I) The “master” format, if such a thing exists, is the PCM stream. With those facts in hand, there are two things that can be asserted: This means metadata/tags, which codecs are used, how the different encoded streams should be written to disk, etc.
For example, how do you map the PCM representation into bits/bytes (big endian vs little endian, lossy/lossless/no compression), how multiple streams are interleaved, etc.įile formats for audio concern themselves on specifying how to store the encoded streams in a file container. It does not say anything about how these samples should be stored.Ĭodecs concern themselves on how these PCM streams should be encoded in a sequence of bits. PCM is just a format to represent audio samples.
In other words, your DAC can’t deal with anything else than PCM. There are no Digital-to-Analog converters that deal with “wav” or “flac” or “mp3.” DACs deal only with a very specific data encoding. With that being said, I’d like to clarify a few things before this thread turns into a flamewar: I do not have a “connaisseur”'s ear, and I’m pretty happy with my low bitrate MP3’s. You could probably automate the conversion procedure to check the MD5 once the file is converted, to make sure nothing is being changed.ĭisclaimer: I don’t have a horse in this race. rw-r-r- 1 root root 36595106 May 10 10:43 output12.flacīut the MD5 remained the same: $ ffmpeg -i output12.flac -f md5 - 2>/dev/null If you want to get more aggressive with your compression, something like this takes a lot more time (1m52s): ffmpeg -i input.wav -compression_level 12 -acodec flac output12.flac It took only 8 secs to convert that file. If both MD5 values are equal, then you are getting exactly the same bitstream, i.e., there can’t possibly be any difference since both bitstreams are literally identical once the flac is decompressed.īy the way, this kind of lossless conversion is pretty fast on the 5N. $ ffmpeg -i output.flac -f md5 - 2>/dev/null Then do something like this: $ ffmpeg -i input.wav -f md5 - 2>/dev/null Convert it to flac like this: $ ffmpeg -i input.wav -acodec flac output.flacĭrwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 10 10:30. Take one wav that you think is problematic when converted to flac.
If only we can find an easy way to keep our wav files and have NAS.įar from me to rain on anyone’s parade, but the “wav vs flac” argument is an extremely simple argument to settle. It is good to hear that there are still others out there like me, as far as wav is concerned. Not only is there room for all of us in music technology but the various “interests” actually end up making things better for all of us. Sometimes we go a bit overboard, but for me, I am more likely to under-invest and end up wanting something discernibly better. In general, we invest in our sound systems as much as we can afford and our ears can appreciate. I have posted questions about wav tags on several other forums and often gotten pretty negative reactions from people. With the relatively cheap prices for storage these days, it seems even less attractive to compress files. I know this is not common, but I would like to preserve the collection I have in the wav format. I am reluctant to change from wav files because I have often been able to tell the difference in double blind tests, especially with some classical music. Why use wav files if there are plenty of lossless file formats available?Īll my music collection is in FLAC (max data compression) and FLAC has very good tagging support and about 1/3 smaller files without any loss.I run my LMS on QNAP TS-119P II box - works fine. I’ve also searched info about running LMS on drobo 5N but so far no luck. I ended up with a folder with 30K files, alphabetically organized by file name, and no information about the music. I tried this with a QNAP NAS and it was able to play the music but not read any of the tags. I want to use the Logitech Media Server (formerly known as Squeezebox) to play wav files (and view their tags).ĭoes anyone do this and, if so, any issues with being able to read the tags? I am in the process of finalizing a decision to purchase a 5N.