WAV vs. FLAC
Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2017 10:46 am
It seems like an eternity ago that I got my first MP3 player, a USB-stick-style thing made by Packard Bell. This device had a storage capacity of 256 Mb which is about enough space for about 5 music albums of heavily-compressed MP3 files. At the time I thought that was pretty cool.
What is MP3 then? Music is a waveform transmitted through the air. An LP preserves this waveform as physically shaped vinyl in a groove which is traced by a stylus and electrically amplified back into sound-waves: Analogue reproduction. The equivalent digital systems chop the sound-waves up into chunks which are stored as binary data on, for instance, a CD. This data is read by a light-beam and the 1's and 0's are used to reconstruct a sound-wave as close as possible to the original. Data on a CD is a format known as WAV. But WAV's use up a fair bit of memory-space and some clever boffins realised that you can take out quite a lot of the information from the music signal and still be able to reconstruct it enough to be recognisable - so an MP3 file of an 500 Mb CD-album might only need 50 Mb of disk-space. This was very important in the early 2000's as devices had restricted storage space and data-transmission was a fairly slow process.
As computer-based audio improved, you could hear that MP3 was not an optimal system - the music coming out as brittle and lifeless. Fine for some - but not for me. Ogg Vorbis, a similar system to MP3, was a little better (used by Spotify, I believe). Then I discoved 'Lossless' formats like FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec); now lossless systems don't remove any musical information but they 'fold' the signal into a smaller packet for storage and 'unfold' it when it is time for the music to be played. Having used FLAC (and the Apple version ALAC) for some years I have found it to be very satisfying in terms of audiophile playback.
Technology marches on and digital music becomes the standard for the audio industry as streaming services replace physical media. The CD is becoming extinct! Network players are now primary sources and how do they deal with different formats? Basically - the less work a digital processor has to do, the better the result will be. A recent discussion here on HFS got me thinking. It isn't so important to compress music files anymore as storage devices have vast amounts of space in relation to, say, 10 years ago. The bulk of my CD collection is held as FLAC files - but would they sound better as uncompressed WAV's. Time for an experiment.
Being in a manic Tangerine Dream phase I re-ripped my 'Hyperborea' CD to WAV without applying any data compression and lined it up to compare against the FLAC file already on the NAS. This is a personal favourite test album, especially the opening track 'No Man's Land' which contains a lot of stereo effects, dynamics and subtle detail. This through the Pi/Allo DigiOne processor and Musette non-oversampling DAC.
What I wasn't expecting was a dramatic difference in audio quality - but the results were obvious. WAV reproduction is fuller, richer, rounder and more clear. FLAC - although very detailed, takes a lot of the 'body' away and the soundstage is less realistic. You can almost feel the processing chips relaxing as they don't have to do so much work - just assemble the data into the correct order and hey, presto! Music!
Next test will be to see if I can save myself a lot of bother by just converting the FLAC files I already have back into WAV's - but will they sound the same? For a lot of music it won't matter too much - but for favourites it looks like the only way is WAV.
Work to do (again).
What is MP3 then? Music is a waveform transmitted through the air. An LP preserves this waveform as physically shaped vinyl in a groove which is traced by a stylus and electrically amplified back into sound-waves: Analogue reproduction. The equivalent digital systems chop the sound-waves up into chunks which are stored as binary data on, for instance, a CD. This data is read by a light-beam and the 1's and 0's are used to reconstruct a sound-wave as close as possible to the original. Data on a CD is a format known as WAV. But WAV's use up a fair bit of memory-space and some clever boffins realised that you can take out quite a lot of the information from the music signal and still be able to reconstruct it enough to be recognisable - so an MP3 file of an 500 Mb CD-album might only need 50 Mb of disk-space. This was very important in the early 2000's as devices had restricted storage space and data-transmission was a fairly slow process.
As computer-based audio improved, you could hear that MP3 was not an optimal system - the music coming out as brittle and lifeless. Fine for some - but not for me. Ogg Vorbis, a similar system to MP3, was a little better (used by Spotify, I believe). Then I discoved 'Lossless' formats like FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec); now lossless systems don't remove any musical information but they 'fold' the signal into a smaller packet for storage and 'unfold' it when it is time for the music to be played. Having used FLAC (and the Apple version ALAC) for some years I have found it to be very satisfying in terms of audiophile playback.
Technology marches on and digital music becomes the standard for the audio industry as streaming services replace physical media. The CD is becoming extinct! Network players are now primary sources and how do they deal with different formats? Basically - the less work a digital processor has to do, the better the result will be. A recent discussion here on HFS got me thinking. It isn't so important to compress music files anymore as storage devices have vast amounts of space in relation to, say, 10 years ago. The bulk of my CD collection is held as FLAC files - but would they sound better as uncompressed WAV's. Time for an experiment.
Being in a manic Tangerine Dream phase I re-ripped my 'Hyperborea' CD to WAV without applying any data compression and lined it up to compare against the FLAC file already on the NAS. This is a personal favourite test album, especially the opening track 'No Man's Land' which contains a lot of stereo effects, dynamics and subtle detail. This through the Pi/Allo DigiOne processor and Musette non-oversampling DAC.
What I wasn't expecting was a dramatic difference in audio quality - but the results were obvious. WAV reproduction is fuller, richer, rounder and more clear. FLAC - although very detailed, takes a lot of the 'body' away and the soundstage is less realistic. You can almost feel the processing chips relaxing as they don't have to do so much work - just assemble the data into the correct order and hey, presto! Music!
Next test will be to see if I can save myself a lot of bother by just converting the FLAC files I already have back into WAV's - but will they sound the same? For a lot of music it won't matter too much - but for favourites it looks like the only way is WAV.
Work to do (again).
