ralphpnj wrote: > By moving all equipment evaluation into the world of opinion, i.e. this > piece of equipment sounds better than that piece of equipment, all the > evaluations become equally valid and thus beyond criticism. In other > words, all the evaluations are equally pointless. It's needn't be all or nothing. Some evaluations are naturally opinion and some are better presented as facts (e.g. measurements, presented with the test conditions)
> In the case of sound of wav files versus flac files there are NO > differences but there appears to be many opinions stating that wav files > sound "better" than flac files. So what Julf is rightly asking is how is > that "better" evaluation being determined since from a purely objective > standpoint there are NO differences between the two files. With "well-designed" equipment, since the decoded FLAC and WAV are bit-identical, the sound "should" be the same. But not all equipment is "well-designed" and even anecdotal measures by Archimago (on his system) w.r.t. CPU/GPU load influences on sound, there is no guarantee that it is generally applicable. (Even if it is likely that it is). So what can be compared with sighted listening is: FLAC>a system>biasFLAC -_vs._- WAV>a system>biasWAV. Although a person comparing the files with ABX may get a better, unbiased result, it comes at the cost of extra hassle, and several potential pitfalls. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ docbob's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=64780 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=104227 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
