Sound Quality

You make it sound like the N200 is just not that good :(

If you are finding that streaming FLAC sounds better than WAV files, something is seriously wrong.  WAV files are the original unaltered format that anything else has to try to sneak in being unnoticeably different from, since people are cheapskates about letting their collections take up space.

I use Audirvana on PC, and I can directly compare streaming FLAC vs local WAV's.   While the streamed FLAC's sound slightly muddy compared to local, the FLAC part is agitating even locally compared to uncompressed.  Local WAV files are so noise free, that I feel like falling asleep with them compared to FLAC.

I also find that local files on ssd's sound quieter than mechanicals, but I have to admit, both sound like I'm getting more confident reads than optical disks ever gave, with all of that ECC and making sure you only record at 4x business.  I theorized that a thumb drive would beat my 2.5 ssd, due to lower power draw from not trying to max out SATA speed, but I could tell no difference between the two.  I ended up getting a little square drive that's about the size of 2 thumb drives, with a little cable, instead of the thumb drive, because it can read and write at around 900mb/s, given the chance.

If you still have cd's to rip, nothing on PC could beat Exact Audio Copy, thanks to it's extreme error detection and correction capability.  I haven't heard of newer software that can beat it, but since most people are probably already done with ripping, I doubt anything will come out that beats it, either.

DSD is nice and natural, but it's too bad that since they can't be edited, you will probably only get remastered old tapes and live performances that way.  At least lots of gear is throwing in dsd decoding chips also into their designs.

Listening to "The Chicks" for a change, and wow, talk about life wasn't already them!  Maybe I'll buy a new high purity cable, so that​​​​​​​ t​​​​​​​he rest​​​​​​​ of t​​​​​​​he women find out​​​​​​​ they'll have a hard time beating them.

@audioisnobiggie The N200 sounds fine. Thanks for your thoughts on WAV over FLAC. I am re-ripping my CD library in WAV files and using dBpoweramp to do so.

I ordered the inexpensive DSD sampler from Native DSD and give it a try.

@sandthemall - lossless IS lossless. Bit to bit. Decompressed file is exactly the same as it was before compression. Think about zip compression. Your word document is exactly the same after decompression, nothing is lost. Similarly, you can zip Wav files and then unzip it and it will come out exactly the same.

There is strong math behind lossless compression. It does not drop any bits.

The theory is that the act of decompressing a file somehow affects the sound by creating temporal delays resulting in jitter.  It a few years ago but someone claimed blind listening tests showed thar WAV files were superior in sound.  I don’t know from any listening tests I’ve participated in so I went with WAV just in case there is something to this (storage is cheap).  The manufacturer of my server—Naim—recommends WAV files, another reason to go in that direction for me.

@mikhailark @larryi OK, thanks, I am riding the WAV!