AIFF Vs. WAV

[numlog]

This topic is pretty interesting, like the next level of 'bits are bits'. 

 

WAV does sound a bit better than FLAC , most can agree,  so I've been trying to improve the quality of FLAC files by converting to WAV.

I'm on server 2016 using HQ player, 96KHz PCM to DSD128.
Foobar was used, the software shouldnt matter for this kind of conversion.

The resulting wav sounded different, slightly softer highs and lighter bass, it was more pleasant to listen to but it felt like some clarity was lost and the change in bass was really odd... something seemed off

 

Next, using freac and dBpoweramp (with tagging disabled) yielded 2 more non-identical sounding wavs! these 2 feel like an improvement over the original flac, poweramp is better but freac is best.

afaict enabling tagging for poweramp didnt make a difference which is interesting, that could have explained why foobar sounded different.

 

Another thing was both these programs take a second or 2 to convert a track to WAV where as foobar was almost instant.

 

So converting FLAC to WAV can be good but the conversion process is imperfect, god knows why.