I have begun re-ripping my collection - this time to FLAC. In fact, I have also downloaded a few FLAC albums of CDs that I have that the CDs are trashed.

After uploading some of these flac files to the player, Ive noticed a few things:

1) They DO sound noticably better than most of my MP3s.
2) FLAC files seem to have less "gain" than MP3's. Even if I make MP3s from the same source, carefully - with say LAME and alt -preset -standard.

It seems, in my case, that the MP3 files are "gained up" more than the flac. To the point where, perhaps, some digital clipping is happening? Anyone have comments or insights on this possibility?

I know it sounds strange... But does the player handle the data the same way? I.e. is any of the mp3 data processed before being decoded in some way? Or FLAC? The MP3's I refer to have a "shrill" quality in the upper midrange, and the corresponding flac will not. I now notice that most (but strangely not all) of my mp3 collection has this "quality". (The ones that dont are almost all older, 128kb, non-lame encodes...)

Comments or thoughts?

Jeff