There is an insane (in my opinion) argument going on over at audioasylum.com that people can hear the difference between FLAC and WAV files when playing in Foobar2000 (and, they say, WAV sounds better because it is not compressed...yes, there have been countless arguments explaining that FLAC is lossless, trust me).

So I started up a thread asking people to try the ABX utility in Foobar2000 to finally prove whether or not anyone can actually hear a difference. But then someone pointed out that the ABX utility in Foobar2000 converts both files to WAV for testing purposes, which defeats the whole purpose of the comparison in the first place.

Is there any workaround for this "feature" in Foobar2000 to convert both test files to WAV? This feature seems to detract from the validity of ABX tests in Foobar2000, when one considers that many people argue that the software that is doing the conversion is having an affect during actual playback due to CPU resource usage or other factors (not my idea, just repeating what is being claimed).

You don't need a workaround. You need advice. Here's advice:

Don't bother arguing with people like this. You can ABX from now until the universe explodes and it will get you nowhere. People believe whatever they want to believe, and no amount of logic, rational thinking and carefully worded arguments you present is going to change that.

*head explodes*

No you can't work around this. You can't even listen to audio unless its converted to PCM first, and WAV is defacto standard for storing PCM on Windows.



People dense enough to argue about this should jump off a cliff.

http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/vt.mpl?f=pcaudio&m=20714

OH... MY... GOD!!

Ah, thanks for that link. I was going to have to go hunt it down but not now. I guess I don't see why people always have the argument that a lossless file sounds differently than a WAV file. They might sound different due to decoding issues or if you use different hardware. However, if things are done correctly (which is about 99% of the time), a lossless file will sound the same as a WAV file. Who cares if foobar2000 converts the files to WAV during playback. That shouldn't matter. The WAV file from the FLAC source will have the same sound quality as the FLAC file (which has the same sound quality as the other WAV file). You can convert a mp3 to WAV and that WAV will take up a lot more space but it will have the exact same sound quality as the source mp3. Quality will not be added to that WAV file. The same goes when going from FLAC to WAV, sound quality is not increased.

I guess I don't see what the big deal is anyway. Many lossless encoders like FLAC, WavPack, and especially Apple Lossless have gone through a lot of scrutiny and testing over the years. They are lossless. Period. Lossless is lossless.

Of course, lossless is lossless, but there are also valid points.

Apart from software bugs, flac could sound different, mainly due to higher cpu load:

- high load on system which could cause playback to stutter
- crappy soundcard which causes noise under high load

OTOH those claims are normally made by people with expensive setups where those problems should not occur.

Even on a 1GHz Pentium III, CPU load isn't a problem as long as it is paired with 256MB of RAM. The FLAC developers made sure that FLAC is very efficient. If the iPod can effectively playback FLAC files via RockBox then the average computer out there can more than handle it (unless it is a old Pentium II machine but that even has problems with Windows 98).

FLAC decodes in real time at about 20MHz. "high load" for a Gameboy maybe, but not a PC made in the last 15 years.

How about this one? (specifically, the replies to the referenced post) . The poster converted a WAV to FLAC, then back to WAV again, and even though the data of the final WAV is the same as the original WAV, he claims that the final WAV sounds worse! As if somehow the final WAV file "knows" that it once spent life (horrors!) as a FLAC file. I was speechless after finding out that this was really his view.

Maybe they will understand it if you reduce it to a first grade level. If the original Wav file is the same as the Final wave then they are the same. In other words 1 is equal to 1. If you say they sound different then you are saying 1 is not equal to 1. This is impossible.

This argument over at audioasylum is one of the stupidest arguments I have ever read..lol.

Don't go hang around audioasylum. That forum has that name for a reason.

Stay here. Where people with average IQ and up usually hang out.

OTOH there are plenty of people who believe that water that was once in contact with this kind of atom or that kind of molecule "remembers" that and retains some magical properties as a result. There is just no accounting for people's gullibility.