always play my files for serious listening after being converted back to the original format again. For the best sounding files , even when downloaded from HD Tracks, I convert them from .flac to .wav via a USB Regen with a low noise external PSU (usually battery derived) and save them to USB memory to improve their SIGNAL INTEGRITY at the time of saving them. This also works to improve much older .wav files copied from from an earlier old Windows XP clunker that were stored on the original C drive, which was repurposed as additional storage on my W10/64 PC. Way back in 2009 a friend of mine from DIY Audio copied his Demo CD to my old PC, but after hearing it on my new W10/64 it no longer sounded like Demo material, just an interesting collection After a trip through the USB Regen it now sounds like Demo material again, at least to my ears.
Regards Alex.
|
|
sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021)
Global Moderator
Posts: 226
About Me: Retired ex Principal Telecommunications Technical Officer with 43 years at Telstra (Australia)
I am also a Moderator in Hi Fi Critic Forum
Electronics hobbyist for >65 years with DIY projects including Loudspeakers, Stereo FM tuner, S/W Regen Receiver, Superhet AM ,
Synchrodyne PLL AM tuner (Phase Lock Loop),Stereo Tape Deck, Amplifiers including I.C. types, Class A, Class AB 100W/Ch. (ETI5000) 240W/Ch. Mosfet (AEM6000) ,several DACs , numerous PSUs including VERY low noise (<4uV) types etc.for myself and friends
Audio Industry Affiliation: NIL
|
Post by sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021) on Sept 10, 2019 10:54:29 GMT 10
I go with the format and resolution of the recording where possible. My otherwise format preference is for wav and at least 24@96 but I am not convinced I can always hear the difference between flac and 16@44 depending on, and with the quality of the recording and mastering being exponentially more important. On a practical note I keep at least 1TB of less listened music in flac to save space (on SSD drives). For converting to wav, when desired, I use JRiver. JRiver also appears to retain all the metadata in "sidecar" files if I am not mistaken so you overcome the problem of lack of embedded metadata in wav. David ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song." - - Louis Armstrong Likewise, although I noticed recently that the price of a 1TB SSD from Samsung etc. has dropped dramatically.
e.g. Samsung 860 QVO 1TB, Internal, 2.5 inch (MZ76Q1T0BW) Solid State Drive Au. $168.85 including delivery from W.A.
|
|
|
Post by Audiophile Neuroscience on Sept 10, 2019 12:06:57 GMT 10
Likewise, although I noticed recently that the price of a 1TB SSD from Samsung etc. has dropped dramatically.
e.g. Samsung 860 QVO 1TB, Internal, 2.5 inch (MZ76Q1T0BW) Solid State Drive Au. $168.85 including delivery from W.A.
Hi Alex, I recently bought the internal samsung 860 Pro 2TB to replace/supplement my internal 850 Pro 1TB. The price dropped sufficiently for the 2TB SSD and I was unhappy having my music split between an internal 1TB SSD and an external 2TB HDD.Now I can get all my main music on the 2TB internal drive with still some room to spare and I have the original 1TB internal drive if needed. David ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song." - - Louis Armstrong
|
|
sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021)
Global Moderator
Posts: 226
About Me: Retired ex Principal Telecommunications Technical Officer with 43 years at Telstra (Australia)
I am also a Moderator in Hi Fi Critic Forum
Electronics hobbyist for >65 years with DIY projects including Loudspeakers, Stereo FM tuner, S/W Regen Receiver, Superhet AM ,
Synchrodyne PLL AM tuner (Phase Lock Loop),Stereo Tape Deck, Amplifiers including I.C. types, Class A, Class AB 100W/Ch. (ETI5000) 240W/Ch. Mosfet (AEM6000) ,several DACs , numerous PSUs including VERY low noise (<4uV) types etc.for myself and friends
Audio Industry Affiliation: NIL
|
Post by sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021) on Sept 10, 2019 12:26:12 GMT 10
Likewise, although I noticed recently that the price of a 1TB SSD from Samsung etc. has dropped dramatically.
e.g. Samsung 860 QVO 1TB, Internal, 2.5 inch (MZ76Q1T0BW) Solid State Drive Au. $168.85 including delivery from W.A.
Hi Alex, I recently bought the internal samsung 860 Pro 2TB to replace/supplement my internal 850 Pro 1TB. The price dropped sufficiently for the 2TB SSD and I was unhappy having my music split between an internal 1TB SSD and an external 2TB HDD.Now I can get all my main music on the 2TB internal drive with still some room to spare and I have the original 1TB internal drive if needed. David ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song." - - Louis Armstrong Hi David You could put it to good use in one of the attached as I have done with a smaller capacity one of mine .
www.ebay.com.au/itm/Orico-USB3-0-Enclosure-2-5-External-Hard-Drive-HDD-SSD-Case-FREE-POST-/333211588417?hash=item4d94f55741
Regards Alex
|
|
|
Post by ROWUK on Sept 10, 2019 15:05:05 GMT 10
I find that we have to use the original resolution and format of the recording for best results. Even although we can mathematically change from 44.1 to 48K or even multiples, the result is garbage. Proper red book CD playback at 44.1 can be incredible. The world (except for Sony with patents) never needed 48K. I get great results from WAV, FLAC, AAC, OGG and raw files. I have no preference. Robin Are you even able to hear the difference between a recent well recorded 24/96 or 24/192 recording with genuine frequency response to past 50kHz and the same music converted to 16 /44.1 ? I am able to do so despite my age and hearing damage, and recently a member of another larger forum tried to make a fool of me . It appears that most people apparently preferred the same file down converted to 16/44.1 from 24/96 and then back to 24/96 again. I had no problem hearing the improvements with the genuine 24/96 version, and accurately described the differences with the original 24/96 file.
Are you aware that most DACs these days upsample , mainly to push artifacts well out of the band immediately above 22.05 kHz which results in much less aggressive filtering needed? MANY people these days even prefer material upsampled to DSD, or better still, recorded in DSD. ( Blue Coast Records etc.) Even my old highly modified Musical Fidelity X-DAC V3 upsamples everything to 24/192 even though it can only do natively to 24/96. However, I have found that to get the best out of the high resolution formats you need to markedly improve the accuracy/stability of the Xtal oscillator. Barry Diament has found that this also applies at the recording stage with his modified Metric Halo ULN8 3D version.
I get markedly improved results at 24/96 with this DAC by using a .1PPM 24.576 MHz TCXO powered by a very low noise +5V supply . (see attached photo) Within. a few minutes of switch on, you can hear a marked improvement as the TCXO fully stabilises. To get the best out of high res you also need to use wideband electronics, including the Power Amplifier Way back in about 1955 we were taught in the Postmaster Generals Department (now Telstra) from British PMG Dept. Engineering books, that the bandwidth of an amplifier should be 3 to 5 times that of the highest frequency to be reproduced. This means that with genuine musical content to 50kHZ , the amplifier should have a usable bandwidth of >150kHz. In fact, I have found that in my DIY Class A Preamplifier, that it sounds better way past that, and in fact Videoguy (Bill Wilson) measured it as -3dB at 1.5MHZ
Regards Alex
P.S. I just saw this from David " I go with the format and resolution of the recording where possible"
I do not upconvert any material that I play through my main highly modified version of a Silicon Chip designed DAC which is used in my main system.
To be honest, The Schoeps and Neumann microphones that I use for live recordings have response that extends to 27kHz or so. As we record from a „natural perspective“ for classical music, there is essentially not much above 16 kHz. Soooo, what I notice at higher resolutions is not frequency response. The noise floor is better at 88.2 or 176.4 (I do not use multiples of 48kHz as I still burn to CD! The higher resolution live recordings sound more „relaxed“ and a bigger sense of space is attached to the instruments. I also have a slightly better sense of pitch at low frequencies. Attack, Articulation and sibilance (things normally related to upper extension) do not seem to change audibly. My Focusrite ADC/DACs do not upsample unless I tell them too. Whether I am able to hear extended frequency response, I cannot say as I have no real source capable of recording it. In my world, response above 13K or so is very much dependent on low frequency extension too. I never listen for it, it just needs not to draw attention to itself.
|
|
|
Post by frednorc on Sept 10, 2019 15:31:55 GMT 10
For the best sounding files , even when downloaded from HD Tracks, I convert them from .flac to .wav via a USB Regen with a low noise external PSU (usually battery derived) and save them to USB memory to improve their SIGNAL INTEGRITY at the time of saving them
Thanks sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021) Just wondering practically how you do this?
|
|
sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021)
Global Moderator
Posts: 226
About Me: Retired ex Principal Telecommunications Technical Officer with 43 years at Telstra (Australia)
I am also a Moderator in Hi Fi Critic Forum
Electronics hobbyist for >65 years with DIY projects including Loudspeakers, Stereo FM tuner, S/W Regen Receiver, Superhet AM ,
Synchrodyne PLL AM tuner (Phase Lock Loop),Stereo Tape Deck, Amplifiers including I.C. types, Class A, Class AB 100W/Ch. (ETI5000) 240W/Ch. Mosfet (AEM6000) ,several DACs , numerous PSUs including VERY low noise (<4uV) types etc.for myself and friends
Audio Industry Affiliation: NIL
|
Post by sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021) on Sept 10, 2019 15:57:47 GMT 10
For the best sounding files , even when downloaded from HD Tracks, I convert them from .flac to .wav via a USB Regen with a low noise external PSU (usually battery derived) and save them to USB memory to improve their SIGNAL INTEGRITY at the time of saving them
Thanks sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021) Just wondering practically how you do this? Provided that the files don't need a little added HF detail , I use Foobar 2000 to convert the track to a .wav file, saving it to USB memory using the Uptone USB Regen powered by a 12V Li Ion battery, plugged into a front USB 2.0 port using a DIY USB -A to USB-B adaptor with both +5V and shield not connected through. I am then able to copy it back if need be, to say an internal SSD without any noticeable further degradation. By using a JLH PSU add-on with the 12V battery, I am also able to add a little more HF detail, or even a small amount of valve like warmth if need be, by choice of capacitors in the capacitance multiplier section of the JLH. The files still remain bit perfect !
Attachments:
|
|
sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021)
Global Moderator
Posts: 226
About Me: Retired ex Principal Telecommunications Technical Officer with 43 years at Telstra (Australia)
I am also a Moderator in Hi Fi Critic Forum
Electronics hobbyist for >65 years with DIY projects including Loudspeakers, Stereo FM tuner, S/W Regen Receiver, Superhet AM ,
Synchrodyne PLL AM tuner (Phase Lock Loop),Stereo Tape Deck, Amplifiers including I.C. types, Class A, Class AB 100W/Ch. (ETI5000) 240W/Ch. Mosfet (AEM6000) ,several DACs , numerous PSUs including VERY low noise (<4uV) types etc.for myself and friends
Audio Industry Affiliation: NIL
|
Post by sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021) on Sept 11, 2019 10:47:23 GMT 10
UPDATE For those without DIY skills in this area, and need to use USB for Audio, the linked products will enable you to do much of what I do, although if you need to do more than just power a USB memory stick, such as using USB to a DAC with a USB input, you will also need a suitable low noise PSU, which Uptone can also sell you, but it then becomes a fairly costly exercise if you are on a tight budget. The best option is the more expensive Iso Regen , but I get good results using the original USB Regen because I already have a suitable DIY low noise PSU. Alex uptoneaudio.com/products/uspcb-a-b-adapteruptoneaudio.com/products/iso-regenuptoneaudio.com/products/usb-regen
|
|
|
Post by frednorc on Sept 11, 2019 15:10:54 GMT 10
"By using a JLH PSU add-on with the 12V battery, I am also able to add a little more HF detail, or even a small amount of valve like warmth if need be, by choice of capacitors in the capacitance multiplier section of the JLH.
The files still remain bit perfect !"
Do u have any samples that i could download which show the differences?
|
|
sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021)
Global Moderator
Posts: 226
About Me: Retired ex Principal Telecommunications Technical Officer with 43 years at Telstra (Australia)
I am also a Moderator in Hi Fi Critic Forum
Electronics hobbyist for >65 years with DIY projects including Loudspeakers, Stereo FM tuner, S/W Regen Receiver, Superhet AM ,
Synchrodyne PLL AM tuner (Phase Lock Loop),Stereo Tape Deck, Amplifiers including I.C. types, Class A, Class AB 100W/Ch. (ETI5000) 240W/Ch. Mosfet (AEM6000) ,several DACs , numerous PSUs including VERY low noise (<4uV) types etc.for myself and friends
Audio Industry Affiliation: NIL
|
Post by sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021) on Sept 11, 2019 15:28:48 GMT 10
|
|
|
Post by frednorc on Sept 11, 2019 16:18:09 GMT 10
Thanks sandyk will give them a go!
|
|