Converting FLAC to WAV and keeping tags?

Lupinethe3rd - their is a small but vocal group who steadfastly believes they hear a difference. Steve Nugent (Empirical Audio) is one of the leaders. It is kind of like arguing about power cables or various tweaks. Some people swear they hear a difference, others dismiss the claims. Did you read the 4 part series in TAS? They claimed to hear differences in bit identical files after copying them from one format to another. I just want you to know that this is a very active topic of discussion and just saying it cannot happen is not going to convince this crowd.

Lupin-

I understand that FlAC and WAV contain the same data. I do believe the difference is thought to come from imperfect decompression of FLAC on the fly by the CPU. As a psychologist by trade, I have no doubt the difference I'm "hearing" could be illusory. Never the less...

Zd -

Thanks for your input. I was afraid it would require mass re-tagging. I'll take a look at Quod.

Andrew

I just stuck to AIFF which supports meta data and is uncompressed lossless.

Some have had good results with FLAC set at 0 compression.

WAV does support meta data now IIRC but getting the software that supports it seems to be difficult.

"As a psychologist by trade, I have no doubt the difference I'm "hearing" could be illusory. Never the less..."

Andrew,

Its just my opinion/advice, but don't doubt yourself. Currently, there are a lot of people getting into audio by way of computer. When they find websites like this and look at what were talking about and buying, quite often their shocked because they are seeing high end audio for the first time. Most people aren't even aware that audio like this even exist. As a result of this, many new people try to "talk sense" to audiophiles. (I should mention that I have no idea if Lupinthe3rd is one of these people. I'm just talking in general.). Thats why I say don't doubt yourself. Who better to judge your system than you?

There seems to be 2 groups: those that say FLAC sounds better than WAV and those who say they hear no difference. But I find it somewhat interesting that virtually no one is saying that WAV sounds better than FLAC - as if most people were in agreement with that part.