Why do Wav and Flac Files Sound Different?

The only way you’ll ever convince me there’s a lick of difference between WAV and FLAC is with the jitter measurements.

It is _possible_ that the decompression has so much of an effect it overworks limited or pooor buffers and jitter control mechanisms, but IMHO, it’s the 21st century and any streamer at all in this day and age should perform equally well with either.

I should point out that any of this should be VERY streamer dependent.  Unique CPU's, algorithms and real-time software is probably running on each of them, so the idea that this is something shared among all of them is not believable. 

Also, take Roon, which essentially reads the files in the server and then seends them to each endpoint separately.  The data stream sent by Roon has been stripped of it's original format. What happens then?

The gist of this thread had to to with the possibility that any metadata was a potential pollutant of the musical information. When I used to download albums from allflac.com removing the "cover" file from the track list before loading it into JRiver would nix the cover art showing up in the thumbnail header for the albums which seems to indicate that this data was no longer involved in the track files. Not the case with Quobuz. None of this may matter sonically. Or it might in some small. way.

OP:

The metadata and audio are separate. They share a file, but it’s not as if the album cover art is being sent per musical frame. It is in a different location, along with all the credits, so once the music starts to play, it is completely out of the picture. At best, these should could cause picoseconds of delay in starting to play the music, but zero when playing has begun.

HDCD and MQA however are interwoven into the music data itself.

It does take a little more CPU power to decompress FLAC or ALAC vs. WAV, which is going to take more network time, but if your player sounds different, it's messed up.

Interesting. I wasn't aware there were different levels of compression available in FLAC. I used the default in Exact Audio Copy when I ripped to an external hard drive and don't know what setting that is. I wonder if that is why I hear difference between FLAC and WAV on replay.

Jim S.

@erik_squires

Maybe I’m reading something into your last message, but can you explain what HDCP has to do with FLAC v. WAV?

I’m not trying to hassle you, this is an honest question posed to an obviously knowledgable colleague.

FWIW, this is a topic long of interest to me. I wrote some lengthy articles about digital copy-protection the topic for mainstream tech publications back when the first round of DVD CP standards emerged, and at the time, HDCP’s only application for audio had to do with DVD-Audio media (and then hirez SACD DSD-encoded stereo).

I understand that today HDCP is incorporated into HDMI/DVI/etc.-transported signals, but that would not distinguished between FLAC & uncompressed PCM content.

Btw, +1 re: your comments about metadata being processed independently of digital-audio content. Jeez. Yes, nothing’s impossible, but Sagan’s Law ("extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof") applies here.

D