WAV vs. FLAC vs. AIFF

There is no difference other than metadata. If anyone thinks there is, they need to get a life or better gear!

To add depth to this discussion and to not hijack it, what settings are the best if you use WAV? Which settings for FLAC, which settings for etc.?

CHAD:
If one can hear the difference doesn't that mean their gear is too good? Typically one can not hear differences on inferior gear because they are not transparent and resolving enough to hear the differences. (higher noise floor, cheaper power supplies etc).

There is a difference between AIF, FLAC, & WAV files. AIF & FLAC files have one more process that the music player must get through before it can play music as opposed to WAV. FLAC and AIF files have a wrapper file. The AIFs wrapper file is less obtrusive than FLAC. Removing processes makes the player sound cleaner and more transparent. The reason I know this is I can hear the difference and speaking with friends who are in the mastering business and they basically confirmed the differences in sound quality I was hearing. It only makes sense that less one less process would improve the sound. Chad I have a great a great life and system that I enjoy once in a while.

My assumption is that with any of these formats, the bits being delivered are the same and timing is the real issue. I agree that in the past it was likely that a lot of activity on the PC could affect the sound, mostly because of timing (jitter) issues. But with the use of async USB the activity on the PC seems to be a real secondary issue. As long as the buffer is full and the activity on the PC is relatively low, it seems that the aysnc USB is the determining factor. I use a PC with a very low end processor, and running FLAC through J River, the CPU hardly goes about 5%. If the FLAC decompression is a problem on a system, it is probably because there are too many other things running. Although, as I said, using an async USB converter/DAC should minimize that effect. There can still be noise issues (like small ground issues) but that should not be affected by the minor differences in processing time to decompress files. I am of the mind that "everything matters", but with properly done async converters/DACs, it seems that the other effects can be extremely small. That said, there are always people who say they hear differences in everything. I would suggest converting a few of your wav files to FLAC and listening. dBpoweramp is a good converter and it has a free version.

What hardware/software are you using?