Why do Wav and Flac Files Sound Different?

The more interesting point of this article seems to be that both Flac and Wav are sonically adulterated by metadata during playback to the extent that fidelity is somewhat harmed. A significant portion of my digital library contains flac files downloaded from Allflac.com and converted in JRiver to Wav. Now that Allflac accepts only bitcoin from overseas customers I just use Quobuz - downloading their Wav files into JRiver and then burning to CD's for my transport. A useful conclusion for my situation would seem be that I not include files such as "cover art" in the download since it appears in the article's graphs to pollute the sonic data.

Wav vs Flac

Here is a somewhat more nuanced take on the issue. The author is responding to the article that started this thread.

I should stress here that I am not playing my files off of my computer - merely using the computer to store these files and then burn CD's to them which are then played on a Jay's Audio CDT3 Mk3. I am using a 2 year old Dell. What more interests me is the interaction of the computer buffer and perhaps more specifically the buffer involved in CD burning with the quality of the resulting burned CD.

By the way, whether an improvement or not, the "cover art" file is now deleted by me before copying the downloaded Quobuz .wav files to JRiver. I miss the visual tag of cover art in the JRiver front page, but the text caption is sufficient for locating files.

A little while ago I downloaded a CD quality CD's worth of music (Sarah Janosz) from Quobuz. Once on my hard drive I deleted the "folder" (image of Janosz) from the list of tracks, uploaded the files to JRiver and was interested to see upon opening the file in JRiver that the "folder" image was still active and came up as the usual jpeg in JRiver where it acted as the visual header for the group of files. It would appear to a layman such as myself that this file is permanently embedded in the download even if "deleted." Any ideas on how to really and truly remove it before burning a CD of the tracks?

By the way, I am working from the start with .wav files here. Everything in the Quobuz "Download Store" that is "CD quality" comes as a ,wav file.

I have never streamed, so this may be a dumb question, but in the case of Quobuz, for instance, which is the outift from which I download, is every single file fetched for play tagged with an image of cover art? Is that cover art separate from the music file - or is it "infolded" in the file?

The gist of this thread had to to with the possibility that any metadata was a potential pollutant of the musical information. When I used to download albums from allflac.com removing the "cover" file from the track list before loading it into JRiver would nix the cover art showing up in the thumbnail header for the albums which seems to indicate that this data was no longer involved in the track files. Not the case with Quobuz. None of this may matter sonically. Or it might in some small. way.

Mofi Quad DSD Controversy

“I know that this revelation of Mobile Fidelity cutting from transfers made to digital is sort-of anathema to some of our purest fans, and I understand that strictly from what you might read on a piece of paper.  But the truth is that us cutting from digital transfers that we ourselves made is not an example of us losing our way, it’s actually an example of us adhering to it adhering to the purest aesthetic and perfecting things beyond anything in the past and the past goes back now 45 years…. Preserving the tape.” 

—    Rob LoVerde, Mastering Engineer, Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs

Even Michael Fremer may be coming around.

Thanks for the suggestions. I am assuming that stripping the folder of all metadata means the CD cannot be used in a manner such that individual songs can be called up by my transport, i.e, the whole file becomes a monolith that can only be played from start to finish of the album without the ability to call up individual tracks.

Thanks for the suggestions. I am assuming that stripping the folder of all metadata means the CD cannot be used in a manner such that individual songs can be called up by my transport, i.e, the whole file becomes a monolith that can only be played from start to finish of the album without the ability to call up individual tracks.

Well, here is something else which may have triggered my initial puzzlement. When I used to download .flac files from ALLFlac.com I wasn't removing the metadata folder when uploading them to JRiver. However, after converting them to .wav in JRiver the metadata would be stripped out. The new CD that had been burned from the .wav files had no way to be fetched as separate tracks on my transport. What came up on the transport's screen would be the number "1" and it would be unresponsive to the track selection button on my remote - all that was visible during the entirety of playing the CD would be that "1" staring me in the face. The tracks would be in the right sequence and the silent gaps between tracks would still be there, but otherwise the only option was to listen to the entire CD in one fell swoop.

Perhaps this could be described as a "bug."