After extensive Blind Testing of streamed FLAC vs WAV (documented elsewhere) USING AN EXTERNAL DAC with an SB3 I found no (zero) difference in resultant sound quality. I'm quite happy for your mileage to vary, I'm just reporting my findings. Personally this is a dead line of enquiry. The digital output is audibly and visually (on a good scope) identical to me.
The final nail in the coffin is that WAV as a storage format has no worthwhile tagging. So storing the data as FLAC (or equivalent) is the only sensible option. For wireless transmission, server side decoding to WAV makes no sense from a network data bandwidth point-of-view. I can't hear ANY difference between streamed WAV vs streamed FLAC. I have some of the Linn masters and they sound great. They sound great downsampled to 48/24. They don't sound any different to me at 88.2 (or 96) / 24. I know you won't agree, but IMHO SACD just isn't that much better to enough people to make it a commercial success. Personally, if the Red Book standard had been 44.1/24, I don't think we would have ever gone to the "higher resolution" formats. -- Phil Leigh You want to see the signal path BEFORE it gets onto a CD/vinyl...it ain't what you'd call minimal...SB3+Stontronics PSU - Altmann JISCO/UPCI - TACT RCS 2.2X with Good Vibrations S/W - MF X-DAC V3/X-PSU/X-10 buffer (Audiocomm full mods)- Linn 5103 - Linn Aktiv 5.1 system (6x LK140's, ESPEK/TRIKAN/KATAN/SEIZMIK 10.5), Townsend Supertweeters, Kimber & Chord cables ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phil Leigh's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=85 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=45839 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
