FLAC to WAV24 sound quality in 0.8.1

[mccormw]

Also read Linsley-Hood's results from A/B blind testing, where even there HiFi journalist who claimed to have golden ears had trouble telling vastly different amps apart. They, of course, did the "sensible" thing and declared the tests invalid! You can't make this stuff up.

It's a bit like Homeopathy really.

I was recently browsing the NAIM forum and followed a discussion on FLAC v WAV and the consensus there was that WAV sounded better than FLAC. Now my first reaction was to rant & rave BUT the NAIM view was that FLAC requires additional processing and this 'could' raise the noise floor. Any views anyone?

Mind you there was some unbelievable gaffs from people posting on the thread that could not understand the difference between 'lossy' and 'lossless'. The view was that because FLAC shrunk files, therefore you had to add bits to the uncompressed PCM then it must be different.

See http://forums.naimaudio.com/topic/wave-or-flac-1

Anyway just to be sure I have downloaded MinimStreamer and set transcoding into place and will see if my 'cloth' ears can hear a difference. It's the great thing about HiFi always looking for a way to make it sound better. Be honest how many of you thought about buying blue marker pens to make CDs sound like LPs? I did but didn't buy, I gave myself a reality check.

btw I have these amazing blocks of wood for sale. They come from a part of my garden where fairies play on mid-springer spaniel night, only in this part of Kent where the lay-lines make a ban-the-bomb sign. They are only £120 ea plus VAT and will make a £500 HiFi sound like you paid £20,000 for it. Please note that these come with no guarantee, the fairies wouldn't like that.

ps I nearly forgot. Now I am transcoding to WAV24 I now see that Windows media player will play my FLAC files (ie transcoded to WAV24). Not sure if that is an advantage or not.
btw is there any problems transcoding everything to WAV24 or would I be better off using WAV. Most of my stuff is FLAC16. I assume that when transcoding FLAC16 to WAV24 if fills the 8 MSBs with 0s. But it will make my network work harder.

Right just off to cut some bits of wood up.