Flac to audio cd vs WAV

[Deleted member 45006]

I recently noticed that when I wrote a CD converting it to an Audio CD using Burn app on my Macbookpro the songs with 918 Kbps (FLAC) were playing too slow on my CD player , were as some files which were more than 1000 Kbps were playing normal , should an issue with the app I use I guess? Someone had issues of the same kind? Is there any app usable in mac which would convert and write ? FLAC OR WAV which is better?

 

[prepress]

Bit rate shouldn't effect on the speed (duration) of the song, but it can sound different than source quality. Please check same burned ACD in other audio players. For Mac I am using Toast Titanium to burn CDs.

Wave is better than FLAC (because that is the raw format on ACD) but FLAC sounds almost same as wave but mostly people use FLAC because there is not much (difficult to notice) difference between WAVE and FLAC but file size. I would suggest to use WAVE (1411kbps, 16 Bit) and burn ACDs from WAVE.

I recently noticed that when I wrote a CD converting it to an Audio CD using Burn app on my Macbookpro the songs with 918 Kbps (FLAC) were playing too slow on my CD player , were as some files which were more than 1000 Kbps were playing normal , should an issue with the app I use I guess? Someone had issues of the same kind? Is there any app usable in mac which would convert and write ? FLAC OR WAV which is better?

 

[Deleted member 45006]

Is that a paid software? I found out the reason , had 918 and 1141 songs mixed up in the same cd and the burn app expected FLAC to have more than 1000 Kbps , so only those songs are playing slow on the player.. Thank a lot prepress ..

 

[Deleted member 45006]

I heard the difference later today , tried FLAC to ACD and WAV to ACD for the same song and the former is missing something ...

 

[prepress]

I use Adobe Audition CS6 and Sony Sound Forge to create WAVE from ACD (and all other audio solutions), and sometimes Exact Audio Copy. You can get EAC for free but not sure if it is available for MAC OS. All others are paid (for PC and Mac both) but there are many free applications to do the same thing.

I heard the difference later today , tried FLAC to ACD and WAV to ACD for the same song and the former is missing something ...

 

[Deleted member 45006]

Mm, for me the other way only matters , I listen mostly from the CD player , so my interest are always around something to convert those files which I downloaded to an ACD , sometimes u won't get the stuff that u want at your local store, and by the time my online purchase reach my home , I would have already lost the interest on it..

 

[prepress]

If you purchase online music as MP3 (320kbps) then there is no use to burn ACDs from them, that will not improve the SQ, that is different thing your player doesn't support MP3 format and you want to listen them in your player.
FYI I don't use CD player, I convert my all CDs as wave and sync them with my iPOD to get same quality.

 

[Deleted member 45006]

You got me wrong I meant purchasing audio cd's online , my CD player is an old one and it doesn't play mp3's (I don't want it to play either ) .. I too use to listen the same way on my iPod but its space consuming .. Ipods were good when they had those wolfson in them

 

[prepress]

OK, as the mostly music shops owners decided to close/wind up their business even I am purchasing online ACDs but they don't have required titles in stock. In early 2000's I was using iPOD 60GB Classic which had wolfson, but after few years I updated that to 120GB Classic due to space issues and I immediately noticed a huge change in sound quality, SQ was flat, melody was gone. I was worried what should I do now, so used that for few months and last December again purchased new 160GB Classic and thought that new iPOD should have Wolfson but no luck, it has Cirrus too But still using it because of huge space, easy to use and mobility.

You got me wrong I meant purchasing audio cd's online , my CD player is an old one and it doesn't play mp3's (I don't want it to play either ) .. I too use to listen the same way on my iPod but its space consuming .. Ipods were good when they had those wolfson in them

 

[Deleted member 45006]

I miss my old iPod mini which I which was sonically great, had a chance to listen to the latest iPod shuffle? The square one, was using it with Bose ie2 for a year, know Bose is not great , but after burning hours this was a good combination to me, had owned the older Shuffle also, but I felt cirrus logic improved their systems in a good way..

 

[IndianEars]

My 2 cents on this :

1. The WAV format is not identical to the digital data on the CD. It is almost identical. I think he 1st 4 bits in the Wav file header are to be changed to 0000 to convert it to the CD file format. hence, atleast theoritically, you are likely to get better results burning a CD from a Wav file rather than a FLAC file.

2. FLAC Files are half the file size.

3. FLAC Files also have the advantage that you can embed details of the song (Artist, Song Name, etc and even the album art into the Flac file. This is not possible in a wav file.

4. There seems to be a general emerging consensus that WAV files sound superior to FLAC File. I personally concur with this.

5. There are TONS of software that will convert file formats... including Flac to wav or visa versa. However, some software are supposed to do a better sounding job than others ( dB Power Amp for Windows... which is a paid software but offers a 21 days free trial ).

 

[prepress]

Yes, many people says the Cirrus is better and more accurate than Wolfson, but many says (even me) Wolfson was better. Now I am familiar with Cirrus and found it's not too bad, but Wolfson is Wolfson

I miss my old iPod mini which I which was sonically great, had a chance to listen to the latest iPod shuffle? The square one, was using it with Bose ie2 for a year, know Bose is not great , but after burning hours this was a good combination to me, had owned the older Shuffle also, but I felt cirrus logic improved their systems in a good way..

 

[prepress]

No, we can add all things in wave like other formats. I use iTunes to add all the info and it works well. Only the drawback is we have to add the info after adding the album/song in the iTunes library and we are done. But once we remove the song from iTunes Library the embedded info will be lost and have to do it again when adding that album again in iTunes again.

FLAC Files also have the advantage that you can embed details of the song (Artist, Song Name, etc and even the album art into the Flac file. This is not possible in a wav file.

 

[Deleted member 45006]

When you copy a file to iPod which is WAV so, it doesn't transcode to AAC ?i never tried playing a WAV on an iPod ?

 

[prepress]

No, it Syncs wave without creating the AAC.
Do you use "Copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library" option?

When you copy a file to iPod which is WAV so, it doesn't transcode to AAC ?i never tried playing a WAV on an iPod ?

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

A couple of cents more

1. The WAV format is not identical to the digital data on the CD. It is almost identical. I think he 1st 4 bits in the Wav file header are to be changed to 0000 to convert it to the CD file format. hence, atleast theoritically, you are likely to get better results burning a CD from a Wav file rather than a FLAC file.

I disagree with the theory. Whilst it is not impossible, there is no reason that a difference in a header file would make any difference to the audio data. I don't know anything about those header files, but it is quite likely that much of the metadata is quite irrelevant to the sound.

Lets take a fictional example. Imagine that an audio file format included the date of the encoding in its header file. Compressing it on one day, and uncompressing it on another could never lead to a binary-identical result. but we could not suggest that that this would affect the actual sound.

Are there any references for CD/WAV/CD tests? That would be interesting --- especially if it proved me wrong :lol:

4. There seems to be a general emerging consensus that WAV files sound superior to FLAC File. I personally concur with this.

I think that we have a natural tendency to avoid multiple changes. We treat them with suspicion, like seeing multiple convertors of varied quality in an interconnect. There may be times that the suspicion is justified.

Compression and uncompression is mature computer technology belonging to the same branch of study as encryption. Both compression/uncompression and encryption/decryption must work flawlessly. Any tendency to error means that the method is entirely broken and useless. Unlike lossy compression, which could be good, bad or indifferent, lossless compression can only be success or failure. There is no it'll do!

There is some space left to argue about system load and decompression whilst playing. Much harder to be dogmatic here, although I personally don't think it signifies.

5. There are TONS of software that will convert file formats... including Flac to wav or visa versa. However, some software are supposed to do a better sounding job than others

Again, it is a success or fail, without any degrees in-between.

Lossy compression has many degrees, with some MP3 conversions being, apparently, quite bad, but lossless must be 100% If there is a difference in the sound when playing, then something else is going on.

I have specifically talked in terms of data, because, at this level, we are dealing with data not music.

 

[Santy]

3. FLAC Files also have the advantage that you can embed details of the song (Artist, Song Name, etc and even the album art into the Flac file. This is not possible in a wav file.

Metadata with all above information can be embedded in WAV files.

 

[IndianEars]

prepress said

Re: Flac to audio cd vs WAV
No, we can add all things in wave like other formats. I use iTunes to add all the info and it works well. Only the drawback is we have to add the info after adding the album/song in the iTunes library and we are done. But once we remove the song from iTunes Library the embedded info will be lost and have to do it again when adding that album again in iTunes again.

Hi Prepress. What you have experienced actually reinforces what i said.

The additional info is NOT stored in the Wav file by iTunes, but saved separately by iTunes and linked to the orinal wav file thru an iTunes specific link. Hence when you take the Wav file outside iTunes .... Poof ! its all gone.

In a Flac file with properly embedded meta data, you can E-mail or download the FLAC file and when its opend after downloading by the new user, he still has all the metadata including the Album Art.

 

[IndianEars]

Santy Said:

Metadata with all above information can be embedded in WAV files.

I have read that somewhere ( there is Tons of info on the net, not all of it true ....):sad:

But I have still to see a Wav File with metadata in it.

 

[IndianEars]

Hi Thad,

Thanks for your long and detailed revert on my post. My feedback:

Thad said:
there is no reason that a difference in a header file would make any difference to the audio data.

Actuallly you have got me wrong. What I was saying is that the WAV ( NOT Flac) file is closest to the CDDA (Compact Disc Digital Audio) format on a red Book (standard) CD.

Hence the computer will be expending LESS Horsepower when converting a Wav to CDDA file on the fly while its also simultaneously burning a CD. Chances of an error free write for Wav to CDDA are arguably better than taking a FLAC File, and having to convert it on the fly in real time to CDDA while simultaneously burning a audio CD.

I Did NOT say that the Wav file will sound better / worse than a CDDA file.

Thad said:

Are there any references for CD/WAV/CD tests? That would be interesting

A blank CDR costs less than Rs 10.

We can experiment for ourselves... Burn 2 CDs, one Flac to the Audio CD

and the other WAV to audio CD.

Total cost of experiment = Rs 20 max.

If you dont hear a difference, Great. Just do what you find most convenient.

If you do hear a difference, then you could adopt that route in future.

YMMV depending on your Computer and audio system, Software, willingness / capability to hear, mood etc... etc.

All in all, win or loose....it will fuel our hobby.

Cheers