[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Once again - does wav sound different than flac?

[Julf]

User marcoc1712 started 'this thread'
(http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?104198-Disk-and-folder-browsing&p=828137&viewfull=1#post828137)
in the developer forum. The tread is primarily about possible bugs
associated with trying to stream pure pcm or wav format files. In order
to keep that thread focused on the actual functioning of the software,
this thread, here in the Audiophile subforum, is discussion about the
possible claimed benefits (and disadvantages) of "raw" pcm vs. flac.

Technically wav isn't a very good format for streaming, so anyone using
it probably has reasons for doing so. The usual reason is the audiophile
folklore about "uncompressed" sounding better than lossless compression.


Often the folklore is based on misunderstanding the nature of lossless
encodings, but a slightly more sophisticated argument is based on the
supposed extra CPU load caused by flac decoding. This ignores the added
processing and IO load (not just in the player application, but also in
the kernel and device drivers) caused by the redundant data - and
assumes that small differences in CPU load would cause audible
differences.

Archimago 'measured the effect of cpu load on jiitter'
(http://archimago.blogspot.com/2013/03/measurements-hunt-for-load-induced.html)
in 2013, and concluded that "symmetrical jitter sidebands are no
different whether CPU or GPU load high".

So far I have not seen any measurements or controlled listening tests
showing any audible difference. I would welcome pointers to either.



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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[agillis]

I know there are some streaming plays that have very limited CPU power
and memory. One these WAV would be better because the CPU could get CPU
or memory bound with FLAC but on all modern players with plenty of CPU
and using the latest FLAC decoding library there should be no
difference.

I have tested this on an Audiophile VortexBox using and SOtM card to
attach the DAC and squeezelite 1.8 as the player. I could not tell the
difference.



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agillis
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[poing]

From 'HA'
(http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=105754):
>
> FLAC decoding is something like 50 CPU cycles/sample. I doubt you can
> load a WAV file from disk that quickly due to the high bitrate.
>
>
> FLACs can play on a 486 at 66 MHz
>
The point is, the default compression level of FLAC can be decoded
extremely quickly. There is no reason to think you will run into a
processor which is too slow, not even in weak embedded systems or on
other really basic hardware.

Besides, there's the other effect Julf already mentioned. WAV has a
higher bitrate than FLAC so there's more IO load (certainly when it
comes to moving data from non-volatile storage into RAM; perhaps when
moving data from RAM into caches and registers as well). If our system
is so extremely low-specced such that we run into bottlenecks, it's
quite possible that WAV is more problematic due to its higher IO
intensity.


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[SBGK]

Julf wrote:
> User marcoc1712 started 'this thread'
> (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?104198-Disk-and-folder-browsing&p=828137&viewfull=1#post828137)
> in the developer forum. The tread is primarily about possible bugs
> associated with trying to stream pure pcm or wav format files. In order
> to keep that thread focused on the actual functioning of the software,
> this thread, here in the Audiophile subforum, is discussion about the
> possible claimed benefits (and disadvantages) of "raw" pcm vs. flac.
>
> Technically wav isn't a very good format for streaming, so anyone using
> it probably has reasons for doing so. The usual reason is the audiophile
> folklore about "uncompressed" sounding better than lossless compression.
>
>
> Often the folklore is based on misunderstanding the nature of lossless
> encodings, but a slightly more sophisticated argument is based on the
> supposed extra CPU load caused by flac decoding. This ignores the added
> processing and IO load (not just in the player application, but also in
> the kernel and device drivers) caused by the redundant data - and
> assumes that small differences in CPU load would cause audible
> differences.
>
> Archimago 'measured the effect of cpu load on jiitter'
> (http://archimago.blogspot.com/2013/03/measurements-hunt-for-load-induced.html)
> in 2013, and concluded that "symmetrical jitter sidebands are no
> different whether CPU or GPU load high".
>
> So far I have not seen any measurements or controlled listening tests
> showing any audible difference. I would welcome pointers to either.

what's the chain ?

flac -> sox -> aplay -> pcm -> kernel -> drivers -> device

wav -> aplay -> pcm -> kernel -> drivers -> device

so kernel and drivers see the same amount of data unless the sample
rates and/or bit depth are different, but then you're comparing apples
and pears.



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[Julf]

SBGK wrote:
> what's the chain ?
>
> flac -> sox -> aplay -> pcm -> kernel -> drivers -> device
>
> wav -> aplay -> pcm -> kernel -> drivers -> device
>
> so kernel and drivers see the same amount of data unless the sample
> rates and/or bit depth are different, but then you're comparing apples
> and pears.

I have no idea what your chains are based on, but they seem to
completely ignore the network.



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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[SBGK]

SBGK wrote:
> what's the chain ?
>
> flac -> sox -> aplay -> pcm -> kernel -> drivers -> device
>
> wav -> aplay -> pcm -> kernel -> drivers -> device
>
> so kernel and drivers see the same amount of data unless the sample
> rates and/or bit depth are different, but then you're comparing apples
> and pears.

so borrowing from Pippin

Packetized network traffic->NIC->Network driver->flac -> sox ->decode
buffer->play buffer->aplay -> pcm -> kernel -> drivers -> device

There is code to fill a decode buffer and then copy that to a play
buffer, perhaps the efficiency of that is different between flac and
wav. Is sox decoding a batch of data at a time ?

I've always found wav to sound better than flac whether it was on pc or
sbt or apple Touch, flac would have a difference in timing which wasn't
present with wav.

I use flac for archive, so am happy that after conversion the data is
the same, it's just the effect of decoding at the same time.



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[pippin]

SBGK wrote:
> so borrowing from Pippin
>
> Packetized network traffic->NIC->Network driver->flac -> sox ->decode
> buffer->play buffer->aplay -> pcm -> kernel -> drivers -> device
>
> There is code to fill a decode buffer and then copy that to a play
> buffer, perhaps the efficiency of that is different between flac and
> wav. Is sox decoding a batch of data at a time ?
>
> I've always found wav to sound better than flac whether it was on pc or
> sbt or apple Touch, flac would have a difference in timing which wasn't
> present with wav.
>
> I use flac for archive, so am happy that after conversion the data is
> the same, it's just the effect of decoding at the same time.

For WiFi you are missing "AES decryption"



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[Wombat]

flac creates this nice random jitter because of steady changes in
decoding while constant wav feed causes ugly constant jitter that sounds
bad.



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[netchord]

can't comment on WAV vs FLAC, but on my system AIFF sounds better than
APL, and ethernet better than wifi.

sue me.



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[ralphpnj]

netchord wrote:
> can't comment on WAV vs FLAC, but on my system AIFF sounds better than
> APL, and ethernet better than wifi.
>
> sue me.

Question: does it sound better or does it just perform better, i.e. less
buffering, or both?



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[Julf]

ralphpnj wrote:
> Question: does it sound better or does it just perform better, i.e. less
> buffering, or both?

And how was the "better" determined?



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
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[marcoc1712]

Julf wrote:
> And how was the "better" determined?

Are you really asking this? What's means Monna Lisa is beautiful, how
was determined? Are you going to measure this?

Better is a even more personal opinion based on each one perception,
culture and individual preferences, are you going to debate also this?
Hope you are not.

Here you and I could not listen to his system, so please respect his
opinion, unless you are meaning it could not be, because they are
exactly and obviously the same, in that case state it directly and be
ready to prove that the difference - that indeed are in place - are
inaudible, for him in his system, not for you in your system, we already
know this.



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[arnyk]

marcoc1712 wrote:
>
> Here you and I could not listen to his system, so please respect his
> opinion, unless you are meaning it could not be, because they are
> exactly and obviously the same, in that case state it directly and be
> ready to prove that the difference - that indeed are in place - are
> inaudible, for him in his system, not for you in your system, we already
> know this.

What if you went to a doctor's office and your exam started with the
slaughtering of a live chicken, followed up by a wild dance around the
room swinging the bleeding carcass?

I'd hope that you would find that a little distrurbing and leave before
anything else happened.

If a person bases his opinions of audio gear on sighted evaluations, it
is really about the same thing.

There's a point here which is that not all opinions are respectable.


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[docbob]

arnyk wrote:
> There's a point here which is that not all opinions are respectable.

Agreed. And you have reached that point. Maybe it's time to give it a
break.

> If a person bases his opinions of audio gear on sighted evaluations, it
> is really about the same thing.
Your analogy is disgusting and wrong. Sighted evaluations have flaws,
but they are not worthless. They provide the evaluation of the person-
in situ-, i.e. as he/she will actually be listening. Of course,
misapplication of ABX also has flaws.


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[Julf]

docbob wrote:
> Sighted evaluations have flaws, but they are not worthless. They provide
> the evaluation of the person- in situ-, i.e. as he/she will actually be
> listening.

But do we really need to evaluate the person (as opposed to the gear)?



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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[docbob]

Julf wrote:
> But do we really need to evaluate the person (as opposed to the gear)?

You are right that my wording was poor. I meant "evaluation of the gear
by the person", and changed it. Thanks.


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[arnyk]

docbob wrote:
> Agreed. And you have reached that point. Maybe it's time to give it a
> break.
>

Maybe its time for being open minded without requiring that people act
like they have holes in their head.

>
> Your analogy is disgusting and wrong.
>

In your opinion, of course. Maybe this is another opinion that needs a
rest.

>
> Sighted evaluations have flaws, but they are not worthless.
>

Typical deflection. I never said that they are worthless for all
purposes.

However, for the purpose the of evaluating the sound quality of certain
kinds of audio gear, they are about as scientific as the chicken act
that I described.

>
> They provide the evaluation of the gear by the person- in situ-, i.e. as
> he/she will actually be listening.
>

For better or worse, of course.

>
> Of course, misapplication of ABX also has flaws.
>

Interestingly enough, I never mentioned ABX, but you did quite
gratuitously - so now we know your agenda.

Reality is that its all about the right tool for the purpose at hand,
not the anti-scientific, suspend all possible disbelief posturing that
some promote for fun and profit.


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[docbob]

arnyk wrote:
> Interestingly enough, I never mentioned ABX, but you did quite
> gratuitously - so now we know your agenda.
>
> Reality is that its all about the right tool for the purpose at hand,
> not the anti-scientific, suspend all possible disbelief posturing that
> some promote for fun and profit.
You're right I mentioned ABX. Although it is the gold standard for
determining whether 2 DUT's are distinguishable, it can also be
-misapplied-. So, what's my agenda?

And -I- never presented "anti-scientific, suspend all possible disbelief
posturing that some promote for fun and profit", -you did-; so now we
know your agenda.


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[marcoc1712]

arnyk wrote:
> What if you went to a doctor's office and your exam started with the
> slaughtering of a live chicken, followed up by a wild dance around the
> room swinging the bleeding carcass?
>
> I'd hope that you would find that a little distrurbing and leave before
> anything else happened.
>
> If a person bases his opinions of audio gear on sighted evaluations, it
> is really about the same thing.
>
> There's a point here which is that not all opinions are respectable.

If you where an african, this is exactly the way you was expecting the
sciaman did... So it depends on time and cultures.

That was a little paradox, but what if you go to the doctor with
toothache and after some serious examination he said 'it's impossible
you have toothache, go home and stay well"?

Will your toothache go away? If a person bases his opinions of audio
gears (only) on measures it is really about the same thing.

At the end, how I have to judge and decide witch audio system has to
sound my music in my house, if not listening to it?

Are you going to choose your wife based on measurement? Are you going to
do that for cars, television sets, bike, beer, food,... How sad life
will be that way...



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[pippin]

marcoc1712 wrote:
>
> That was a little paradox, but what if you go to the doctor with
> toothache and after some serious examination he said 'it's impossible
> you have toothache, go home and stay well"?
>
As of my experience doctors do that all the time.

>
> At the end, how I have to judge and decide witch audio system has to
> sound my music in my house, if not listening to it?
>

We have two different topics at hand here.

1. How does a specific setup sound to someone.
This is of course obvious and if your massive gold-plated power cable
sounds better to you because you know how expensive it was and it gives
you the warm feeling that you were able to afford it then that's a real
and live effect and makes your listening experience better.

2. How a system should be designed to create the best output for
everyone. The effect in #1 is highly individual and non-reproducible so
discussing it in the context of "does something sound different" is
totally useless. It doesn't get you anywhere because you can't influence
it as a designer of a system.
As a designer of a system you have to care about measurable effects and
design the optimum performance for it.

Asking "are there people to whom 64 kbpit/s mp3 played through a
bluetooth speaker submerged inside of an aquarium sound better" gets you
nowhere. Of course there are or nobody would buy beats headphones. But
unless they are either your majority or your target group you'd usually
stay with getting the most accurate sound reproduction and that
specifically includes all kind of errors. Because stuttering or
non-working playback is actually very inaccurate and even if it only
happens to some people it's a serious degradation of your overall system
performance.



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[marcoc1712]

pippin wrote:
> As of my experience doctors do that all the time.
>
>
>
> We have two different topics at hand here.
>
> 1. How does a specific setup sound to someone.
> This is of course obvious and if your massive gold-plated power cable
> sounds better to you because you know how expensive it was and it gives
> you the warm feeling that you were able to afford it or you hand-crafted
> 780-component system that took three years to setup gives you the good
> feeling that you've done everything you could to optimize it and all of
> this makes your system sound superior to you then that's a real and live
> effect and makes your listening experience better.
>
> 2. How a system should be designed to create the best output for
> everyone. The effect in #1 is highly individual and non-reproducible so
> discussing it in the context of "does something sound different" is
> totally useless. It doesn't get you anywhere because you can't influence
> it as a designer of a system, it's an individual thing (OK, you could
> simply sell your system more expensively to create that warm feeling and
> actually I'm deeply convinced that's simply what 90% of all audiophile
> vendors do but that's not engineering, that's marketing).
> As a designer of a system you have to care about measurable effects and
> design the optimum performance for it.
>
> Asking "are there people to whom 64 kbpit/s mp3 played through a
> bluetooth speaker submerged inside of an aquarium sound better" gets you
> nowhere. Of course there are or nobody would buy beats headphones. But
> unless they are either your majority or your target group you'd usually
> stay with getting the most accurate sound reproduction and that
> specifically includes all kind of errors. Because stuttering or
> non-working playback is actually very inaccurate and even if it only
> happens to some people it's a serious degradation of your overall system
> performance.


Completely with You...


0. This is why I try to avoid doctors.

1. This is exactly what I pointed out talking about 'better': discussing
individual perceptions drive no where from a designer point of view,
unless you're talking about marketing and you could influence the 'needs
of the market.

2. Again, I Agree, but... I only think that measure (at least as we
today intend them) should be integrated by listening, because the violon
made by Val di Fassa threes do sound better than the other, to the
majority of educated to music people. If someone or even the majority
could not hear the difference, means where Guarneri del Gesù or
Stradivari fools or wrong? Are you able to misure and explain why they
sound 'different'?

Ask yourself: will today Stradivari or Guarneri del Gesu helped or
retained by modern 'meauserment' to do the same and produce such
masterpieces?

Too bad I know the answer, just becouse we miss Stradivari and Guarneri
del Gesu today...


3. Not sure to well understand.



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[arnyk]

marcoc1712 wrote:
>
>
> 2. Again, I Agree, but... I only think that measure (at least as we
> today intend them) should be integrated by listening, because the violon
> made by Val di Fassa threes do sound better than the other, to the
> majority of educated to music people. If someone or even the majority
> could not hear the difference, means where Guarneri del Gesù or
> Stradivari fools or wrong? Are you able to misure and explain why they
> sound 'different'?
>

Val de Fassa is a place where among other things fir trees sometimes
used to make violins grow, not a person. So the statement "...because
the violon made by Val di Fassa threes do sound better than the other"
really makes no sense. The provenance of highly prized ancient violins
is not precise - we don't know for sure exactly where the wood they were
made from comes from in an exact way.

marcoc1712 wrote:
>
> Ask yourself: will today Stradivari or Guarneri del Gesu helped or
> retained by modern 'meauserment' to do the same and produce such
> masterpieces?
>

Unless one thinks himself omniscient, the tools and procedures that the
great violin makers of the past would use today can only be speculated
upon.

>
> Too bad I know the answer, just becouse we miss Stradivari and Guarneri
> del Gesu today...
>

I don't think you or anybody else surely knows the true answers to the
questions you pose. Given the proven illogical claims in your post, your
answers to them are highly in doubt to say the least.


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[marcoc1712]

arnyk wrote:
> Val de Fassa is a place where among other things fir trees sometimes
> used to make violins grow, not a person.

It's my fault, forgive me, I'm from Italy (not too far from Val di
Fassa), but what you explained so well was exactly what I meant, tanks
for your correction.

By the way, it's a fact that most of the instruments builded by the
cremona's masters where built with wood from Val di Fassa, togheter with
others, of course, they where using many different kind of wood for a
single instrument, coming from different places.

Some artists went to Val di Fassa and choose the three to be used, that
means wait some years to let wood age. It's a legend? maybe, but a well
established one, so I think something is real.


arnyk wrote:
>
> Unless one thinks himself omniscient, the tools and procedures that the
> great violin makers of the past would use today can only be speculated
> upon.

Ehm... I did not say they will not use measure, I only say they did it
without and I'm not sure they (or others) could make any better with.

Then, they missed measure? seems not. Do measures explain in what they
where so great? Don't think so. Do we miss the work of artisans like
Guarneri or Stradivari? I do.

That's a speculation? Of course it is, what are we doing here?



arnyk wrote:
>
> I don't think you or anybody else surely knows the true answers to the
> questions you pose. Given the proven illogical claims in your post, your
> answers to them are highly in doubt to say the least.

Are you informed that someone invented the "rhetorical questions" and
Yes or Not are not the only answers in a polite discussion?

Were was proven I was illogical? That's a rude statement, Sir.

I do my best using a language that's not my mother tongue, sure I made
some bad error, but I always try to be polite, You are much better than
me in english, then find yourself the words to use with you.



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[ralphpnj]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> That was a little paradox, but what if you go to the doctor with
> toothache and after some serious examination he said 'it's impossible
> you have toothache, go home and stay well"?

What the doctor has determined is that there is no physical reason (as
far as his/her medical knowledge goes) for you to have a toothache. So
if your tooth still aches then you need to look elsewhere for the
reason.

Applied to audio, what Julf is saying is that there are valid scientific
reasons for wav files to sound different from flac files so the reason
for one sounding better than the other mus lie elsewhere. And if that
"elsewhere" is via sighted listening, well then that proves absolutely
nothing. As Pippin stated if one gets a warm and fuzzy feeling from
one's fancy cables or high bit rate wav files great.



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[marcoc1712]

ralphpnj wrote:
> What the doctor has determined is that there is no physical reason (as
> far as his/her medical knowledge goes) for you to have a toothache. So
> if your tooth still aches then you need to look elsewhere for the
> reason.
>
> Applied to audio, what Julf is saying is that there are valid scientific
> reasons for wav files to sound different from flac files so the reason
> for one sounding better than the other mus lie elsewhere. And if that
> "elsewhere" is via sighted listening, well then that proves absolutely
> nothing. As Pippin stated if one gets a warm and fuzzy feeling from
> one's fancy cables or high bit rate wav files great.

And what if someone could ged rid of your toothache? Will you believe
him or stay with your toothache?



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[Julf]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> Better is a even more personal opinion based on each one perception,
> culture and individual preferences, are you going to debate also this?
> Hope you are not.
>
> Here you and I could not listen to his system, so please respect his
> opinion, unless you are meaning it could not be, because they are
> exactly and obviously the same, in that case state it directly and be
> ready to prove that the difference - that indeed are in place - are
> inaudible, for him in his system, not for you in your system, we already
> know this.

You might have noticed that I followed up with:

Julf wrote:
> And open eyes, I assume?
>
> What did you do to maintain an open mind (as opposed to one affected by
> cognitive biases)?

So yes, I was actually interested in hearing if it was purely a
subjective opinion, or if there actually was some sort of formal
listening test that attempted to address the issues associated with
sighted listening.



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fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
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[marcoc1712]

Julf wrote:
> You might have noticed that I followed up with:
>
>
>
> So yes, I was actually interested in hearing if it was purely a
> subjective opinion, or if there actually was some sort of formal
> listening test that attempted to address the issues associated with
> sighted listening.

You missed the point, different could be determined by an ABX or other,
better could not! Better is a personal opinion, you are allowed to
disagree, sure, but You have to respect the fact that is his true,
honest, personal, opinion.

Arguing on that matter is arrogant, means you want your opinion be
superior the others one and this is arrogant also if you have academics
titles, if you have not...

We are still talking about 'better' here...



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[ralphpnj]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> You missed the point, different could be determined by an ABX or other,
> better could not! Better is a personal opinion, you are allowed to
> disagree, sure, but You have to respect the fact that is his true,
> honest, personal, opinion.
>
> Arguing on that matter is arrogant, means you want your opinion be
> superior the others one and this is arrogant also if you have academics
> titles, if you have not...
>
> We are still talking about 'better' here...

"Better" is a huge, gaping rabbit hole into which many audiophiles fall
and on which much of the high end audio business is based.

By moving all equipment evaluation into the world of opinion, i.e. this
piece of equipment sounds better than that piece of equipment, all the
evaluations become equally valid and thus beyond criticism. In other
words, all the evaluations are equally pointless.

In the case of sound of wav files versus flac files there are NO
differences but there appears to be many opinions stating that wav files
sound "better" than flac files. So what Julf is rightly asking is how is
that "better" evaluation being determined since from a purely objective
standpoint there are NO differences between the two files.

For some strange reason I can never get over the fact of why believing
in scientifically proven facts is considered an "opinion". So for
example, would my belief that 2+2=4 be considered an opinion and subject
to the same debate as say my opinion that "Unforgiven" is the best Clint
Eastwood movie? Get the point?



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[docbob]

ralphpnj wrote:
> By moving all equipment evaluation into the world of opinion, i.e. this
> piece of equipment sounds better than that piece of equipment, all the
> evaluations become equally valid and thus beyond criticism. In other
> words, all the evaluations are equally pointless.
It's needn't be all or nothing. Some evaluations are naturally opinion
and some are better presented as facts (e.g. measurements, presented
with the test conditions)

> In the case of sound of wav files versus flac files there are NO
> differences but there appears to be many opinions stating that wav files
> sound "better" than flac files. So what Julf is rightly asking is how is
> that "better" evaluation being determined since from a purely objective
> standpoint there are NO differences between the two files.

With "well-designed" equipment, since the decoded FLAC and WAV are
bit-identical, the sound "should" be the same. But not all equipment is
"well-designed" and even anecdotal measures by Archimago (on his system)
w.r.t. CPU/GPU load influences on sound, there is no guarantee that it
is generally applicable. (Even if it is likely that it is).

So what can be compared with sighted listening is: FLAC>a
system>biasFLAC -_vs._- WAV>a system>biasWAV.
Although a person comparing the files with ABX may get a better,
unbiased result, it comes at the cost of extra hassle, and several
potential pitfalls.


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[ralphpnj]

docbob wrote:
> It's needn't be all or nothing. Some evaluations are naturally opinion
> and some are better presented as facts (e.g. measurements, presented
> with the test conditions)

Quite true but where does one draw the line?

In the case of measurements, often times the measurements presented in
high end audio magazines are deemed irrelevant, especially when the
measurements run counter to the opinion.


docbob wrote:
> With "well-designed" equipment, since the decoded FLAC and WAV are
> bit-identical, the _sound_ (not files) "should" be the same. But not all
> equipment is "well-designed" and even with anecdotal measures by
> Archimago (on his system) w.r.t. CPU/GPU load influences on sound, there
> is no guarantee that it is generally applicable. (Even if it is likely
> that it is).
>
> So what can be compared with sighted listening is: FLAC>a
> system>biasFLAC -_vs._- WAV>a system>biasWAV.
> Although a person comparing the files with ABX may get a better,
> unbiased result, it comes at the cost of extra hassle, and several
> potential pitfalls.

Well if the differences are there because of poorly designed equipment
then we are not comparing apple to apples. Falling back on the "well
designed" equipment reason is no reason at all.



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[docbob]

ralphpnj wrote:
> Quite true but where does one draw the line?
It's pretty arbitrary, right? 16 years for driving. 18,000 ft for Class
A airspace... In our context, I think the arbitrary choice is up to the
person spending time and/or money. My line may be different from yours.
My own cost/benefit.

> In the case of measurements, often times the measurements presented in
> high end audio magazines are deemed irrelevant, especially when the
> measurements run counter to the opinion. May I edit? "High end audio magazines are deemed irrelevant" by me for
upholding standards to which I would hold myself.

> Well if the differences are there because of poorly designed equipment
> then we are not comparing apple to apples. Falling back on the "well
> designed" equipment reason is no reason at all. A poorly designed apple to the same poorly designed apple isn't valid?
That's what I meant. Many assume that if "it is known" how to design
properly, that all available designs are proper. That's not the case.


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[ralphpnj]

ralphpnj wrote:
> Quite true but where does one draw the line?
>
> In the case of measurements, often times the measurements presented in
> high end audio magazines are deemed irrelevant, especially when the
> measurements run counter to the opinion.
>
> Well if the differences are there because of poorly designed equipment
> then we are not comparing apple to apples. Falling back on the "well
> designed" equipment reason is no reason at all.

docbob wrote:
> It's pretty arbitrary, right? 16 years for driving. 18,000 ft for Class
> A airspace... In our context, I think the arbitrary choice is up to the
> person spending time and/or money. My line may be different from yours.
> My own cost/benefit.
>
> May I edit? "High end audio magazines are deemed irrelevant" by me for
> upholding standards to which I would hold myself.
>
> A poorly designed apple to the same poorly designed apple isn't valid?
> That's what I meant. Many assume that if "it is known" how to design
> properly, that all available designs are proper. That's not the case.

First what I meant by "deemed irrelevant" is that the measurements as
taken and presented by the high end audio magazine are dismissed by that
very same magazine whenever those measurements run counter to the
opinions being expressed. For example the measurements for two DACs
under review, with one DAC costing under $500 and the other DAC costing
well over $5000, are taken and presented and the measurements show that
there are no measurable differences between the DACs but the review
states that the expensive DAC clearly sounds better than the inexpensive
DAC. In this case the measurements are deemed irrelevant by the reviewer
since the measurements failed to show just how much better the expensive
DAC sounds.

In 2015 why are we even discussing poorly designed equipment, except of
course when that poorly designed equipment is being used to prove a
point that doesn't exist in properly and well designed equipment.



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[docbob]

ralphpnj wrote:
> First what I meant by "deemed irrelevant" is that the measurements as
> taken and presented by the high end audio magazine are dismissed by that
> very same magazine whenever those measurements run counter to the
> opinions being expressed. For example the measurements for two DACs
> under review, with one DAC costing under $500 and the other DAC costing
> well over $5000, are taken and presented and the measurements show that
> there are no measurable differences between the DACs but the review
> states that the expensive DAC clearly sounds better than the inexpensive
> DAC. In this case the measurements are deemed irrelevant by the reviewer
> since the measurements failed to show just how much better the expensive
> DAC sounds.
I know exactly what you meant. And the example you give is exactly the
reason, that -I- deem high end audio magazines irrelevant -for me.- I
was trying for a play on words... guess it didn't work.

> In 2015 why are we even discussing poorly designed equipment, except of
> course when that poorly designed equipment is being used to prove a
> point that doesn't exist in properly and well designed equipment.
I didn't realize poorly designed equipment had an expiration date.
What's special about 2015? Poor designs exist in many areas, always have
and always will. A poor design in audio may get you a bad rep, but in
autos you get expensive recalls and lawsuits due to deaths. At least
audio isn't life and death. I recently found that a digital sensor chip
(not audio) I used for an experiment had a very poorly designed
anti-alias filter (single pole at the max digitization rate, not half
AND selectable rates!). Oops, I've switched sensors, but...


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[Julf]

docbob wrote:
> It's pretty arbitrary, right? 16 years for driving. 18,000 ft for Class
> A airspace...

Those two are arbitrary in the sense that they could equally well be 18
years (as in most European countries) or 5,500 metres (as it was in the
bad old, purely metric, Soviet Union). But, while no laws of nature,
they are not arbitrary in the sense of "well, whatever I think it is" -
they are both the result of extensive research, studies, debates and
agreements. Pretty much like the current scientific and engineering
understanding of proper design of digital sound reproduction systems...



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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[docbob]

ralphpnj wrote:
> By moving all equipment evaluation into the world of opinion, i.e. this
> piece of equipment sounds better than that piece of equipment, all the
> evaluations become equally valid and thus beyond criticism. In other
> words, all the evaluations are equally pointless.
docbob wrote:
> It's needn't be all or nothing. Some evaluations are naturally opinion
> and some are better presented as facts (e.g. measurements, presented
> with the test conditions)
ralphpnj wrote:
> Quite true but where does one draw the line?
docbob wrote:
> It's pretty arbitrary, right? 16 years for driving. 18,000 ft for Class
> A airspace...
Julf wrote:
> Those two are arbitrary in the sense that they could equally well be 18
> years (as in most European countries) or 5,500 metres (as it was in the
> bad old, purely metric, Soviet Union). But, while no laws of nature,
> they are not arbitrary in the sense of "well, whatever I think it is" -
> they are both the result of extensive research, studies, debates and
> agreements.
The line I mentioned was the arbitrary line for when to use opinion and
when to use something more objective in -equipment evaluation-, not
design.
> Pretty much like the current scientific and engineering understanding of
> proper design of digital sound reproduction systems... Other than standards (like red book), there aren't "agreements" for
proper design, and engineers are free to make mistakes... and they do.
I'm not intending to disparage all, most, or even many current designs.
I just point out that design mistakes occur, even when the proper design
is printed in the textbook.


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[Julf]

docbob wrote:
> Other than standards (like red book), there aren't "agreements" for
> proper design, and engineers are free to make mistakes... and they do.
> I'm not intending to disparage all, most, or even many current designs.
> I just point out that design mistakes occur, even when the proper design
> is printed in the textbook.

There are widely accepted design rules, but yes, engineers are free to
make mistakes, knowingly or not. It is still important to differentiate
"wav sounds better than flac" from "this piece of gear is so badly
designed that the CPU load affects the sound".



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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[docbob]

Julf wrote:
> There are widely accepted design rules, but yes, engineers are free to
> make mistakes, knowingly or not. It is still important to differentiate
> "wav sounds better than flac" from "this piece of gear is so badly
> designed that the CPU load affects the sound". Yes, I agree and I tried to by saying the -files- would be identical,
but the sound may differ (due to bad design, even if unlikely). But I
agree with your post.


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[arnyk]

docbob wrote:
> Yes, I agree and I tried to by saying the -files- would be identical,
> but the sound may differ (due to bad design, even if unlikely). But I
> agree with your post.

Letsee, the files would be identical but the sound would be different?

So that could happen to anything, right? You could write a post
praising your new amplifier but if give your opinion enough credibility,
I could run right out and buy it but the one I obtained would sound
different for no known reason.

It might sit on the shelf and automatigically flip between sounding good
or not.

So, then what good is it to share opinions?

What good it is to buy certain gear in the hopes of better sound
quality?


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[docbob]

arnyk wrote:
> Letsee, the files would be identical but the sound would be different?
I don't stick a USB stick in my ear: there is a set of systems to
convert the files to sound. Just as the 8kHz USB packet noise Archimago
-measured- shouldn't be in his system, it is. If (hypothetical! - I've
never heard or measured it) decoding the FLAC adds noise to any of the
systems, -inappropriately due to bad design,- there may be different
sound. I don't propose this as likely, I merely object to the
pretentious "it *can't* happen" attitude by some.


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[Julf]

docbob wrote:
> I merely object to the pretentious "it *can't* happen" attitude by some.

Fair enough, and not an unreasonable reaction - but I do have to point
out that with some of us, it is not "it *can't* happen", it is "unless
there is decent evidence, it didn't happen" (a slight variation of 'pics
or it didn't happen'
(http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pics+or+it+didn%27t+happen)).



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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[marcoc1712]

Julf wrote:
> Fair enough, and not an unreasonable reaction - but I do have to point
> out that with some of us, it is not "it *can't* happen", it is "unless
> there is decent evidence, it didn't happen" (a slight variation of 'pics
> or it didn't happen'
> (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pics+or+it+didn%27t+happen)).

What's a decent evidence in this regards? Could you better explain what
we have to present as a proof we do heard some difference in our system
when playing flac or wav?



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[Julf]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> What's a decent evidence in this regards? Could you better explain what
> we have to present as a proof we do heard some difference in our system
> when playing flac or wav?

There is no single criteria - some evidence is strong, some evidence is
weak, but any evidence is better than no evidence at all. You present
your evidence, others question it and try to replicate it - if questions
and concerns are addressed, and others reach similar results, then the
evidence gains credibility.



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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[marcoc1712]

Julf wrote:
> There is no single criteria - some evidence is strong, some evidence is
> weak, but any evidence is better than no evidence at all. You present
> your evidence, others question it and try to replicate it - if questions
> and concerns are addressed, and others reach similar results, then the
> evidence gains credibility.

Who is deciding witch one is strong or weak?

The only evidence about perception one could give is "I fell" or "I
can't feel". The last is weak, becouse if you - or eve majority cant'
fells something, is non that it does not exists... You will never prove
something this way, so better stop discussing it.

But, wait, Mussolini went famous by it's moto: "God strike me, if there
is one" proving to Italians that god does not exists...

Point here become: Shall we trust people saying they fell something?

I'm open minded and firm believer that one is honest until proved he is
not and even more, also if you have evidence that someone sometime lie,
this not mean he will always lie or is lying in this special matter.

You know, I'm liar (how could you say I always lie then...).

In any case, you moved from evidence matter to people reliability and I
don't think You, me and people in this forum is allowed to discuss
people reliability, is not so fair.

Other than this, You are not looking for evidences at all here, if was
like that you just asked if someone could feel differences, retaining
yourself by moking people reporting positive result and asking them to
demostrate is possible...

This witch-hunt climax is not confortable and obviously prevent people
to produce evidences, this is why I first asked not to open this can of
worms, as an example, not so difficult to understand why.

So what?

I first admit that not all the people, not in all the systems and not in
any circumstance heard differences betwen flac and wav, but i trust
someone in some systems in some circumstance could, just becouse they
(and I with them) report to.

If and how it could take place in reality is another story and has
nothing to do with evidences about people 'feeling' it. This is the
STRONG point I would like you understand.

Any why and how theory could result wrong and change in years, but this
does not means 'evidence' are false, in any matter.

Hope is clear.



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[Julf]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> Who is deciding witch one is strong or weak?

We all do. If there is enough evidence, stuff becomes "accepted fact".

> The only evidence about perception one could give is "I fell" or "I
> can't feel". The last is weak, becouse if you - or eve majority cant'
> fells something, is non that it does not exists... You will never prove
> something this way, so better stop discussing it.

Just because we can't prove that something doesn't exist doesn't prove
that it exists. If you consistently fail to show any evidence that
something exists, and accepted knowledge is indicating it shouldn't
exist, why should we believe it exists? Do you believe in unicorns? I
can't prove they don't exist...

> I'm open minded and firm believer that one is honest until proved he is
> not and even more, also if you have evidence that someone sometime lie,
> this not mean he will always lie or is lying in this special matter.
>
> You know, I'm liar (how could you say I always lie then...).
>
> In any case, you moved from evidence matter to people reliability and I
> don't think You, me and people in this forum is allowed to discuss
> people reliability, is not so fair.

No, this is not about necessarily suspecting people of lying (unless you
count lying to yourself). I am convinced most people (we are not talking
about snake oil vendors here) truly believe they are hearing the
differences they claim they are hearing. But should they blindly believe
what they think their senses are saying?

Which of the two horizontal lines is shorter?
18793

> Other than this, You are not looking for evidences at all here, if was
> like that you just asked if someone could feel differences, retaining
> yourself by moking people reporting positive result and asking them to
> demostrate is possible...
>
> This witch-hunt climax is not confortable and obviously prevent people
> to produce evidences, this is why I first asked not to open this can of
> worms, as an example, not so difficult to understand why.

"Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence". Audio technology
is the result of engineering. Engineering is applied science. Not
voodoo. You can't design a decent DAC just by throwing resistors in the
air and watch how they land. OK, you *can* "design" a decent DAC by
buying a suitable chip or board, inserting it in a "aircraft-grade
virgin titanium" box and salting it with buzzwords, but that is a
different story...

> I first admit that not all the people, not in all the systems and not in
> any circumstance heard differences betwen flac and wav, but i trust
> someone in some systems in some circumstance could, just becouse they
> (and I with them) report to.

And I trust the Loch Ness monster exists, because people have reported
seeing it/him/her.

> Any why and how theory could result wrong and change in years, but this
> does not means 'evidence' are false, in any matter.

Are we talking about evidence, or "evidence"? Real evidence is subject
to peer review and constant criticism - and that is a good thing. That
is really what scientists mean when they talk about keeping an open
mind. Theories are updated based on *validated* evidence, not anecdotes
and hearsay.


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fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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[marcoc1712]

Julf wrote:
> We all do. If there is enough evidence, stuff becomes "accepted fact".


Again, Who decide when evidence are enougth do become "accepted fact"?
Oh, yes...Always You.


Julf wrote:
> Just because we can't prove that something doesn't exist doesn't prove
> that it exists.

Sure, but here is not the same, I say I heard it and I'm not the only
one, Again what more evidence you need to accept we feel it (not on why
and how), please be clear!


Julf wrote:
> ...
> Which of the two horizontal lines is shorter?

Then we are, psycoacusitical... Why not, if you could hear a 40Hz pedal
in your little room is becouse of it. Try to measure and detect the 40Hz
note in sound... The fact your instruments could not detect it means is
not there?

The fact is that IS in the music BUT NOT in the sound (where music is
the perceived message ans sound is the phisical medium) becouse masking
take effects only in the uman brain.

The "errror" is in the instruments that don't look at the particular
combination of sounds being played that origin the 40Hz note or in my
brain? If for you is in my brain, ok, stop here.

Julf wrote:
> Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence

Again and again and again... What evidence could someone give of his
perception other than to say I could feel it? I'm not talking about HOW
to build a DAC, it's only you keep confusing things.

Please be honest and clear!!! You want me to say I could not heard any
differences, but I can't if I want to be honest.

Julf wrote:
> And I trust the Loch Ness monster exists, because people have reported
> seeing it/him/her.

Then You are judging about other people reliability, not evidences, as I
was pointing out before, be honest and admit this, it's quite unfair but
sure you are suppose do be better than me. That's all we are talking
about...

Julf wrote:
> Theories are updated based on *validated* evidence, not anecdotes and
> hearsay.

Again, just You need to change the theories first than accept the
evidence that some phenomenon could take place.

Actual thoeries on digital sound reproduction (that don't really care if
flac sound the same of wav at the analog output and why, by the way) are
valid since someone will eventually demostrate something different, but
this not means we could not accept and then investigate that some people
claim to hear some difference and they are not crazy.

You dangerously exchange the theory that explain reality with the
reality itself!

Sky will not fall on your head just becouse someone demostate it could,
but if it has to it will, also if nobody will demostrate it could
before...

More and Again, I'm not here to demostrate anything other than state I -
and others - could hear some difference, are this anecdotes and hearsay?



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[SBGK]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> Again, Who decide when evidence are enougth do become "accepted fact"?
> Oh, yes...Always You.
>
>
>
>
> Sure, but here is not the same, I say I heard it and I'm not the only
> one, Again what more evidence you need to accept we feel it (not on why
> and how), please be clear!
>
>
>
>
> Then we are, psycoacusitical... Why not, if you could hear a 40Hz pedal
> in your little room is becouse of it. Try to measure and detect the 40Hz
> note in sound... The fact your instruments could not detect it means is
> not there?
>
> The fact is that IS in the music BUT NOT in the sound (where music is
> the perceived message ans sound is the phisical medium) becouse masking
> take effects only in the uman brain.
>
> The "errror" is in the instruments that don't look at the particular
> combination of sounds being played that origin the 40Hz note or in my
> brain? If for you is in my brain, ok, stop here.
>
>
>
> Again and again and again... What evidence could someone give of his
> perception other than to say I could feel it? I'm not talking about HOW
> to build a DAC, it's only you keep confusing things.
>
> Please be honest and clear!!! You want me to say I could not heard any
> differences, but I can't if I want to be honest.
>
>
>
> Then You are judging about other people reliability, not evidences, as I
> was pointing out before, be honest and admit this, it's quite unfair but
> sure you are suppose do be better than me. That's all we are talking
> about...
>
>
>
> Again, just You need to change the theories first than accept the
> evidence that some phenomenon could take place.
>
> Actual thoeries on digital sound reproduction (that don't really care if
> flac sound the same of wav at the analog output and why, by the way) are
> valid since someone will eventually demostrate something different, but
> this not means we could not accept and then investigate that some people
> claim to hear some difference and they are not crazy.
>
> You dangerously exchange the theory that explain reality with the
> reality itself!
>
> Sky will not fall on your head just becouse someone demostate it could,
> but if it has to it will, also if nobody will demostrate it could
> before...
>
> More and Again, I'm not here to demostrate anything other than state I -
> and others - could hear some difference, are this anecdotes and hearsay?

It's like the 3 Billy Goats Gruff story.



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[Julf]

SBGK wrote:
> It's like the 3 Billy Goats Gruff story.

Thanks for dropping in and providing the troll part!



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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[ralphpnj]

Wombat wrote:
> With audio you can claim anything especialy on the internet and always
> find people daydreaming the same.
> Now add terms "uncompressed" and "compressed" and you have a perfect
> trigger.
> No surprise.

And of course there are always the fancy magazines with glossy pages and
lots slick advertising. I think the old saying goes something like "one
lies and the other one swears to it".

marcoc1712 wrote:
> Is that dogma and faith? I know who JS and others are, please, could you
> explain what's your merits to say that?

Ah the first mention of the sainted JS (only took until post #91). The
less said about the rise and fall of JS, the better. However, as usual,
Mr. Dylan said it best:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9EKqQWPjyo



Living Rm: Transporter-SimAudio pre/power amps-Vandersteen 3A Sign. &
sub
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& Energy sub
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[marcoc1712]

ralphpnj wrote:
> And of course there are always the fancy magazines with glossy pages and
> lots slick advertising. I think the old saying goes something like "one
> lies and the other one swears to it".
>
>
>
> Ah the first mention of the sainted JS (only took until post #91). The
> less said about the rise and fall of JS, the better. However, as usual,
> Mr. Dylan said it best:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9EKqQWPjyo

Was Already mentioned in one of the first post in the THD were the story
started first...



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[Wombat]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> Sure, but here is not the same, I say I heard it and I'm not the only
> one, Again what more evidence you need to accept we feel it (not on why
> and how), please be clear!
With audio you can claim anything especialy on the internet and always
find people daydreaming the same.
Now add terms "uncompressed" and "compressed" and you have a perfect
trigger.
No surprise.



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[Julf]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> Again, Who decide when evidence are enougth do become "accepted fact"?
> Oh, yes...Always You.

No, not me at all, except as a tiny part of the scientific and
engineering community. The people who design the gear you use.

> Sure, but here is not the same, I say I heard it and I'm not the only
> one, Again what more evidence you need to accept we feel it (not on why
> and how), please be clear!

The established gold standard is properly controlled, double-blind
testing. The best standards are ITU-R BS.1116 and BS.1534. Both are
definitely worth reading.

> Why not, if you could hear a 40Hz pedal in your little room is becouse
> of it. Try to measure and detect the 40Hz note in sound... The fact your
> instruments could not detect it means is not there?
>
> The fact is that IS in the music BUT NOT in the sound (where music is
> the perceived message ans sound is the phisical medium) becouse masking
> take effects only in the uman brain.

If it is not there it is not there. Just like there is a lot of stuff in
a mp3 file that isn't there, but your ear fills in. If it isn't in the
data, and it isn't in the sound wave that comes from your speaker, it
isn't physically there. And that is not splitting hairs - it is a very
important design parameter for the sound system that does or does not
have to reproduce the 40 Hz signal - and in this case we don't, as it
doesn't have to be there for your ear-brain combination to *think* that
it is hearing a 40 Hz tone. It isn't. It is generating the perception in
the brain.

> The "errror" is in the instruments that don't look at the particular
> combination of sounds being played that origin the 40Hz note or in my
> brain? If for you is in my brain, ok, stop here.

Isn't saying "if you don't agree with me, stop here" somewhat arrogant?
If you perceive something that isn't physically there, how is it *not*
"in your brain"?

> Again and again and again... What evidence could someone give of his
> perception other than to say I could feel it?

Again and again and again, there are lots of test methods, such as
double-blind ABX, that can verify if you really can perceive a
difference.

> Please be honest and clear!!! You want me to say I could not heard any
> differences, but I can't if I want to be honest.

But the question you should ask yourself (unless you arrogantly believe
your senses are infallible) is "but how do I know the differences are
real?"

> Then You are judging about other people reliability, not evidences

Only to the extent that I think someone who accepts the existence of the
Loch Ness monster purely on the basis of somebody saying so, whoever the
person, is rather gullible.

> Again, just You need to change the theories first than accept the
> evidence that some phenomenon could take place.

First I need proof that our current theories don't work.

> Actual thoeries on digital sound reproduction (that don't really care if
> flac sound the same of wav at the analog output and why, by the way) are
> valid since someone will eventually demostrate something different, but
> this not means we could not accept and then investigate that some people
> claim to hear some difference and they are not crazy.

You are making the rather arrogant assumption that having conceptual
biases (we all have them) means people are "crazy". I am all for
investigating the claims - that is exactly what I am trying to advocate.
How do *you* suggest we investigate them?

> More and Again, I'm not here to demostrate anything other than state I -
> and others - could hear some difference, are this anecdotes and hearsay?

Yes - unless you provide some *verifiable* evidence.



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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[marcoc1712]

arnyk wrote:
> Letsee, the files would be identical but the sound would be different?
>
> So that could happen to anything, right? You could write a post
> praising your new amplifier but if give your opinion enough credibility,
> I could run right out and buy it but the one I obtained would sound
> different for no known reason.
>
> It might sit on the shelf and automatigically flip between sounding good
> or not.
>
> So, then what good is it to share opinions?
>
> What good it is to buy certain gear in the hopes of better sound
> quality?

Jitter means nothing to you? Rurmor coming by interferences?...The final
stage of a dac Is nothing different from any analog device in that
matter.



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[Julf]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> Jitter means nothing to you? Rurmor coming by interferences?...The final
> stage of a dac Is nothing different from any analog device in that
> matter.

Most modern DAC designs have an ASRC or at least fifo buffer at their
input that isolates the rest of the DAC from timing variations in the
input, so jitter is less of an issue than it was 20 years ago. I assume
your "rurmor" is hum and noise, and if that was an issue, we would see
lots of reports of optical connections sounding much better than
electrical ones. Do we? And yes, the final stage of a DAC is analog, but
pretty well isolated (in any modern DAC design) from the input.



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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[marcoc1712]

Julf wrote:
> Most modern DAC designs have an ASRC or at least fifo buffer at their
> input that isolates the rest of the DAC from timing variations in the
> input, so jitter is less of an issue than it was 20 years ago. I assume
> your "rurmor" is hum and noise, and if that was an issue, we would see
> lots of reports of optical connections sounding much better than
> electrical ones. Do we? And yes, the final stage of a DAC is analog, but
> pretty well isolated (in any modern DAC design) from the input.

Most(?) but not All. My claims are for me in my system, that is the same
as it was in 2009, just because in my opinion is still the best sounding
source I've ever tried for 44.1/16 material. See my signature.

Crazy audiophiles believe NOS ladder R2R DAC sounds better. Unless you
think all dacs sound the same, in that case no way you could heard
wav/flac differences, no ASRC here, sure.

Noise (yes, rumor was a naive translation from italian) come from signal
line but also from power supply, ground paths and even EMI, RFI and
vibrations, as in any other analogue device, why should not in the
output stage of our beloved dac? Sure some device are better than
others, also in this aspect.

I'm far out of my field, so I'll stop here.



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[Julf]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> Crazy audiophiles believe NOS ladder R2R DAC sounds better. Unless you
> think all dacs sound the same, in that case no way you could heard
> wav/flac differences, no ASRC here, sure.
>
> Noise (yes, rumor was a naive translation from italian) come from signal
> line but also from power supply, ground paths and even EMI, RFI and
> vibrations, as in any other analogue device, why should not in the
> output stage of our beloved dac? Sure some device are better than
> others, also in this aspect.

Yes, analog stages of DACs definitely differ, and some are more
susceptible to noise than others. But would that noise depend on the
data format?

This is where science and engineering comes in. Let's take the two most
common "theories" (I'd rather call them "speculation") - 1) jitter is a
major factor in the resulting sound, and jitter can be affected by the
source and data format used, and 2) the source (and the data format
used) is affecting the DAC through electrical noise conducted from the
source to the DAC.

The way the scientific method works is that you formulate tests, based
on your theories, that can validate or invalidate your theory. In the
case of jitter, DACs with ASRCs and fifo buffers should perform much
better than DACs without them (albeit the ones with ASRCs might have
other sound quality issues). Do we see a clear pattern of people
preferring DACs with ASRCs and buffers? Do they do better in listening
tests? In the case of electrical noise, do we find that systems using
optical connections generally sound better than systems using electrical
connections?

I think the answer to both questions is "no".

It is good to have an open mind, but that doesn't mean abandoning
scientific thinking in favour of faith and dogma.



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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[marcoc1712]

Julf wrote:
> Yes, analog stages of DACs definitely differ, and some are more
> susceptible to noise than others. But would that noise depend on the
> data format?
>
> This is where science and engineering comes in. Let's take the two most
> common "theories" (I'd rather call them "speculation") - 1) jitter is a
> major factor in the resulting sound, and jitter can be affected by the
> source and data format used, and 2) the source (and the data format
> used) is affecting the DAC through electrical noise conducted from the
> source to the DAC.
>
> The way the scientific method works is that you formulate tests, based
> on your theories, that can validate or invalidate your theory. In the
> case of jitter, DACs with ASRCs and fifo buffers should perform much
> better than DACs without them (albeit the ones with ASRCs might have
> other sound quality issues). Do we see a clear pattern of people
> preferring DACs with ASRCs and buffers? Do they do better in listening
> tests? In the case of electrical noise, do we find that systems using
> optical connections generally sound better than systems using electrical
> connections?
>
> I think the answer to both questions is "no".
>
> It is good to have an open mind, but that doesn't mean abandoning
> scientific thinking in favour of faith and dogma.

Again, I completely agree with you and I'm with you saying that people
claiming "the problem come from here and then the solution is my
fabulous isolator" has to prove that:

a. The theory is right.
b. the solution is effective.

If not, is just marketing.

Then I loose you, when you say that since we don't have a clear pattern
in people preferring DACs with better isolations, we should argue that
isolation does not have any matter in sound quality.

In main stream market, sound quaility is not the priority, price (and
cost reduction) is for sure a more important factor, we are still
talking about absolute sond quality or about 'good enougth' objects? In
the latter case, I don't think anyone is taking care of the little
differences we are talking about...

Has ever market pattern demostrate something other than people
behaivours is more sensitive to fashion than quality?

Back on topic.

Again, I'm not the one who could formulate a theory on how and why in
some systems and for some people flac do sund different than wav, so I
don't have to prove anything in this regard, no matter how long you'll
keep putting someothers words in my mouth, I've just pointed out that:

1. In perception matters the only evidence possible is someone sayng "I
feel it".
2. The fact one could not explain how and why does not imply it could
not feel it.
3. There is no 'scientific' demostrated thruth that 'is impossible'.
4. We have measurement that say difference are in place,the fact they
are considerer 'too little to be audible' is opinable.
5. There are few theory (some of witch are the ones you pointed above)
that try to explain how this could happen.

Points from 1 to 4 don't need any of the theory at 5 to be true, hope is
clear.

About 5, I personally think - but I'm not an expert professional in that
matter - that John Swenson theory on software related Jitter could be
somehow corresponding to truth, he provided evidences, both measures and
listening tests, many others had great results working on galvanic
isolation and power supply.

Is that dogma and faith? I know who JS and others are, please, could you
explain what's your merits to say that?

Again, you looks to me a little arrogant...



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[Julf]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> Then I loose you, when you say that since we don't have a clear pattern
> in people preferring DACs with better isolations, we should argue that
> isolation does not have any matter in sound quality.
>
> In main stream market, sound quaility is not the priority, price (and
> cost reduction) is for sure a more important factor, we are still
> talking about absolute sond quality or about 'good enougth' objects? In
> the latter case, I don't think anyone is taking care of the little
> differences we are talking about...
>
> Has ever market pattern demostrate something other than people
> behaivours is more sensitive to fashion than quality?

I wasn't talking about the mainstream market. Have we seen any evidence
from *audiophile* listening tests that *discerning listeners* prefer a)
isolation from jitter (buffers and ASRCs) b) electrical noise?

> Again, I'm not the one who could formulate a theory on how and why in
> some systems and for some people flac do sund different than wav, so I
> don't have to prove anything in this regard, no matter how long you'll
> keep putting someothers words in my mouth

You don't have to prove anything, but if you state "I hear a
difference", without any supporting evidence, the only thing we can
conclude is that you do believe you can hear a difference. It really
doesn't tell us anything more than that.

> 1. In perception matters the only evidence possible is someone sayng "I
> feel it".

I guess you missed the part where I pointed out that that is not true.
Someone saying "I hear it" tells us what they *believe* they hear., but
double-blind ABX can actually verify if they actually can hear a
difference.

> 2. The fact one could not explain how and why does not imply it could
> not feel it.

But in this case we have perfectly valid explanations for why you might
think you hear something - but you are asking us to ignore the most
plausible explanation (cognitive bias) and go for an explanation
(theory) that has no evidence supporting it. There are simple
experiments which can tell us which explanation is more valid/likely,
but you choose to ignore them. I would call that arrogant.

> 3. There is no 'scientific' demostrated thruth that 'is impossible'.

No. There is simply a scientific process that you are ignoring. I
suggest reading a 101 course in Theory of Knowledge.

> 4. We have measurement that say difference are in place,the fact they
> are considerer 'too little to be audible' is opinable.

From archimagos summary, it appears he disagrees with you.

> Is that dogma and faith? I know who JS and others are, please, could you
> explain what's your merits to say that?

Yes, relying on somebody's merits and qualifications to determine if
what they say is true or not is dogma and faith in authority.

My "merits" are purely an academic education in electronics and digital
systems, and something like 35 years of experience in audio and digital
systems. But that really shouldn't have any bearing on the case. Either
unicorns exist or they don't - just because the Pope declares them to
exist (or not) doesn't prove anything.

> Again, you looks to me a little arrogant...

Real arrogance would be to quote Dilbert and state "Sometimes it is
better if the aquarium owner doesn't explain to the turtle how the
filtration system works". But jokes aside, I think the ultimate
arrogance is assuming your own senses are infallible guides to the
truth, and refusing to question your assumptions.

Let's go back to the basic premise - you believe that file formats could
make an audible difference. How do you suggest we can test that
assumption in a repeatable, verifiable way?



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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[arnyk]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> Jitter means nothing to you? Rurmor coming by interferences?...The final
> stage of a dac Is nothing different from any analog device in that
> matter.

All of those things are of course influences that would of course be
held constant in any logical, scientific comparison.


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[marcoc1712]

ralphpnj wrote:
> "Better" is a huge, gaping rabbit hole into which many audiophiles fall
> and on which much of the high end audio business is based.
>
> By moving all equipment evaluation into the world of opinion, i.e. this
> piece of equipment sounds better than that piece of equipment, all the
> evaluations become equally valid and thus beyond criticism. In other
> words, all the evaluations are equally pointless.
>
> In the case of sound of wav files versus flac files there are NO
> differences but there appears to be many opinions stating that wav files
> sound "better" than flac files. So what Julf is rightly asking is how is
> that "better" evaluation being determined since from a purely objective
> standpoint there are NO differences between the two files.
>
> For some strange reason I can never get over the fact of why believing
> in scientifically proven facts is considered an "opinion". So for
> example, would my belief that 2+2=4 be considered an opinion and subject
> to the same debate as say my opinion that "Unforgiven" is the best Clint
> Eastwood movie? Get the point?


No, and this is a really wrong argument because:

1. 2+2=4 is because 2, +, = and 4 are concept, not real objects, have
you ever observed a 2? or some 'equal' in real world? No, they lives in
the platonic world and only there 2 is always equal 2.

2. I'm noy aware of any "science" actually sayng flac and wav sound the
same (at the analog rca output of the dac), Archimago says the
difference is under 90db, so is inaudible. (2 is not really like 2 here,
but from his point of view it does not matter...sure?).

3. 90 db SNR is actually a not so good result for a dac, so what? Does
anybody could distinguish between a 90 db SNR dac and a 140 one? Not
sure, but then why we admit there is a reason to look for a 140 db SNR
DAC if 90 db are enougth to be completely inaudible? Oh, sure, 140 is
greather than 90...

Some rumors is inaudible also at -30db, when others (related with the
signal) are nasty, so a difference 'could be' in place well over the
limit of a modern, well designed DAC.

NOTE that nobody here is talking about difference in bit, sure the
contents in bit is (if not in broken systems) the same, but again, here
"bits are the same" is true only because we are figuring 'symbols' of
information, not the actual signal being moved from files to the dac and
then processed, in this case they are NEVER the same, is the way it
works.

Your (and others) absolute certainty that "sound of wav files versus
flac files there are NO differences" come from where? Could you report
proofs that is always EXACTLY as 2 = 2 in every system? I don't think
so.

I, by me, I could admit that in many systems the difference is inaudible
to me, but not in mine and some others I've listen to.



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[arnyk]

marcoc1712 wrote:
>
>
> 2. I'm not aware of any "science" actually saying flac and wav sound the
> same (at the analog rca output of the dac), Archimago says the
> difference is under 90db, so is inaudible. (2 is not really like 2 here,
> but from his point of view it does not matter...sure?).
>

The science is that all FLAC files are first converted to .wav files
before they are fed to the DAC chip. To the best of my knowledge (and I
constantly study these things) there are no DAC chips that can handle a
FLAC file without that conversion being done first.

>
> 3. 90 db SNR is actually a not so good result for a dac, so what?
>

The maximum SNR that a 16 bit .wav file can deliver is 93 dB, so now you
are arguing over 3 dB in a context that is 90+ dB down. The difference
is generally inaudible in any reasonable listening comparison because
the rule of the weakest link. The weakest link in this case is generally
the recording and production process, not DACs or FLAC file converters.

>
> Does anybody could distinguish between a 90 db SNR dac and a 140 one?
> Not sure,
>

I'm sure. Nobody ever has, and many have tried.

>
> but then why we admit there is a reason to look for a 140 db SNR DAC if
> 90 db are enougth to be completely inaudible? Oh, sure, 140 is greater
> than 90...
>

You have apparently stumbled onto truth - DACs with > 90 dB THD+N are
generally not subjectively better.

>
> Some rumors is inaudible also at -30db, when others (related with the
> signal) are nasty, so a difference 'could be' in place well over the
> limit of a modern, well designed DAC.
>

The point where distingushing among DACs becomes very difficult is about
70 dB. At 30-40 dB it can be pretty easy.

>
> NOTE that nobody here is talking about difference in bit, sure the
> contents in bit is (if not in broken systems) the same, but again, here
> "bits are the same" is true only because we are figuring 'symbols' of
> information, not the actual signal being moved from files to the dac and
> then processed, in this case they are NEVER the same, is the way it
> works.
>
> Your (and others) absolute certainty that "sound of wav files versus
> flac files there are NO differences" come from where? Could you report
> proofs that is always EXACTLY as 2 = 2 in every system? I don't think
> so.
>

Asked and answered.

>
> I, by me, I could admit that in many systems the difference is inaudible
> to me, but not in mine and some others I've listen to.

No doubt you have done sighted evaluations which are grossly flawed for
this purpose.


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[Julf]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> Are you really asking this? What's means Monna Lisa is beautiful, how
> was determined? Are you going to measure this?

If I ask "Do you think Mona Lisa is beautiful or not?", I am asking for
a subjective opinion (that can only be measured statistically over a
large group of people), but if I ask "Are these two copies of Mona Lisa
identical or not", then it is something that can very well be measured.



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[netchord]

ralphpnj wrote:
> Question: does it sound better or does it just perform better, i.e. less
> buffering, or both?

sound.

there's no performance difference on my network. most of my collection
is 16/44, with a bit of 24/88 or 24/96. no higher bitrates.



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[Julf]

netchord wrote:
> open ears, open mind.

And open eyes, I assume?

What did you do to maintain an open mind (as opposed to one affected by
cognitive biases)?



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fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
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[netchord]

Julf wrote:
> And open eyes, I assume?
>
> What did you do to maintain an open mind (as opposed to one affected by
> cognitive biases)?

drank scotch.



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[ralphpnj]

netchord wrote:
> drank scotch.

Single malt or blended?



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[Wombat]

Scotch can do wonders in supporting open minded daydreaming!



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[netchord]

ralphpnj wrote:
> Single malt or blended?

Balvenie Double Wood. one wood for flac, one wood for AIFF.



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[pippin]

The other way around: how does the data get into the player.
For WiFi it's pretty obvious that PCM is a bad trade because then you
have twice the data rate going through a complex encryption algorithm
instead of half the data rate through the rather simple FLAC so with PCM
over WiFi you increase your player load.

With wired Ethernet it's not that clear and a lot depends on your player
and the network stac. But even there the chain is:

Packetized network traffic->NIC->Network driver->player's input
buffer->Player's playback buffer...l

And that's only the best case and since the network traffic is
packetized at lest the left of this is neither pointer forwarding nor
simple block copies,



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[Wombat]

pippin wrote:
> I've done measurements with a profiler on ARM6 on iOS in the past and
> there the App side of the network code alone (reading the data from the
> network subsystem and writing it into the output ring buffer) created
> more load than reading half the data as FLAC and decoding the FLAC but
> that might be caused partially by inefficiencies in the iOS network
> subsystem. It definitely shows how efficient FLAC is, there's almost no
> CPU load involved for the decoding alone.
I didn't think about these things a while but remember a developer of
the rockbox alternative player firmware team posted something similar at
hydrogenaudio. Playing flac allowed players playing longer as
uncompressed.



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[marcoc1712]

Julf wrote:
> User marcoc1712 started 'this thread'
> (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?104198-Disk-and-folder-browsing&p=828137&viewfull=1#post828137)
> in the developer forum. The tread is primarily about possible bugs
> associated with trying to stream pure pcm or wav format files. In order
> to keep that thread focused on the actual functioning of the software,
> this thread, here in the Audiophile subforum, is discussion about the
> possible claimed benefits (and disadvantages) of "raw" pcm vs. flac.
>
> Technically wav isn't a very good format for streaming, so anyone using
> it probably has reasons for doing so. The usual reason is the audiophile
> folklore about "uncompressed" sounding better than lossless compression.
>
>
> Often the folklore is based on misunderstanding the nature of lossless
> encodings, but a slightly more sophisticated argument is based on the
> supposed extra CPU load caused by flac decoding. This ignores the added
> processing and IO load (not just in the player application, but also in
> the kernel and device drivers) caused by the redundant data - and
> assumes that small differences in CPU load would cause audible
> differences.
>
> Archimago 'measured the effect of cpu load on jiitter'
> (http://archimago.blogspot.com/2013/03/measurements-hunt-for-load-induced.html)
> in 2013, and concluded that "symmetrical jitter sidebands are no
> different whether CPU or GPU load high".
>
> So far I have not seen any measurements or controlled listening tests
> showing any audible difference. I would welcome pointers to either.


Hi all,

I'm here just becouse Julf named me as the one opened the THD, but - as
you could read in the original thd - I was the first asking not to open
this can of worm , again...


I feel quite stupid about that, but it resulted that the bug I was
reporting was already soved and I was running an old version of the
software...Something went wrong at some point this summer and I did non
double ceck... Sorry to waste my and Michael time for this.

But at the end of the day, this means LMS is still supporting WAV, AIF
and PCM streaming and this is a very good news for me.

As a note, I want to report that I was impressed (in a very negative
way) by the 'hate' some people has put in the world 'audiophile' being a
sufficient reason itself for reject the question and relegate it to this
'ghetto'.

I was wrong (an stupid) because I was usingan old version, but I was
right in the matter,it's so thrue that was already solved!

Hope someone else have a similar tought about mocking everythink 'sounds
like' being audiophile... As a note, all the 'rumor' in the THD, for
sure contributed to make the waste even bigger. Again, sorry for this.

About the matter of this thread, I'm not really interested, is one of
those things that one has to try by itself in his own system. Aftre
reding the Archimago article, it's clear (and is not nothing) that
differences are little but are in place, "-90db means are inaudible" is
wrong, it depends on many factors. But here I think other than IT guys
have to join the discussion.

Discerne if rumors come from CPU, memory, ethernet or what else is not
in my competence field, so I don't ever want to debate this.

Measure by two different systems shows CPU usage Is increasing using
flac vs WAV, net traffic is - of course - decreasing by a greater factor
(see the original THD for details), but sure, those measure are too
naif.

I'm still missing the one that prouf the opposite and - in any case- I
think they are not 'the answer' to the question.



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[pippin]

marcoc1712 wrote:
>
>
> I'm still missing the one that prouf the opposite and - in any case- I
> think they are not 'the answer' to the question.

And I am missing a proof that Nessie doesn't exist.
It's not possible to prove that something doesn't exist.
And this fact is being used by a huge "audiophile" business sector to
sell expensive snake oil to people. Which is exactly where all the hate
is coming from.

For me personally, I'm seeing that a significant part of the people
asking me for customer support have simply screwed up their system due
to following some of these audiophile guides and then they want help
from me, put the blame on my App etc. etc., it's affects the amount of
time I have to do seriously useful features and in fact there are
seriousness useful features I did NOT implement due to the very fact
that they might cause issues in such setups and therefore create even
more support issues.

If it was just a spleen it wasn't a big issue but it potentially affects
the quality of products even of those who don't want to follow it,
that's a problem.



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[SBGK]

pippin wrote:
> And I am missing a proof that Nessie doesn't exist.
>

that's easy, just empty Loch Ness of water and if there's not a monster
at the bottom then it doesn't exist. Though it could have gone to the
pub that evening, I suppose.



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[Julf]

SBGK wrote:
> that's easy, just empty Loch Ness of water and if there's not a monster
> at the bottom then it doesn't exist. Though it could have gone to the
> pub that evening, I suppose.

Exactly - that is precisely the issue. Even if you managed to empty Loch
Ness, there would be someone that would claim Nessie was out for a
walk...



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[marcoc1712]

Julf wrote:
> Exactly - that is precisely the issue. Even if you managed to empty Loch
> Ness, there would be someone that would claim Nessie was out for a
> walk...

If, If, If...

Talking with me imply consider only what I'm actyualy sayng, not what
'Audipophile' are suppose to do... I'm I the speakers for all the
audiofiles out there?

You are a bit arrogant, man.



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[marcoc1712]

pippin wrote:
> And I am missing a proof that Nessie doesn't exist.
> It's not possible to prove that something doesn't exist.
> And this fact is being used by a huge "audiophile" business sector to
> sell expensive snake oil to people. Which is exactly where all the hate
> is coming from.
>
> For me personally, I'm seeing that a significant part of the people
> asking me for customer support have simply screwed up their system due
> to following some of these audiophile guides and then they want help
> from me, put the blame on my App etc. etc., it's affects the amount of
> time I have to do seriously useful features and in fact there are
> seriousness useful features I did NOT implement due to the very fact
> that they might cause issues in such setups and therefore create even
> more support issues.
>
> If it was just a spleen it wasn't a big issue but it potentially affects
> the quality of products even of those who don't want to follow it,
> that's a problem.

Pippin:

a. I'm not asking support for any of your products here.
b. If a system could be easily broken by fancy settings, people will
easily find the way. (Murphy law).
c. If a system could be broken, people will find the way. (a variant to
the Murphy law).

To be clear, You would like to get rid of WAV in LMS, let us use this as
an example.

LMS suports WAV since the really beginning and is still declared to be.
YOu are legitimate to ask the community to EOF WAV support, but until it
i ssupported, it should work as the other formats does, otherwise people
is legitimate to think is a bug...What's wrong with this?

If You - as a third party product developers - wanted introduce some
features thar could not work with WAV, you are always been welcome (i.e.
Earland plugins don't work with cue files) just declare it, test it
runtime and in case deny the service. More you'll be clear the less
people will call your support service (and claim you product is broken,
but could claim your product miss that faeature).

The same is valid for EVERY functionality. Is up to you be aware your
product is operating in a safe environment, if you do not and a user
find a bug in a condition where is supposed to work... he is rigth when
asking, you where wrong in programming, so, better fix the problem.



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[pippin]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> a. I'm not asking support for any of your products here.
> b. If a system could be easily broken by fancy settings, people will
> easily find the way. (Murphy law).
> c. If a system could be broken, people will find the way. (a variant to
> the Murphy law).
>
a) This is not about you, believe it or not.
b) and c) But that's not what's happening. What's happening is that
people are screwing up their systems because they believe they are
improving their sound.

Still no problem. The problem for me starts where they start to complain
about the screwed up system and blame other stuff and causing work for
me. And usually not even telling me "hey, I did screw up my system while
tinkering around with settings, could you maybe help me?", they say
"HEY, YOUR APP SUCKS BECAUSE IT DOESN'T WORK AT ALL AND I PAID SOOOO
MUCH FOR IT NOW GO DIAGNOSE AND FIX MY SYSTEM. NOW!!!!!!!"

And the problems are plenty. Your example is just one pretty special
case, yet, sorry, kind of typical because in your case it was again some
very special, nonstandard setting, in this case combined with the fact
that you had an outdated beta version of the server software. And at
first you didn't say you are streaming PCM.
You didn't ask me, though, you asked Michael, I did mention this isn't
about you, didn't I :)

Examples of things that frequently break for people using WAV or PCM
streaming or both:

- tagging
- sorting
- transcoding (e.g. for remote playback
- playback of remote streams
- playback of not directly supported formats (AAC for old
Squeezeboxes, WMA for iPeng and so on,...)
- playback of up- or downsampled files
- network load issues
- synchronization


>
> To be clear, You would like to get rid of WAV in LMS, let us use this as
> an example.
>

Just to be clear, I don't want to get rid of WAV. I'm just saying WAV
causes issues with tagging, PCM streaming causes issues with streaming.
It's a fact.

Does it sound different? I don't know. I haven't seen a single
controlled listening test and the arguments brought forward as of why it
should make a difference don't convince me at all. I DO know it causes
trouble all over the place.

There are other formats that cause trouble, too. WMA is similar as is
AAC and ALAC, I would not recommend them either although I do even use
some of those myself (lots of my lossless rips are ALAC for
convenience). I am pointing out that these cause trouble, too. I have
made quite a number of proposals to fix these issues here, some have
been implemented.

In this special case, though, it's about ignoring fixes already present
in the server and then disabling them.
Most people having issues are not really tech-savvy and know what they
are tinkering around with. They have heard somewhere on some forum that
their sound would get better if they change some setting because then
their playback would be "bit-true" and the effect is "dramatic", so they
change it. And then they don't understand the effects.

>
> If You - as a third party product developers - wanted introduce some
> features thar could not work with WAV, you are always been welcome (i.e.
> Earland plugins don't work with cue files) just declare it, test it
> runtime and in case deny the service. More you'll be clear the less
> people will call your support service (and claim you product is broken,
> but could claim your product miss that faeature).
>
I can clearly see that you have never had contact with customers or
users of your technical system in your life.
A huge part of Apple's success, for example, resides on the fact that
they usually simply don't give users the choice to screw up their system
and don't introduce features that don't work in certain supported cases.



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[marcoc1712]

pippin wrote:
> a) This is not about you, believe it or not.
> b) and c) But that's not what's happening. What's happening is that
> people are screwing up their systems because they believe they are
> improving their sound.
>
> Still no problem. The problem for me starts where they start to complain
> about the screwed up system and blame other stuff and causing work for
> me. And usually not even telling me "hey, I did screw up my system while
> tinkering around with settings, could you maybe help me?", they say
> "HEY, YOUR APP SUCKS BECAUSE IT DOESN'T WORK AT ALL AND I PAID SOOOO
> MUCH FOR IT NOW GO DIAGNOSE AND FIX MY SYSTEM. NOW!!!!!!!"
>
> And the problems are plenty. Your example is just one pretty special
> case, yet, sorry, kind of typical because in your case it was again some
> very special, nonstandard setting, in this case combined with the fact
> that you had an outdated beta version of the server software. And at
> first you didn't say you are streaming PCM.
> You didn't ask me, though, you asked Michael, I did mention this isn't
> about you, didn't I :)
>
> Examples of things that frequently break for people using WAV or PCM
> streaming or both:
> > > >
- tagging
- sorting
- transcoding (e.g. for remote playback
- playback of remote streams
- playback of not directly supported formats (AAC for old
> Squeezeboxes, WMA for iPeng and so on,...)
- playback of up- or downsampled files
- network load issues
- synchronization
> > >
>

Nothing strange in this, they will always do like that. But You know
they ar esometime rigth just because you don't clearly stated BEFORE it
was not faseable...

If you did, You could even charge them when you discover they did. But
if You have asetting in the system that broke you software, is up to
you, You are going to recieve complaints and - sure - your software is
broken here.


pippin wrote:
>
> Just to be clear, I don't want to get rid of WAV. I'm just saying WAV
> causes issues with tagging, PCM streaming causes issues with streaming.
> It's a fact.
>
>

Those are yuor opinons, not fact. I could say misuse of tagging and
streaming with WAV could cause problems, then a Tagging application or a
server shoul take care of this or... Just don't support them!

So I suggest you don't support WAV TAGGING, clearly STATE you retain
support IF PCM streaming is activated (you could check it in your
software, I suppose) in your software. If someone then call you for
this, You could even charge him (Major software company do exactly that
way).


pippin wrote:
>
> In this special case, though, it's about ignoring fixes already present
> in the server and then disabling them.
> Most people having issues are not really tech-savvy and know what they
> are tinkering around with. They have heard somewhere on some forum that
> their sound would get better if they change some setting because then
> their playback would be "bit-true" and the effect is "dramatic", so they
> change it. And then they don't understand the effects.
>

My wife is driving her car never wondering about the oil in 30 years...
Ended in bringing her car to service same time as mine, could you thing
you can change her mind? Good luck.

pippin wrote:
>
> I can clearly see that you have never had contact with customers or
> users of your technical system in your life.
> A huge part of Apple's success, for example, resides on the fact that
> they usually simply don't give users the choice to screw up their system
> and don't introduce features that don't work in certain supported cases.

And here you are really wrong!

I was product manager and service director in a software factory
producing ERP systems. Agree on the Apple example (was better some years
ago, then), it' exactly what I was adviging you to do with your
software!



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[pippin]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> Nothing strange in this, they will always do like that. But You know
> they ar esometime rigth just because you don't clearly stated BEFORE it
> was not faseable...
>
> If you did, You could even charge them when you discover they did. But
> if You have asetting in the system that broke you software, is up to
> you, You are going to recieve complaints and - sure - your software is
> broken here.
>
You still don't get it. It's not my App that breaks, it's their
Squeezebox system.
My App can do nothing about the fact that they have no artwork in their
WAV files. My App can do nothing about the fact that with uncompressed
HD streams all of a sudden they can't sync several players over WiFi
anymore. My App can do nothing about the fact that some streams no
longer play because they don't have the required codecs on their NAS.

But they still come to me because my App is how they use their system so
obviously it has to be able to cope with all the stuff they do to their
server and fix all these issues.

>
> Those are yuor opinons, not fact. I could say misuse of tagging and
> streaming with WAV could cause problems, then a Tagging application or a
> server shoul take care of this or... Just don't support them!
>
Oh yea, what a GREAT idea. Are you sure you ever talked to real
customers?

The customer has a problem, they don't care what part of the system
breaks, they don't care whether it's their own fault, they want it fixed
and it has to be fixed without them changing the transcoding settings
back because, of course, "with FLAC the box sounds like crap".

>
> So I suggest you don't support WAV TAGGING, clearly STATE you retain
> support IF PCM streaming is activated (you could check it in your
> software, I suppose) in your software. If someone then call you for
> this, You could even charge him (Major software company do exactly that
> way).
>
Listen, I have 1400 characters to describe an App, I can't write a
300-page book about limitations of the Squeezebox system if you apply
certain audiophile nonsense settings.
Plus, real-life users don't read that stuff anyway if it's more than two
lines of text. Heck, I can't blame them, I don't.



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[ralphpnj]

pippin wrote:
> Are you sure you ever talked to real customers?.

Pippin,

For what it's worth I am one of your "customers" and I love the iPeng
app and know that you provide excellent customer support. It's also good
to know that you personally don't believe a lot of the audiophile myths
about digital audio that are all too prevalent these days.



Living Rm: Transporter-SimAudio pre/power amps-Vandersteen 3A Sign. &
sub
Home Theater: Touch-Marantz HTR-Energy Veritas 2.1 & Linn sub
Computer Rm: Touch-Headroom Desktop w/DAC-Aragon amp-Energy Veritas 2.1
& Energy sub
Bedroom: Touch-HR Desktop w/DAC-Audio Refinement amp-Energy Veritas 2.0
Guest Rm: Duet-Sony soundbar
Garage: SB3-JVC compact system
Controls: iPeng; SB Controller; Moose & Muso
Server: SBS on dedicated windows 7 computer w/2 Drobos
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[marcoc1712]

pippin wrote:
> You still don't get it. It's not my App that breaks, it's their
> Squeezebox system.
> My App can do nothing about the fact that they have no artwork in their
> WAV files. My App can do nothing about the fact that with uncompressed
> HD streams all of a sudden they can't sync several players over WiFi
> anymore. My App can do nothing about the fact that some streams no
> longer play because they don't have the required codecs on their NAS.
>
> But they still come to me because my App is how they use their system so
> obviously it has to be able to cope with all the stuff they do to their
> server and fix all these issues.
>
>
> Oh yea, what a GREAT idea. Are you sure you ever talked to real
> customers?
>
> The customer has a problem, they don't care what part of the system
> breaks, they don't care whether it's their own fault, they want it fixed
> and it has to be fixed without them changing the transcoding settings
> back because, of course, "with FLAC the box sounds like crap".
> If you tell them "not my problem" they just go and write a nice 1-star
> review on the App Store. Problem solved...
>
>
> Listen, I have 1400 characters to describe an App, I can't write a
> 300-page book about limitations of the Squeezebox system if you apply
> certain audiophile nonsense settings.
> Plus, real-life users don't read that stuff anyway if it's more than two
> lines of text. Heck, I can't blame them, I don't.


I Know what you mean, but you choiced to build your - great - app on top
of LMS, it was already there and was not any better in this matter, so
what?

a. cut users hands, fight against Audiophiles, teach users they are
evil...
b. work on the 'system' (LMS and your app) and make it 'rock solid'.

Since many people is using LMS and not your app and other develpers
claims his product, based on LMS, is 'Audiphile', I think will be
difficult to move the standard where you want LMS to go, then the only
realistic way you have is to fork LMS, make the 'pippin version of' and
restrict service only to users that use your version.

Costs too much? ...



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[pippin]

marcoc1712 wrote:
>
> a. cut users hands, fight against Audiophiles, teach users they are
> evil...
>

I don't want to "fight" audiophiles. They can do what they want, it's a
free world out here.

I just ask you for the same things you are asking me for:

1. I will say my opinion. I will call out what I believe is nonsense
when I see it. You won't stop me from that.
2. When telling people they should make "optimizations" to the system,
tell them about the side effects, that they can't expect the system to
be stable anymore and that things might break. As long as they don't do
that I will keep recommending not to follow these recommendations.

That's all.



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[Julf]

OK, to provide some more meaningless numbers...

I took a 4-minute CD track ("Making plans for Nigel" by XTC), made two
copies, one flac and one wav, stripped all tags from the flac (so that
there wouldn't be a major difference in display activity during
playback), removed the wav->flc rule from convert.conf, and played each
track in a loop for 15 minutes on my squeezebox touch, while monitoring
the load with "top".

Results? Meaningless. The CPU and I/O load varies too much to give any
reasonable picture - the only thing I can say is that not surprisingly,
wav uses more system time in relation to user space time compared to
flac.
The short-term load figures for wav were more uneven compared to flac,
with occasional sudden bursts of very heavy load (I assume when
copying/filling buffers).

The 15-minute load averages were too close to call - 0.64 for wav, 0.63
for flac.

Conclusion: the differences are too small to determine by simplistic
measures like this, and it does indeed seem that wav trades application
CPU usage for system CPU usage.



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
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[marcoc1712]

pippin wrote:
> I don't want to "fight" audiophiles. They can do what they want, it's a
> free world out here.
>
> I just ask you for the same things you are asking me for:
>
> 1. I will say my opinion. I will call out what I believe is nonsense
> when I see it. You won't stop me from that the same way I can't stop you
> from telling people PCM was the only way to stream right.
> 2. When telling people they should make "optimizations" to the system,
> tell them about the side effects, tell them that they can't expect the
> system to be stable anymore and that things might break. As long as you
> (and others) don't do that I will keep recommending not to use these
> tweaks. And if people sell stuff as audiophile, they have to tell their
> customers what that means, side effects included.
>
> That's all.

I'm completely with You, other than I'm not selling anything and neither
advise people to make any "optimisation", just want keep using LMS as it
is and was since the beginning, then I may work to make it better in
some aspect i'm interested in (like cue files and wav), but I know
'better' is a point of view here...

By the way I'm not telling people PCM was the only way to stream right,
but only that is one of the availlable and in some situation - in my
opinion - is better than others, when in others (like WIFI, poor
network bandwith...) Flac or other could be better.

That's the point!

Then I'll make you a concrete purpose:

The actual way LMS handle transcodind and resamplig is, say, inadeguate?
Usage of Custom-convert.conf is complicated, undocumented and - i'm with
you with this - could drive to abuse or misuse, then problems.

BUT, LMS claims to support transcoding and resample, is plenty of guide
on how to do it using Custom-convert.conf and I'm quite sure this cause
a lot of calls to your help desk.

Shall we work togheter to:

a. Define a 'safe' subset of transcoding and resampling options to be
supported by LMS?
b. Build a simple user interface that replace the usage of
custom-convert.conf (and convert.conf and slimserver-convert.conf) and
File types, where users could choice only between a closed set of
options?

Im quite sure there is only one place were those files are read by the
server, so it should be feasible with not so big effort (at least
producing the files to be read), and I think we could remove at least
30% of problems.

What's your mind about? shall we start discussing what's the availlable
options should be?

I really believe that if we start work togheter we could make things
better in LMS, other is just bla, bla, bla...

Let me know your mind.



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[pippin]

marcoc1712 wrote:
>
> What's your mind about? shall we start discussing what's the availlable
> options should be?
>

No, I believe it's still to _easy_ to change transcoding settings, not
too complicated. If it was more complicated (such as only allowing
changes in custom-convert.conf), fewer people who don't know what they
are doing would try it out.

It's not as you claim, not everything you can set in these transcoding
settings is "supported", you can render your setup completely useless
with these settings.



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[marcoc1712]

pippin wrote:
> No, I believe it's still to _easy_ to change transcoding settings, not
> too complicated. If it was more complicated (such as only allowing
> changes in custom-convert.conf), fewer people who don't know what they
> are doing would try it out.
>
> It's not as you claim, not everything you can set in these transcoding
> settings is "supported", you can render your setup completely useless
> with these settings, you can't just enable PCM, you can set up much
> weirder settings if you want.

With Trascoding settings are you referring to Server Settings > Advanced
Settings > File Types?

If so, how could you do more than enabling/disabling file conversion
without first code them in some .conf file?

Anyway, my idea is to have a single page replacing also this part of
code, here you first could select what your settings are for: all
players, specific model or a single player, then you have the list of
file types that could be read, for each of them you have a dropbox with
all the availlable settings (profiles) you could use to stream that
specific file type, listed in the suggested order, maybe you could also
put a warning signe on some of them and show a message or an hint that
explain why they are not the first choice in every situation. You could
have a sort of hineritance from all players to specific one.

When considered safe and meaningfull, you could then enable some
additional settings for resampling.

Maybe, you could also add an "EXPERT" function that allow people to add
new profiles (as today in custom-convert.conf) but in that case you
could clearly state that they could broke the system and they will not
receive support in this case, set a flag ant show it in your app with a
red, blinking warning message.

Sure, we are going to provvide the "reset to standard setting"
function...

Will this system be any safer for you? WIll prevent any tweak? No, sure
it will not, but...



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[marcoc1712]

pippin wrote:
> a) This is not about you, believe it or not.
>
>
> Sorry, just so that I understand what you are talking about: this is
> about analog out on an SB+?
> This is a general thread so I'm quite sure others are talking about
> other setups.
>

The first sentence of this THD is "User marcoc1712..." so i think is
about me...

SB+ Is what I use and like more for 44.1/16 material and inside is a old
good SB classic, with another DAC and a far better power supply.

When I describe my system I always think at it as the primary source,
but I've got some experience also with other systems (real SB or
'computers') and I've found each one have it's own signature and
characteristics in term of sound. I've got an AlixBoard and a macmini in
other rooms, both sound good to me and then - as you know - I've got a
linux/xp box pc for development/test purpose with Local player. To me
Alix is the better and Pc (with XP) the worst, mac mini being good.



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[Julf]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> I was the first asking not to open this can of worm , again...

Yes and no. Had you simply stated "I know there is no audible
difference, but I have other reasons", it probably would not have caused
any reactions. But instead you argued for the audibility of the
differences, just like below:

> Aftre reding the Archimago article, it's clear (and is not nothing) that
> differences are little but are in place, "-90db means are inaudible" is
> wrong, it depends on many factors. But here I think other than IT guys
> should join the discussion.

No, -90dB means "probably at the limit of the measuring system".

> Measure by two different systems shows me that CPU usage is increasing
> using flac vs WAV, network traffic is - of course - decreasing by a
> greater factor (see the original THD for details), but sure, those
> measure are too naif.
>
> I'm still missing the one that prouf the opposite and - in any case- I
> think they are not 'the answer' to the question.

We have asked you for details about your measurements. Meanwhile several
people have pointed out measurements that show less load when using
flac.



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
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[marcoc1712]

Julf wrote:
> Yes and no. Had you simply stated "I know there is no audible
> difference, but I have other reasons", it probably would not have caused
> any reactions. But instead you argued for the audibility of the
> differences, just like below:

Why I'd have to say samething that I dont'd believe to? Just to make you
happy? By the way, I've just sad that -90 db means allmost nothing, if
you are not considering other factors, nothing else. Is this the same? I
think not.

Julf wrote:
>
> No, -90dB means "probably at the limit of the measuring system".

I really don't think so, actually very poor 'measuring systems' could
reach -140 db and more, actually -90 db is not a so good S/N ratio for a
decent DAC.

At least to me - this mean thart a - little as you want - difference IS
in place. Enought to be directly eard? Who knows, here is where
acoustics and psycoacoustic take place... Never sad nothing different.

You want other believe it's impossible, that's hard, but it's up to you,
I'm happy with You thinking it is...

Julf wrote:
>
> We have asked you for details about your measurements. Meanwhile several
> people have pointed out measurements that show less load when using
> flac.

I've posted mine, if you don't believe they are true, is not up to
me... Where are yours or form "other people"? Please point me to ANY
measurement where CPU load - at same samplerate, channels, endianess and
dept - is better for flac than for Wav.


Were I'm asking to proof that something does not exists? I'm just asking
you proof that Wav consume more CPU than FLAC, could you?



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[Julf]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> I really don't think so, actually very poor 'measuring systems' could
> reach -140 db and more, actually -90 db is not a so good S/N ratio for a
> decent DAC.

Did you actually read archimago's conclusions?

> I've posted mine, if you don't believe they are true, is not up to
> me...

How about answering the follow-up questions?

> Where are yours or from "other people"? Please point me to ANY
> measurement where CPU load - at same samplerate, channels, endianess and
> dept - is better for flac than for Wav.

Please scroll up.



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[Wombat]

While most speculations about audibility is fluff there is flac always
using more CPU power as i understand it for decoding but the overall
consumption of CPU+i/o may be smaller.



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[marcoc1712]

Julf wrote:
> Did you actually read archimago's conclusions?
>
>
>
> How about answering the follow-up questions?
>
>
>
> Please scroll up.

You posted here something regarding Jitter, are we talking about this?
I'm not, so any conclusion is irrrilevant here.

The other Article by Archimago, posted in the other thd Is much more
relevant, since compare the output from different formats. Please read
conclusions.

I've scrolled but found ANY measure...



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[pippin]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> You posted here something regarding Jitter, are we talking about this?
> I'm not, so any conclusion is irrrilevant here.
>

Now I'm confused. What ARE we talking about??? This whole thread is
about jitter, isn't it?
The _only_ reason I've ever heard of why WAV/PCM would sound better than
FLAC is due to increased jitter due to higher or more uneven processor
load.

Now you are saying you have another reason? Which one? Or does it just
sound better without any reason?



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[Wombat]

Are tags in wav supported by LMS? This crap creates problems for so many
things over all the years i read in audio fora. It should be Verboten.



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[marcoc1712]

pippin wrote:
> Now I'm confused. What ARE we talking about??? This whole thread is
> about jitter, isn't it?
> The _only_ reason I've ever heard of why WAV/PCM would sound better than
> FLAC is due to increased jitter due to higher or more uneven processor
> load.
>
> Now you are saying you have another reason? Which one? Or does it just
> sound better without any reason?
>
> Are we talking about THD on the analog out of a PC here? You are not
> using an external DAC? And that PC had a SNR of more than 90dB?


0. Never sad better, just different.

1. I think we all agree there is no difference at all in bits, networlk
connection, flac conversion and USB connection to dac always (or near
always, just a far, far, far, little opportunity in USB) produce an
exact 'logical' copy. SB+ has no USB but direct I2S to the dac, so...

2. If not 'data', should be time, is'nt it? But wait, Is the 'time ' of
the cpu related to the clock of the signal at the dac? If not in very
poor systems, no. It's not, or at east not directly.

So, it's not even there...

But some system are better than other in this terms, so here we have
differences here too, but - as archimago pointed out - are little and
seems not to be related at the cpu load or others.

Other than this, you could move the data in asynchronous way and
'recklock' it just before the dac. In that sense, up to the buffer just
before the dac itself we don't have jitter at all.

Then if we have some Jitter injected to the dac, is because some 'rumor'
reach the clock and influence it's precision. But in exactly the same
way this rumor could affect the digital, it could affect the analog too,
is just few cm ahead.

If you measure the otput of the dac (analog) you could not understend
what come from Jitter and what from 'rumor' and you could even not
understand the 'real' path the rumor follow to reach the RCA couple,
just like was with the old plain analog in the golden years...

Those are just a speculation, I really have not Idea were differences
origin, but measuring Jitter and measurinng THD or others at the analog
out is different.



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SB+, Klimo Merlino + Kent Gold, Monitor Audio Studio 20 Gold SE+, Klimo
reference and DIS Interconnect.
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[Julf]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> measuring Jitter and measurinng THD or others at the analog out is
> different.

How do you think jitter is usually measured?



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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[Julf]

marcoc1712 wrote:
> You posted here something regarding Jitter, are we talking about this?
> I'm not, so any conclusion is irrrilevant here.

You are talking about audible differences. As we all agree there is no
change in the actual bits, the differences have to be either jitter or
noise.


> The other Article by Archimago, posted in the other thd Is much more
> relevant, since compare the output from different formats. Please read
> conclusions.

Could you post a link and quote the part of the conclusions you think
support your position?

> I've scrolled but found ANY measure...

Definitely several mentions of measurements. No actual numbers, but then
your numbers, without any details of hws they were measured, are rather
worthless:

pippin wrote:
> I've done measurements with a profiler on ARM6 on iOS in the past and
> there the App side of the network code alone (reading the data from the
> network subsystem and writing it into the output ring buffer) created
> more load than reading half the data as FLAC and decoding the FLAC but
> that might be caused partially by inefficiencies in the iOS network
> subsystem. It definitely shows how efficient FLAC is, there's almost no
> CPU load involved for the decoding alone.

Wombat wrote:
> I didn't think about these things a while but remember a developer of
> the rockbox alternative player firmware team posted something similar at
> hydrogenaudio. Playing flac allowed players playing longer as
> uncompressed.

As to he questions you didn't answer:

Julf wrote:
> So your load numbers are not total system load numbers? Are they the
> numbers just for the squeezelite process? Is kernel-side load included?
> How did you measure it?
>



"To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this
fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt
edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953
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[ralphpnj]

One thing that we all can agree on is if you wear a flac(k) jacket while
swimming in the wav(e)s you will sink like a stone.

And why has no one mentioned that there is a very simple and easy
solution to all this nonsense:

Use Apple Lossless encoding instead of flac unless you believe this
piece: http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue63/aiff.htm



Living Rm: Transporter-SimAudio pre/power amps-Vandersteen 3A Sign. &
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[pippin]

Sorry, just so that I understand what you are talking about: this is
about analog out on an SB+?
This is a general thread so I'm quite sure others are talking about
other setups.



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[pippin]

The biggest pitfall obviously being that you might not get the result
you want to get.



---
learn more about iPeng, the iPhone and iPad remote for the Squeezebox
and
Logitech UE Smart Radio as well as iPeng Party, the free Party-App,
at penguinlovesmusic.com
*New: iPeng 8, the Universal App for iOS 7 and iOS 8*
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[docbob]

pippin wrote:
> The biggest pitfall obviously being that you might not get the result
> you want to get.

Is that the -biggest-?;) It certainly may be the least desirable for
some. I meant technical, procedural pitfalls, but...
-touche!-


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