Converting Flac to Wav & Upconversion

Thank you Steve.
I have only limited experience with upsampling and I am thankful to you for your much more generilized input

I have Musica Pristina Virtuoso music server and here is my experience.

1 When I rip CD into WAV and FLAC (two separate files) and compare both - WAVE is dramatically better then FLAC which sounds lean, thin, 2D and castrated

2 When I take FLAC file I have downloaded from HDTracks.com or hidefenitiontapetransfer and convert it to WAV format I never experience sound degradation described in TAS recently. Converted WAV is better then FLAC but not in 100%. So I do convert as there is no downside (besides space which is cheap now) and potential improvments. Sound characteristics as I described above

3 When I upsample file, WAV or FLAC, (I use Musica Pristina software) then I hear tremendous improvment in highs: silkier, extended, air, instrument separation. Bass does not change (a bit tighter) but is not so promiment in comparison. Its natural, as we just improved highs and ear is not used to it! Later on, bass sound "normal"

I believe that upsampling results depends grealy on the DAC you use because if it does its own upsampling then done twice it could be worsen, in theory I believe. My DAC is Esoteric K-01 USB DAC portion of this SACD Player.

Done right - the SQ is better then majority of analog gears I auditioned in my life

Hello Steve,

"Dob - It helps to understand why upsampling makes things sound smoother and silkier. "

I do not beleieve its always the case and depends larfely on the given DAC (with its filters and other parameters)

I believe later on you also said that if X then Y and else its Z etc....

I think audiophile must trust their ears first of all. If I like the taste of the given soup I don;t have to learn all exact ingridiens and methods of cooking involved in its preparation - leaving it to the brilliant chefs as you are.

Always ewmjoy reading your comments. Thanks a lot

Thanks

" If a WOW system's like Sgr's barely discerns between FLAC an WAV then, I, *a mere mortal* should be just fine with FLAC."

May be it has nothing to do with mortality and quality of the systems. May be you both are simply deaf?

Sorry. Can help it!

Hello Steven,

Sorry if I have offended you. You do things right. First you report what you hear and then you try to explain it - and its fine and how it suppose to be, first observatio(s) and then speculation/discussions and this is how we learn.

Simply, Mihaitaa with his "mere mortal" approach tempted me too much. As you can see many so called audiophies are trying to apply their ignorance of reality and "calculate" music instead of listinging to it. Just above Lupin the 3d described to us that zeros are zeros indeed and shared with us description of his thought process, or as he put it "bowel movement". He will never guess, that "1" is actually electrical pulse, say 1 v amplitude for illustation and could be a) mispaced in time due to the jitter and b) greatly distorted (say reduced to 0.499v) due to noisy power supply, non linear DC:DC convertors etc and be mischaracterized as a "zero"

To comment further, I am trying not to diminish huge difference betweet two formats but improve AQ and make it as close to analogue front end as possible. There are number of factors involved and I am sure I don;t know even half of them. Many extremely useful suggestions are from Musica Pristina people ("Spectron").

At any rate, my apologies again and all the best ! This hobby (addiction for me, actually) is fantastic for life!

The greatest and most consistent difference between FLAC and WAV when you rip your CD in both formats and then compare.

When you convert FLAC (ripped or downloaded) then "new" WAV file sound not worse then FLAC, practically 100% in my experience. In addition, many new "WAV" files sounds better (ranging from slight to huge difference) then original FLAC files. I do this conversion now automatically as I know SQ will not worsen but may (may) improve