Minim server + Synology NAS kills custom dedicated pc on music sound quality

[simoncn]

(14-11-2013 22:01)Linn_agnostik Wrote:  Thanks for sharing..

my experience is more nuanced - I use minimserver on my Synology DS-412+ (dual core atom, 2,13ghz), feeding my linn renderer (Akurate DS/1) and I've experimented with transcoding recently.
Tried both wav and wav24 and thought I lost a bit of warmth and grit in (predominantly) voices, both male and female. Turned off transcoding and lo and behold, the warmth and organic nature returned.
No major differences, not night and day in any sense, but clearly discernible.
I have no ssd in my system and unfortunately no way to test that, as it is fully loaded

Wav24 transcoding from flac on 192/24 was <5% cpu utilisation

It is interesting that you noticed a difference and preferred the FLAC sound to the WAV sound. For me, the WAV sound is preferable, but I have no way of knowing which of these is closer to the intentions of the engineer who created the recording.