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Converting my CD Collection from .FLAC to .WAV

Lately I have begun converting my CD collection from .flac files to uncompressed .wav files. on the theory that doing away with a computing step in my transport and dac might improve playback sound. In some cases it does so quite unequivocally. Especially, there is a slight de-glaring of female vocals and horns. James Taylor's voice on October Road is now less shouty. Listening in general feels more relaxed and paced. SRV's guitar jangle is less rankling at times. Julian Bream's lute is less smacking.

Most of the websites from which I download files now offer only MP3 and.flac. In the old days they offered .wav too - understandble since download time and server space cost money.

What say you, knaves?

bolong
audiotroy's avatar
audiotroy
3,800 posts
 

bad idea wav doesn't sound better and doesn't  have Metadata support we inportservers and use flac and we have tested wav vs flac on a 150k reference system flac is just as good  flac is 100% losless

 

Dave and Troy

Audio intellect  Nj

 

bolong OP
617 posts
 

 

I am not interested in "metadata" - this is not a server farm I am running here. My Cd's are kept in their own in Progo DVD cases, and I can add all the metadata I want to accompany them in those cases.

This is just some guy burning his own CD's and listening to what can happen. Ultimately, flac's and wavs have the same data. What is different is the internal processing necessary to unwrap.flac files, and that is where - at least with my particular system - the wav files may have a slight advantage. As we all know here on this forum, it is the "slight" advantages that make such a difference to golden ears. This is not a new idea. "Paul" of PS audio also endorses this procedure.

I use JRiver to pre-covert my flacs to wavs. It is quite easy to do, and I hope some of the tweekers here will give it a try and report back to us nay or yay.

tomrk
73 posts
 

It sounds like you already understand that FLAC and WAV files are mathematically the same, if you convert WAV to FLAC and then back to WAV, the bits will lbe identical.

The conversion can be done in much faster than real time, which is why when you rip a CD, the slowest part is pulling the bits from the CD. My computer can convert dozens of WAV's to any format simultaneously.

Which is my way of saying that given modern computing equipment even in streamers (which will probably have dedicated hardware to do the conversion), it’s trivial to convert from FLAC and will have no effect on sound quality.

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