can j3 really play flac ??

[Asterix77]

Originally Posted by isaacscng

brackets= ()...

Just tried it...I do not have a problem playing a FLAC file (or any file) with "()" or "[]" in the name.

[AkumaGM]

I was about to post a thread with a similar issue. To avoid creating a repeat thread, I will share my experience with my newly purchased (and 2.26 updated) J3 and FLAC files.

The issue I have noticed with my J3 is when I play FLAC files encoded above 44.1 khz, it sounds like they have been pitch bent (pitch bended?) I re-encoded the files to 44.1khz using foobar2000 and they now play correctly.

[Asterix77]

Originally Posted by AkumaGM

I was about to post a thread with a similar issue. To avoid creating a repeat thread, I will share my experience with my newly purchased (and 2.26 updated) J3 and FLAC files.

The issue I have noticed with my J3 is when I play FLAC files encoded above 44.1 khz, it sounds like they have been pitch bent (pitch bended?) I re-encoded the files to 44.1khz using foobar2000 and they now play correctly.

Funny...I never noticed it with my files...might be fun trying to re-create it and see if I can get the same effect.

[GregVDS]

I never had any problem with FLAC. I would even say that with my current 'workflow' under mac, I rather prefer to convert everything into FLAC, from m4a, wav, mp3 with XLD software, and check tags with Tag soft, and everything is perfect and nice sounding.

And an out of subject comment: Sound is so good with J3, FLAC and FA DBA-02 that it seems music is slower, more intelligible, and more details are noticeable than ever before. Only my Hi-End Audio Analogue CD player, home made headphones amp, Linkwitz filter and Grados sound better...

Best,

[Asterix77]

Why would you convert a lossy format like mp3 to FLAC?

[DSperber]

Originally Posted by GregVDS

I never had any problem with FLAC. I would even say that with my current 'workflow' under mac, I rather prefer to convert everything into FLAC, from m4a, wav, mp3 with XLD software, and check tags with Tag soft, and everything is perfect and nice sounding.

Are you really "replacing" your original MP3 with newly made/bought FLAC, or are you actually "converting" your current compressed files to FLAC?

As was already mentioned, why would you convert to FLAC from a lossy and already-compressed version of a song? This really doesn't accomplish anything audible, as the pure sound of the original WAV has already been lost when producing the MP3, for example. Just converting MP3 to FLAC does not "improve the sound" of the original MP3.

The only reasonable approach to improving the sound of what you currently have involves re-making your music files yourself, from your own CDs. Or I suppose you can buy newer higher-quality music files.

But if you want better audio quality in your music files, you need to either (a) re-create/buy MP3's from the original CDs using higher quality parameters than you did originally, or (b) re-rip the tracks you want in FLAC from CD to WAV and then create new FLAC versions from the true WAV rips.


That's actually what I'm just wrapping up now, is my own "FLAC-pass" of my own 1100 CD collection, from which I'd originally produced about 6700 high-quality MP3 tracks using LAME (and max quality VBR encoding parameters). Sounded great to me, but the sound out of the J3 inspired me. I decided to make a "FLAC-pass", re-listening to all tracks I'd previously produced MP3 from and re-producing FLAC versions instead to replace the MP3 versions for those "super-favorites" where I really do want the BIT-FOR-BIT ORIGINAL WAV SOUND (which is what FLAC will reproduce).

That project has taken me a few months now, but it's just about wrapped up. I've replaced about 1000 of those 6700 MP3 tracks with FLAC. Total music collection grew from about 49GB to about 61GB, but the whole thing can still fit on my 64GB J3.

Anyway, FLAC is meant to duplicate the original WAV. It really has zero audible benefit and negative size benefit if you convert MP3 to FLAC.

[Asterix77]

I fully agree with DSperder...hence the question in my previous post.

[azgolfguy]

Switch Plus does work. There seems to be some loss of volume or resolution when converting from 96/24 to the 44hz setting. There may be ways to compensate for this with different compressions. If anyone has any ideas, please let us know.

[Enzyme]

There seems to be some loss of volume or resolution when converting from 96/24 to the 44hz setting

not sure about volume but i'm sure i read in the wolfsen pdf that 48hz is one of the chips default values, whereas 44 is not, and requires further processing by the chip, that may cause some issues.

that info was found while in a major geek mode session and ive quickly scanned the pdf a couple of times since to try and find that data but failed, you need to read it fully, it's mentioned in the columns of data at some point.

but, ive found when using 48hz ogg's that the bitrate data is missing on the j3, whereas on 44 it shows you the bitrate of the track your listening to, just a minor annoyance.

[azgolfguy]

The only conversion option for 44110 files was compression, which I turned off. I listened to both 96/24 original files and 44100 converted files, and they are close. Switch creates a 1000kps file on the conversion. Since it's a reasonable way to get my 30+ FLAC albums onto the J3, I can live with it. I also found with Switch that I can convert the 96/24 FLAC files to 320kps MP3 files that also sound good and can be loaded to my iPod Touch. Thanks for the advice.