[flac-dev] uncompressed FLAC

[Ben Allison]

> Martin Leese wrote:
>
>> What I read was that most contributors accept
>> that FLAC is bit perfect.  It is easy to propose
>> mechanisms to explain why people hear
>> differences.  (The most obvious one is that
>> there are no differences to hear.  Another is
>> that the extra computation load on the
>> processor places noise onto the power rails,
>> affecting the D/A convertors.)  However,
>> without proper double blind testing, there is
>> little point.
>
> Until there are a couple of reliable ABX tests that confirm
> this its simply not worth discussing.
>
> Erik

I remember Josh Coalson one time pointing out that, for some devices,
decoding FLAC is actually faster and less resource intensive than WAV
because the reduced I/O cost outweighs the CPU cost.  This would be
espcially true in a fast laptop with a 5400 RPM drive, or a mobile phone
with a 1.2GHz ARM processor and a class-2 SD card.

-Ben Allison