Questions about tweaking Squeezebox software

Have you tried the Squeezebox forums?

I dont't believe the Squeezebox hardware can natively decode AIFF like it can with FLAC or MP3, so it likely needs to get dynamically transcoded as FLAC to send to the Squeezebox.

That's my speculation.

Sufentanil,

Well, your speculation, at the least, offers an explanation that makes sense. Thanks.

That is correct; AIFF is NOT native to squeezebox. Go to the forums or check the specs on SB.

http://forums.slimdevices.com/
More info than you'll ever want to know about SB there.

FLAC is a lossless compressed format. SB uses FLAC by default I believe to stream higher res files for better bandwidth over the network, in particular WiFI networks that can become a bottleneck for transmitting data fast enough if uncompressed high res data streams were used. SB system is prone to fewer dropouts while playing as a result of limited network bandwidth. SOund quality does not suffer because lossless compression is used in FLAC.

Thanks for the info guys. I guess I should have checked other sources before asking here; but, I tend to consider the information that I get here to be more reliable than information that I get elsewhere.

Anyway, this is what I discovered, for those that may be interested.

First, the SBT does natively support AIFF files. The problem is that there is a bug in the software that prevents the SBT from decoding (if that's the proper word) AIFF files of greater than 16 bits and/or 48khz. I verified this using a 16/48 file with only the AIFF stream enabled. The 16/48 file played fine, but the 24/96 file only gave me static.

Second, (from what I read) you must enable the Flac stream under AIFF file types to get the 24/96 and greater AIFF files to play. They will play but a down conversion to 48khz occurs. Although I was able to verify that enabling the Flac stream works, I wasn't able to verify the down conversion part. I am, however able to hear the difference between playing a 24/96 flac file vs a 24/96 AIFF file. The 24/96 flac file has a more full bodied sound. Perhaps the down conversion thing is true or, of course, I'm fooling myself.

Third, and a offshoot of the above, is that the SBT does indeed fully support flac in native format. I converted some of my hi rez AIFF files to uncompressed flac and noticed an immediate improvement when doing an A/B comparison.

I don't think that this is so much of an example of flac being better than AIFF, but more of a work around to a limitation of the SBT.

I think that you guys lead me to my answer. Thanks.