Sound differences

[simoncn]

(05-02-2013 12:33)Kingpin Wrote:  Hello,

1. We have a discussion on another board about sound differences during transcoding.
Some people hear differences when playing alac or flac as wav to the streamer and between the original wav file?

2. Next question is that they hear differences when transcoding to wav24.

How is this possible?

Because alac/flac are both lossless, when streaming as pcm to the server it shouldn't make a difference to the original wav file?
Next thing is why upsample to wav24? It doesn't make sense to me because you can't add anything what isn't there. The 8 bit difference will be filled with '0'!
Can you explain to me how this is possible?

Does minimserver anything with the files (like upsampling to 96khz(for example)?

MinimServer doesn't resample. It just fills the low-order bits with zeros.

I agree with you that it seems very surprising that this should make a difference. I didn't believe it until I had heard it myself consistently on a lot of different source material. Some other forum members have also heard this difference.

I don't have a technical explanation for this. My guess is that there is some difference within the Linn DS between how 16-bit inputs and 24-bit inputs are processed. I haven't been able to try it with any other renderer.

Have you tried it yourself? Can you hear a difference?