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In Reply to: deja vu all over again :-) posted by Archimago on January 11, 2012 at 17:55:22:
I always use cPlay to play my FLAC files. Here the extra processing manifests as a slight delay when loading a playlist. The FLAC processing for the first track is (usually) completed before any music plays so there is no degradation. On most tracks there is no further FLAC processing until the next track begins, at which point there will be FLAC processing for a second or so, but here there is usually no music, so again there is no potential degradation of sound quality.
For long tracks (or average length tracks at hi-res) cPlay sometimes breaks a track into multiple loads, so midway through a track it may decide to load another chunk. There will be a brief period while the processor is running at a high load, and there could be audible degradation. However, I've not heard it. There are several possible explanations why I don't hear this, one being that the effect is smaller than my ability to hear it, another being that the effect comes in steady bursts, so there is no cyclic load causing periodic jitter at an audible frequency, and finally that the usual effect of jitter, degradation of sound stage, is not perceived for brief periods as the mind has already "locked in" the mental illusion during the 99.5% of the time there is no FLAC processing.
When I play music with my editing programs I always convert FLACs to WAV. Soundforge 9 used to have problems editing FLAC files, the GUI got missynced from the audio samples, so I got in the habit of always editing WAV files. I believe this was fixed in Soundforge 10, but I don't like the idea of editing my archival files so making a copy that includes a conversion is an extra step that's a good idea. iZotope RX 2 Advanced does not support FLAC files so the question does not arise.
If I am doing audiophile tests for sound quality, I always convert files to WAV, not because I believe this results in better sound, but reducing the number of formats being compared is a basic matter of good experimentation: reduce the number of possible confounding variables. Doing experimentation is not the main reason why I play recordings, however. :-)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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Follow Ups
- RE: deja vu all over again :-) - Tony Lauck 07:52:18 01/12/12 (1)
- RE: deja vu all over again :-) - Bob_C 13:04:18 01/12/12 (0)
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