Best FLAC converter software

[sandyk]

On 11/5/2020 at 4:00 PM, cappo said:

If you take an album in FLAC (or APE) and convert it to WAV using 5 different converters you will find that all 5 newly created WAV-versions of your album sound different. What the heck is going on here? Why do they sound different!? There are many dozens of converters out there that can do the job. I don't have the time to go through them all to find the best for the job. So, the point of this thread is to cross-fertilize, collect member feedback and come up with a list of top-three converters out there.

So my question goes to all those addicted to best: what is your favorite FLAC-to-WAV converter?

Cappo

What we first need to confirm is that after conversion to .wav files that all of the resulting .wav files have the same checksums. To do this you can use free software for Windows such as ExactFile.  I normally use SHA256 for this these days as .md5 may be capable of being fooled on occasions.

 I have 2 files in the same folder, one of which was copied directly to K:/New Folder in a USB memory stick from Videos and renamed with USB, and the other which was copied first from Videos to my "I'' HDD, then to the New Folder on USB.  

 The same method applies to both Digital Audio and Video files.

 

I agree that although the checksums may say that they are identical, that they can however sound different even though all of your different converters show the same result, as they should.

 However, the owner of the Forum and the qualified E.Es and S/W people will insist that you are imagining the differences if the checksums are the same. 😉

P.S. 

 I mainly use Foobar 2000 for the conversions from .flac to .wav

 

Click on the image until you get a larger image.

Alex. 

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

This is where I would do a set of experiments, where I could guarantee that each output WAV is stored absolutely exactly the same way, down to the last byte, for each one file - and see if I could still hear differences ...

 

 You have already done this with  3 comparison Audio files that I sent you where you reported hearing differences between all 3 

(TOTO-Africa) 

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, cappo said:

In other words, nobody cares about superior WAV and everybody continues to listen to their inferior FLACs?

 

If that is indeed the case, then, it appears, that I'm in the wrong place with my questions. I erroneously thought that this was the forum where addicted-to-best audiophiles share, help and learn from each other...

 I always convert .flac files to ..wav before playing them because they sound better. 

However, I have found that as I further improve the PSU and Earthing of the PC that the differences between them  are less than previously.

[sandyk]

15 minutes ago, cappo said:

Here are 3 versions of Diana Krall's Live in Paris Album converted into WAV by:

AIMP Converter, Audio Transcoder and Xrecoder respectively. Listen and hear for yourself - all sound different while all are stored identically and all checksums are identical too:

https://fex.net/ru/s/9n7xpsy

Cappo

 I won't even bother listening to them as I do not need convincing .

If you check MY PROFILE you will even find some comparison Music Videos where if your gear (including your PC's monitor, NOT a typical Laptop, but an external monitor) is good enough, you can both see and hear the differences at the same time . See also MY Signature (below)

Alex

 

 P.S. 

 I suspect that this thread will soon be removed by Admin due to someone complaining 😉

 I have never discussed any of this previously with you before either, in case somebody suggests we are in collusion

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, sandyk said:

https://fex.net/ru/s/9n7xpsy

 

cappo 

Re this link. You would need to translate this page for most members

[sandyk]

32 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

Guys, there is nothing wrong about your desire to sell or to promote the sales - it is quite understandable. But the way you do it makes me laugh. Thank you for fun😀

 

Just like in the USA at the moment , the Jury still appears to be out, although I completely understand Chris's scepticism .

We see heaps of products being recommended in other areas of the forum, but that doesn't necessarily mean the posters are affiliated with the manufacturer.

 It's not as if there is likely to be a huge number of members purchasing products from European websites where you don't even know which button is which. 😄

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, Vlodzimierz said:

 

I am very much surprised by your nationalistic inclinations. I have personally used AudioQuest USA cable products for 26 years. Acoustics of the Danish company Dynaudio, German amplifier, Japanese turntable, top-end Denon. Surge protectors of the British company Isol-8 Teknologies. And no nationalism! Do you all use only devices made in your own country? Well, then you have to listen to Music exclusively from your composers and performers! I'm ashamed for you.

I am not nationalistic, and I am from Australia where we have to import from worldwide 

 I did check out the link provided earlier but without a translation I wouldn't have even known which button to press.

 My apologies for attempting to try and draw the heat out of this thread which could have resulted in it being

prematurely closed.

Feel free to contact Cappo via a PM and ask him if I am as you believe me to be.

Yes,  I am interested in any S/W that may (or may not)  perform better  .flac conversions than the designed by a committee Foobar 2000 or the .flac front end which doesn't work with Windows 10/64.

 

 BTW, the use of large letters is perceived as SHOUTING and doesn't do your cause any good..

 

 

[sandyk]

5 hours ago, davide256 said:

When using dbPoweramp to rip, there are multiple options/levels of flac encoding even for lossless. As to ripping WAV to FLAC, that begs the question of

why one would compound conversion limits instead of ripping direct from source CD/SACD, etc. I long ago abandoned WAV because it had poor capabilities

for library information and reripped all to FLAC lossless from CD then. Too much pain in editing meta data after a batch WAV to FLAC conversion.

Just because you personally, are unable to hear the differences between .flac and .wav doesn't mean that numerous other members are unable to as many have previously reported, and just like the OP and  Vlodzimierz  has reported here also .

However, if the artwork is more important to you than sound quality, then stick with .flac

 

BTW, this discussion isn't about converting FROM .wav. It's about converting from .flac and .ape TO .wav as per the initial post in the thread. Given that many companies provide their Downloads in .flac format mainly to save bandwidth ,it should hardly be surprising that they want the best sounding conversion to .wav possible.
 

[sandyk]

17 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

And now I am looking forward to hear your expert analysis of the results of the conversion from flac to wav with the help of the fabulous, and not expensive at all app already mentioned above. Please!

Please keep your sarcasm to yourself, and unless you have anything of value to report in this clearly SUBJECTIVE type thread, please refrain from deliberately trying to disrupt it and force it's closure, as well as the banning of both new members without first giving them the benefit of the doubt.

It should also be clear that there are language barriers here too.

 

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, robocop said:

Xxhighend is the best flac to Wave software I use. It converts all flac files to Wave ready for playback. It is a playback software not a stand alone for conversions.

 

Personally I rip all CD's to Wave and purchase all music in Wave where possible, otherwise its flac. I have db poweramp, Xrecode and EAC.

 

In comparing these three I prefer EAC for CD rips, Xrecode for conversions and turning single file ripped albums into individual tracks, and Dvd Audio Extractor for ripping audio from Dvd's and blueray's. I've compared Xrecode to dbpoweramp for conversions and Xrecode wins by a small margin. I avoid any other file types unless its all I have to work with. 

 

Robert

 Thanks Robert.

 I will give Xrecode a try against Foobar 2000.

 

Alex

[sandyk]

2 hours ago, cappo said:

Yesterday I spent several hours comparing Xrecode with Audio Transcoder. Both are good and very similar but Audio Transcoder gives a much more accurate and articulate bass.

As I said I would, I did try Xrecoder with W10/64 , but it failed to process the first .flac  file that I tried it on. 

As it is also a trial version of a paid S/W I decided it wasn't worth the trouble or expense of investigating further, as Foobar 2000 is Freeware and easy to use, so I removed the program again.

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, bogi said:

Looking forward for your explanations.

Other than the attached , I will not be going further with this in this thread as it has been done to death numerous times already, and Chris will not permit it all to be posted yet again.

The attached is from the 6th separate , and CORRECTLY performed session of DBTs, each with 8 repeats in each, for a total of 48 out of 48 POSITIVE results, performed by E.E. Martin Colloms from Hi Fi Critic, as well as being  past editor of Hi Fi News and Record Review.

 I supplied pairs of comparison .wav files via the Internet of tracks from Dire Straits-Love Over Gold for the purpose. 

 

 Among the now many members who have now verified my findings are E.E. George Graves. Paul Raulerson. Peter St.  manishander, acg (Anthony) .fas42 . 

Recording and Mastering Engineer Barry Diament has also verified my findings via comparison CD-Rs sent to him.

 

IF you require further info please use PMs, or better still, use the SEARCH facility.

 If you have a decent external monitor, you will also find comparison Music VIDEOS in MY Profile where if your gear is good enough you should be able to both SEE and HEAR differences at the same time.

BTW, both of the new members in this thread have come to the same conclusions INDEPENDENTLY

 

[sandyk]

9 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

Why give other people's names in support of what you consider to be a purely subjective? Does the subjective needs something else besides itself? Is nothing enough? Know the truth and truth will set you free.

 IGNORED .

Are you by any chance related to Ralf11 ?

[sandyk]

32 minutes ago, robocop said:

My idea is first never having to convert anything from original is best in my book.

 Agreed.

[sandyk]

43 minutes ago, bogi said:

Like 2 CDs burned at different burning speeds.  CD player can then produce different noise pattern when reading one CD and the other, although the bits are the same.

Care to explain how adjoining pairs of .wav files on the same CD-R can also sound different, just like they did before being burned to CD-R, even though the order of each file in the pair on the CD was deliberately  varied in a manner purposely not known to the recipient ? This was done with a series of CD-Rs sent to Martin Colloms in the U.K. at a later date.

 (report is available via PM if requested)

 You may be able to use an Electron Microscope to see the differences though ???

[sandyk]

Incidentally, some prefer the resulting SQ from the use of Monkey's Audio (.ape) over .flac

 .ape format was developed by Matt Ashland from JRiver

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, bogi said:

Eventually I can listen to files sandyk is pointing to.

It may be easier to SEE the differences with files such as "Aurora Conqueror" even directly from Dropbox ,if you have a decent external monitor, although they could also be downloaded to USB memory and played using an Oppo 103 etc. into your HDTV

Perhaps even directly from the USB  port of some HD TVs ?

[sandyk]

43 minutes ago, copy_of_a said:

As far as the conversion software goes... take one that works as supposed to and call it a day 😊

Also a non-issue ...

 

 You must live in a perfect P.C. world where the quality of the PSU and earthing of the source doesn't matter as long as it spews out the correct 1s and 0s

 

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/60381-hdd-to-case-bonding-uptick-in-sq/?tab=comments#comment-1084599

 

[sandyk]

14 minutes ago, copy_of_a said:

Sure. You‘ll find a lot of nonsense on audiophile forums.😜

 If the OP hadn't been banned as a result of him losing his cool ,because of the attacks from members such as yourself and AnotherSpin, he would have been in the position as the OP to request that as this is clearly  a Subjective, NOT Objective thread,  that comments like your would have been removed , and not have been permitted.as they inevitably lead to the closure of threads which is their clear intention.

 This is exactly the kind of disruptive behaviour that saw quite a few members either banned or move to A.S.R.

[sandyk]

29 minutes ago, miguelito said:

I don't understand... Isn't FLAC lossless? In which case, doesn't that mean that the data should be exactly recovered - other than possibly metadata (which can be incorporated in WAV) the files should be bits for bit identical. Is this not the case? Why?

 

Notice I am not a "bits is bits" person. In this particular case you aren't comparing FLAC and WAV as you play, but doing math to get from FLAC to WAV... Unless there is something inherently complex about whatever compression happens in FLAC, this makes no sense to me.

 

BTW... This possibly means that WAV to FLAC is not all that reliable. 

 The perceived audible differences are not normally huge, but both .ape and .flac S/W  perform as intended without conversion errors , and the differences appear to be mainly due to electrical noise in the PC/Server which is capable of further improvement in many cases.

[sandyk]

42 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

Did you try the app aggressively promoted here by OP? Can you share your impressions about results?

The results of the only other S/W I tried were posted 23 hours ago on page 2

[sandyk]

12 minutes ago, Vlodzimierz said:

And this is instead of just trying to listen to music from Wav files and compare with the sound of Flac.

  

 I have been saying for many years here that I always convert .flac files to .wav files for serious listening and always prefer .wav over the original .flac files where they were supplied in that format from Linn Records and HDTracks etc. and then converted to .wav files.

[sandyk]

19 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

The stored data is present as charges (or in case of optical disk, the equivalent in light waves). The way these are written and the surrounding noise patterns during the operation might decide what the internal structure/distribution of this is inside the storage media. When reading back, it could cause a different noise pattern joining the required signal.

 This is undoubtedly the main reason behind why BluSpec and SHM formats can sound quite different to normal RBCD , and  due to improved readabilty.

I did purchase 3 sets of Sony Blu Spec comparisons several years back and had no trouble clearly hearing the improvement of the BluSpec format under non sighted conditions. 

 

Incidentally, recently I have been backing up many of my favourite RBCD and High Res albums to 25GB BluRay discs, and perhaps due to the improved precision of the Optical head necessary for this format, they actually sound a little better than the original CD when played with my Oppo 103 into a higher quality DIY DAC 

 

[sandyk]

6 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

Also: it seems to me that when I first experimented with the converting FLAC into WAV ten years or so ago, the difference was more noticeable. Since then, linear power supply units were added at all critical points, better quality cables, and NAA have been added to the audio system. Now there is practically no difference. Probably, it could be concluded that in this case the efforts in the field of hardware proved to be more effective.

Isn't that exactly what I have been saying ? 😉

 

Even then I was able to get a further very worthwhile improvement recently by improving the PC's internal earthing as per the suggestions in this thread.

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/60381-hdd-to-case-bonding-uptick-in-sq/?tab=comments#comment-1084599

 

[sandyk]

48 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

I believe you were exactly saying that converting FLAC files to WAV makes sense, if I understood correctly.

I always convert .flac to.wav for serious listening, even with corrected and posted .flac files in John Dyson's PM group about feral Dolby-A encoded files.

 So why is it so inconceivable that the 2 banned posters were able to hear differences between .flac files converted to .wav using different types of S/W ?

 Each type of S/W would have it's own individual electrical noise profile that may not have been noticed if they had made further improvements to the PSU, cabling and earthing areas as you also appear to have done.

 

P.S.
 I also noted from the photos I saw from the OP that he had gone to a lot of trouble in the PSU area, although he may have made the common mistake of using too many low value parallel capacitors ,which could have had the effect of the output impedance of the PSU being considerably lower at 100kHz and higher, thus further accentuating any HF noise.