I am using dbpoweramp to rip all my cds to WAV. I’m getting metadata and album covers which show up on my Aurender. Not sure why people say you don’t get these with WAV. Does dbpoweramp do something special? Or am I seeing something else?
Why do Wav and Flac Files Sound Different?
This article is from 2016, so outfits like JRiver may have developed workarounds for the metadata/sound quality issues sussed out below. Inquiring minds want to know.
Why Do WAV And FLAC Files Sound Different?
"Based on these results, we attempted to pinpoint which section of the metadata might be responsible. Since the cover art file associated with the metadata is the largest contributor to the metadata header size, we began by examining the effect of deleting cover art prior to the WAV-to-FLAC-to-WAV conversion protocol. This proved fortuitous, as our first suspicion proved correct."
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@m2team00 It seems to be a relatively new feature to have album art in WAV files and not sure all converters support it. See more here. |
I find it an interesting question. Lossless should be lossless, i.e., bit perfect, whether a WAV file or FLAC. This brings me to another age-old debate on here. If FLAC is bit-perfect, and it supposedly is, if one rips a vinyl album to FLAC using a good quality analog rig to FLAC, shouldn't the FLAC file have the same "analog" sound as if one were playing the album on a turntable? I have done that experiment and on my system (all digital), the vinyl inevitably has some "crackles and pops" from the album that is absent from the same music ripped from CD or streamed. That plus the convenience of digital makes me not miss my turntable! |
@moto_man We should separate two issues. Lossless, and recording quality. WAV, FLAC, and ALAC should all be lossless formats, but I don’t do quality assurance on every algorithm out there which is converting from one to another, or used in CD ripping. It is technically possible that someone has a FLAC compression or CD ripping code that is not lossless, but if so it’s a bug. The other part of this is the recording and playback quality which is affected by things such as the ADC, recording settings, digital filters on your DAC, etc. In an ideal world, of course, the playback is identical to the recording. If you are missing events there may be something going on. There are a number of music analyzers out there that might be worth experimenting with to give you an answer.
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