Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming FLAC or WAV for Sooloos

Hi folks,

I'm not sure if this topic was already discussed. If yes, please refer to the article.

Discspace is nowadays hardly a problem. At least I have more than I need in my two Ensembles (each 2TB)

What would you recommend for best quality and/or performance for ripping? FLAC or WAV?

Particulary for high-res online downloads (e.g. hdtracks.com)
Rather FLAC or WAV (or WAV and convert by yourself to FLAC with dBpoweramp)?

What are the pros and cons?

Thank you for your replies!

The theory is that:

- FLAC is basically a "zipped" WAV file, so no data is actually thrown away.
- FLAC has additional "meta data" added, allowing better describing the actual music files within the zipped up.

Based upon the above, there SHOULD be zero audible differences between FLAC and WAV, only benefits for space use and ease of browsing your music collection.

However:

- If FLAC is decompressed on the fly (e.g. something that a Squeezebox does), some have suggested that the processing power to decompress the file can result in power increases which "could" impact upon sound quality.

- Sooloos is capable of very cleverly tagging WAV files, thus nicely side-stepping the requirement for meta data that might normally existing.

- I have seem some people claiming they can hear a difference between the two.

I can't say I've ever run a comparison, but I should get around to it someday and I'd suggest you do the same.

One final thought. If you cut your music say using a PC and hold a copy on your PC, then tools like Foobar2000 can easily convert to and from FLAC to WAV. Again, as there is no data loss, that "should" be a non-issue.

Some have found there is a difference and some have not. Meridian will say they have found no differences but I recommend you do some experimenting on your system to see if there is a difference on your system before you go and do a whole lot of ripping. You can always convert from FLAC to wave but some have found a direct rip to wave to sound better than a rip to FLAC then a conversion to wave. May as well do it right the first time.

FYI, ripping software like dBpoweramp is capable of tagging wave files, however you'll need to adjust the tagging settings to work with Meridian. I forget the exact setting you need to worry about but someone on this site will know. You will know if you have the setting wrong as you get a blast of white noise at the beginning of each track As Meridian tries to read the tag at the beginning of the track file as audio!

In my experience the most common reason to put WAV into Sooloos is because for some reason it rejects the FLACs. I've had maybe 5 discs where whatever I've done (re-ripped, reencoded, encoded to WAV and back to FLAC) it has rejected the FLACs with an error. In those cases it has always accepted the album as WAV files.

That sounds like a lossy process.

Robert

Come come Robert, you know better than that!

Not only is FLAC to WAV conversion lossless, it can be proven to be by rechecking the result again the AccurateRip database, using XLD or similar.

Ludwig, yes I know that, just to put "some oil in the flame"

No trustable speaking, you wrote in your previous post.

So that is my point, WHY will the (faulty?) WAV accepted? So "something" is different as FLAC get not and WAV get accepted?

I don't know how AccurateRip or other proof the checksum to verify that the ripping is correct, maybe thats the reason why wave files get accepted and FLAC files not?

Do you have an idea for that?

In theory, the checksum should come from the CD/music manufacturer, not from "users".

Robert

It could be something to do with metadata fields, which FLAC has and WAV not. Even though I've tried emptying them in such cases, I'm not convinced it always worked.

Thank you to all for your explanations.

I wasn't aware that FLAC and WAV contains exact the same content.
This makes sense.

One thing that I have found that prevents a disc importing, in J River MC at least, is a very long track name. When this is added to the rest of the path the result can be very long, especially if there is repetition of, say, composer. So I keep folder names short and non-repetitive, i.e. the 'artist' appears in file-path only once, as does the 'album' etc.

Of course, this may not be the problem.

Locus

I found that dBpoweramp tagged WAVs produced the with noise but likewise tagged AIFF's work just fine.

The wave ID tagging setting you need to use in dBpoweramp to use with Meridian is ID3 tagging ONLY. It is the LIST tagging that creates the white noise at the beginning of each track when played on the MDS system, as Meridian thinks the LIST tag at the beginning of the file is audio and tries to play it. It doesn't make the same mistake with ID3 tags, so they are safe to use.

In dBpoweramp you can adjust this setting through the dBpoweramp Configuration program. Open that program, click tha Advanced Options button at the bottom of the window, scroll down to Wave ID Tagging, click on Tag Creation and select ID3.