[515164]

With the talk of the difference between wav and flac, is the difference similar to VBR and CBR mp3s? Is the mentioned difference in quality due to how the FLAC is played back having to be uncompressed as it goes?

Check out this post: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/sony-nw-wm1z-wm1a.815841/post-15686499

By the way, to get things more on topic, it seems that just turning Direct Mode off (without any effects active) reveals a noise floor, that it's not there while Direct Mode is active.

I noticed this with my Shure SE846, low gain, volume set to 90, playing via the Bluetooth Receiver function using LDAC, on the balanced connection.

 

[gerelmx1986]

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

From a data preservation stand point, a compressed FLAC file is going to be exact lossless bit perfect copy of WAVE if you extract/convert the FLAC back to WAVE.

when it comes to real-time playback of FLAC file on an audio system, it’s going to incur more performance penalties vs WAVE file playback, there are probably some Software engineering workarounds(like decoding entire flac file to system memory as raw PCM data and do direct data streaming to DAC).

However this kind of workarounds do not work practically in a portable environment like in a Walkman which needs to reduce battery load and limit cpu/memory usage, so the Walkman has to do decoding of the flac file in a sequential portion by portion manner which induces more bursty like periodic cpu & memory I/O usage and power draw. This will likely impact sound quality slightly due to additional incurred periodic cpu/ram generated electrical noise and power draw during decoding/playback process.

You can always set FLAC compression to lvl 0 which means it’s basically an uncompressed pcm wave stream but with album art and editable track information. This is the closest to a WAVE file in terms of the system utilisation during playback.

I think this firmware engineer has the Flac vs Wave phenomenal explained in the most understandable manner:

https://www.audioshark.org/computer...uality-difference-between-flac-wav-15491.html

True. For those who believe WAV and FLAC must sound the same and heard no difference, the reason is that they are exactly the same digitally after FLAC decoding.

For those who heard a difference, the reason is that the process of the FLAC decoding needs additional CPU and memory accesses, which cause additional noise. Additional CPU usage also means slightly increased power requirements. Power is of utmost importance to audio SQ.

(Note: WAV is not good for tagging. For a non-compressed alternative consider AIFF.)

Peter Lie
LUMIN Firmware Lead

 

[Mindstorms]

Man, stop saying stuff if you don't actually know how lossless compression works. What the heck is "voids" that are being "deleted", really? Lossless means nothing is being lost.

I thought we already cleared this out........... Please.

Just inform yourself properly, and stop blindly listening to others. Even the record house you were buying hi-res stuff from was actually saying false stuff, if you remember.

Here, this was when that discussion started, with the record house: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/sony-nw-wm1z-wm1a.815841/post-15548024

I hear something weird in lossless audio as they call it it may not lose sound but FLAC sometimes sound weird to me maybe we are so acustomed to mp3 than when you hear flac it sounds like volume its too much... if someone knows what i mean... DSD on the other side I loved on my walkman maybe its recording and has nothing to do with the format.... but noone can explain...

 

[515164]

I hear something weird in lossless audio as they call it it may not lose sound but FLAC sometimes sound weird to me maybe we are so acustomed to mp3 than when you hear flac it sounds like volume its too much... if someone knows what i mean... DSD on the other side I loved on my walkman maybe its recording and has nothing to do with the format.... but noone can explain...

Well, this has nothing to do with imagining how something works and then thinking that the imagined thing is actually true and then spreading it around as true information.

Ok, the decoding of the FLAC (which is made to be a lot faster than the encoding process) may produce some noise as the CPU works or something - this is plausible.

However, "voids" being "deleted" or claiming that the data is compressed in a lossy way, is false.

That was my point of the post - that we should inform ourselves about stuff.

 

[mwhals]

All my almost 10,000 flac files ripped from CDs sound great to me.

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

All my almost 10,000 flac files ripped from CDs sound great to me.

Most people won’t notice or can live with the very slight differences.

However there exist people with Golden Tiger Ears that can hear 4x better!!! X-men audiophiles

 

[Krutsch]

From a data preservation stand point, a compressed FLAC file is going to be exact lossless bit perfect copy of WAVE if you extract/convert the FLAC back to WAVE.

That part is correct.

...
You can always set FLAC compression to lvl 0 which means it’s basically an uncompressed pcm wave stream but with album art and editable track information. This is the closest to a WAVE file in terms of the system utilisation during playback.
...

One thing you need to understand is that FLAC compression level has more to do with the level of effort expended during compression - de-compression (transcoding back to PCM) is basically the same level of processing, regardless of the compression level used.

I've actually done some testing on this, using an older system. I've run CPU benchmarks on large FLAC files (i.e 192/24) encoded with default compression levels (i.e. 5); during playback on an older system, the CPU was barely doing anything - like low single digits to unpack and decode, consistently and over time.

Conversely, on the same system, running Apple's lossless codec (ALAC) was a different story - almost 50% CPU utilization to unpack/de-code the same hi-res music on the same system. Why is this? The metadata. ALAC has a more complex metadata structure that allows arbitrary data to appear throughout the audio file, which translates into more processing required to play back the same song.

Guess what happened when I tried the same experiment using WAV audio files (again, the same tracks as above, but transcoded to WAV)? The CPU numbers looked like FLAC. Yes, that's right - (almost) no difference. FLAC de-compression is very fast and light-weight and the metadata structure is well designed.

 

[Vitaly2017]

From a data preservation stand point, a compressed FLAC file is going to be exact lossless bit perfect copy of WAVE if you extract/convert the FLAC back to WAVE.

when it comes to real-time playback of FLAC file on an audio system, it’s going to incur more performance penalties vs WAVE file playback, there are probably some Software engineering workarounds(like decoding entire flac file to system memory as raw PCM data and do direct data streaming to DAC).

However this kind of workarounds do not work practically in a portable environment like in a Walkman which needs to reduce battery load and limit cpu/memory usage, so the Walkman has to do decoding of the flac file in a sequential portion by portion manner which induces more bursty like periodic cpu & memory I/O usage and power draw. This will likely impact sound quality slightly due to additional incurred periodic cpu/ram generated electrical noise and power draw during decoding/playback process.


You can always set FLAC compression to lvl 0 which means it’s basically an uncompressed pcm wave stream but with album art and editable track information. This is the closest to a WAVE file in terms of the system utilisation during playback.

I think this firmware engineer has the Flac vs Wave phenomenal explained in the most understandable manner:

https://www.audioshark.org/computer...uality-difference-between-flac-wav-15491.html

I hear something weird in lossless audio as they call it it may not lose sound but FLAC sometimes sound weird to me maybe we are so acustomed to mp3 than when you hear flac it sounds like volume its too much... if someone knows what i mean... DSD on the other side I loved on my walkman maybe its recording and has nothing to do with the format.... but noone can explain...

Most people won’t notice or can live with the very slight differences.

However there exist people with Golden Tiger Ears that can hear 4x better!!! X-men audiophiles

Thank you for you support guys and it is indeed true what @Sonywalkmanuser explained about the flac vs wav have a higher impact in sq perception flac vs wav in pc then on the Walkman. I once did the experiment and I could feel a more prominent difference in wav sounding better then flac on pc.

On Walkman its almost unnoticeable as I presume its a dedicated music player and it been optimized as max possible for highest sq performance! So that make sense!

But @morgenstern09 keeps arguing with and looking into everyway to prove I am wrong lol. Hey there is a difference between flac and wav it will always be there and to hear it you need very particular circumstances and mind set and of course your gear matters!
Worse the gear easier is to spot it with ToTL iems.... or headphones.

I will admit I had flacs I converted them back to wav and what I feel is that. Flac files seems to act really like zip files to music data and when converted back to wav and flac and vis versa it seems to hold its same data value!

But by all means I still find the wav to offer best performance what ever is the playback circumstances!
Wav has no compression in its way its playing the music file directly without the hassle of going threw the uncompression process.

Believe me or not is your choise!
I think @morgenstern09 keep trying to correct me as because he believes that I falsely claim flac physically degrading the sound quality of the music. But I think it is not. I think its the compression that flac has to go threw that degrades a layer of purness of the sound quality.
It does sound better in wav even flacs that I convert back to wav still seems to offer a better sense and perception of the music.



So I hope you understand my point of view better @morgenstern09 flac is lossless compression yes but I will repeat again that word 3 times that I HATE


compression compression compression! That is the problem!

 

[515164]

I think @morgenstern09 keep trying to correct me as because he believes that I falsely claim flac physically degrading the sound quality of the music.

No man, come on...

You were saying that FLAC encoding is lossy, which is not true, and then you came up with this "voids" being "deleted", lol. This is not how compression of data works. That's all.

I'm not here to prove you wrong, I am just mentioning that some stuff you say is not true. If nobody would correct a false claim, then other people may think it's true as well.

 

[normie610]

So I hope you understand my point of view better flac is lossless compression yes but I will repeat again that word 3 times that I HATE


compression compression compression! That is the problem!

And you hate lossless compression because it sounds worse to you than wav?

 

[Vitaly2017]

No man, come on...

You were saying that FLAC encoding is lossy, which is not true, and then you came up with this "voids" being "deleted", lol. This is not how compression of data works. That's all.

I'm not here to prove you wrong, I am just mentioning that some stuff you say is not true. If nobody would correct a false claim, then other people may think it's true as well.

Well I tell you a secret lol the black voids being deleted and lost is an idea that my friend said I simply used it. Yea it may be perceived as lossy conversion but it is not what I meant !
Hey after all we are here for friendly discussions and I didnt think that my words could be used against me lmao.

So lets agree flac is a lossless compression everyone ! We all agree and the decompression process is what Tiger Ears hate and disagrees with Ok people

I see compression like disabling direct sources in walkman menu.

I always use direct source! So for me wav is a sort of a direct source thing in a way....


I think what I am saying is totally credible and make sense no?

 

[515164]

I think what I am saying is totally credible and make sense no?

It could make sense. However, it would affect the sound in a very small proportion.

One thing that I can't get out of my mind is that at first you were thinking that it's not a lossless compression, and that was your reason that you don't use FLAC files. After some discussions where we cleared out that nothing is actually lost, then you started with this other reason, that the decompression process produces noise that you can perceive. To me this sounds a little like some bias, and you just try finding reasons to justify why you don't use FLAC files.

Just my 2 cents. I don't really care about FLAC vs WAV as I already have my choice, I just didn't want to have false info here.

Cheers!

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

End of the day it's your own choice on how you as an audiophile/walkman user wish to store your files.

It's good to have a friendly discussion where we are able to exchange opinions or differing information to the topic that relates to our walkman.

In my opinion:

If you need extra space then flac is definitely a good format to store more music.

If you can hear a difference, and you have the excess storage space to spare, then go for wave format for your most precious PCM based music.

Or you can even convert to lossy AAC files if you think it's audiblly transparent enough for you.

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

With regards to Direct Source On, Direct Source Off with all DSP off and DSP modes:


Depending on my mood and music playing, sometimes I prefer to use DSP and sometimes I like to use Direct Source mode.

Take for example when listening to old songs, for example the band Eagles, I like to use vinyl processor surface noise so that the music from the walkman sounded more like it is coming from a cassette tape Walkman player rather than a hi res digital player. It brought back the familar hisser/noiser sound that I used to listen when younger.

Also sometimes I feel DSEE HX AI on the zx507 can help add ambience to the live music while there are other music recordings which I feel sounded better with direct source mode ON.

Same thing with DC phase Linearizer, some music I prefer to have it switched off but there are many music which sounded better with it on. My taste for bass changed with my mood, so sometimes I prefer a stronger bass setting and sometimes I like lower bass on the same music track.

So in my opinion, it's good that Sony has included so many DSP and switches that allow us to select what best suits us at the moment of listening.