People often say it's a placebo, but I'm a huge fan of FLAC. Same quality as uncompressed WAV, but with smaller file sizes. I've noticed that lossy formats like MP3, AAC, and even Opus tend to clip frequently with loudly-mastered music, but FLAC avoids this.

Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

i just download a flac ripped version of a day to remember to compare to my mp3 320 kbps and i don't really here a difference maybe like a 3% better quality in the flac.

What speakers are you using?

konc wrote:

Not trying to force my opinion in any way, but I totally disagree with this. It all comes down to the speakers when you're tryi […]
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leileilol wrote:

Having music in FLAC's more about the satisfaction of having unadulterated guaranteed-loss-free sound, rather than some silly audiophile myearsarebetterthanyours pissing contests. I've never had the desire to go for 320kbps MP3s, especially with mp3's other issues like the end gap that destroys album-oriented music, and the soon-expiring patent issues

Not trying to force my opinion in any way, but I totally disagree with this.
It all comes down to the speakers when you're trying to hear quality of a music file type. I assure you I walk into a bar (with a known/descent sound system) and tell right away id the DJ is playing crappy mp3s <320 or a lossless format. Again I'm not doing any claims about my ears been better that anybody's else. Using good speakers, let's say some ~500euro quality studio monitors and a ~100euro DAC, you can tell the big difference between a compressed and an uncompressed file when played side by side. It's not imposed, there's really a big difference. OK, from some small computer speakers youtube might even sound better that a WAV for many people but that's another story.

The thing is that keeping music in a compressed format permanently destroys it. And I'm not even talking about anything less than a 320 MP3s, going lower completely destroys the music. You can't ever go back again and that's the main problem for me. So I recommend keeping your music in a lossless format and if you need to play it on some device that can't handle it (eg. most car stereos currently used), convert and make a copy of it.

This is apparently a very sensitive point, so I'll say it once more: I'm not an "audiophile" spending thousands for better cables pretending that I can hear any difference out of them. But lossless music sounding a lot better on the correct equipment is not subjective at all, it's a fact.

I concur.

My speakers are vintage JBL 120Ti's. I've been using various amp from Sansui AU-7900 to Sansui A40 to Yamaha RX-V663 (AV receiver in pure direct mode). And in all cases I'm always able to tell the difference between MP3 and uncompressed format. In many cases, MP3's sound 'meatier' but always dirtier, while uncompressed formats tend to sound leaner but much, much cleaner. And yes, MP3 tends to clip more often than lossless. The only case where MP3's sound almost as good as lossless is when the music is simple and/or electronic music.

Besides, who still listens to MP3 in this FLAC era anyway?

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Besides, who still listens to MP3 in this FLAC era anyway?

You'd be surprised... Even playing them "professionally" in 128Kbps youtube downloads.

I've been working myself up to an audiophile level of understanding on how everything works. I took classes, watched some very interesting videos on the subject (xiph.org has a neat one), read quite a few differing opinions on the subject of audio production formats and there about, and got into the maths behind it all.

While I'm nowhere near being a guru of acoustics, I can at least offer my somewhat educated opinions on the matter.

The ideal format is greatly dependent on the target playback equipment capabilities.
Audio compression formats should list their target Quantization noise levels.
320kbps is ideal for capturing all the audio detail in a 48000kHz audio stream, any Quantization noise present will be what was present on the original capture and dependent on the target bit depth.
Provided your audio equipment can playback a 48000kHz audio stream at 16-bits, your ideal Quantization noise floor will be inaudible and >= -96dB. With shaped dithering this can be pushed down to -120dB.

Encoding less than 320kbps (such as 192kHz) will introduce aliasing into the audio signal and this can be exacerbated by sensitive audio equipment as harmonic distortion, but typically this distortion is very low and almost inaudible. If the encoding engine is doing it's job mathematically sound, then a 48000kHz 16-bit MP3 @320kbps should accurately contain the original source, and be "good enough" for most everyone's equipment.

APE is dead then

I think I transcoded any APE files I had to FLAC. No reason not to.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

People often say it's a placebo, but I'm a huge fan of FLAC.

There is a physical difference to them yes, mathematically.
It's a placebo when the end user "swears" they can hear a difference, when in reality they are most certainly not able to and instead have projection bias towards the "better" format.

Here's an interesting aspect of this discussion:

My dad and I run an FM radio station. It's a pretty low budget operation, so here's what the audio stack looks like:

-Computer playing 192 kbps MP3's (I tried to get my dad to go higher but he keeps going back to these double-blind tests he read about in which they "proved" that people can't tell the difference between 192 kbps MP3 and lossless) on a Behringer DAC (a very simple and accurate unit)
-Professional studio analog console
-Output of console goes to the input of another Behringer DAC connected to a PC, which then streams the audio over the internet (hey, it's a super low budget operation! We can't afford a dedicated lossless link) at 224 kbps MP3 to the transmitter site (the internet connection there can't handle any more than that), where there is a
-Exstreamer unit, which pulls the MP3 stream from the internet and plays it directly to the transmitter
-Audio processing inside the transmitter - very minimal stuff here, low compression, etc - mostly leveling.
-And out the signal goes!

Now I know you're going to say, "there's no way that's going to sound good at all! 192 kbps? Pfft! And you're encoding it a second time when you send it to the transmitter!"
But believe it or not, this system actually sounds very good over the FM airwaves. In fact, I dare say we have the best-sounding station in town. You can feed that audio chain any music you want, and it will be as faithfully reproduced as the FM band is capable of. Maybe we can afford to make all those supposed "quality cuts" along the way because the bottleneck is really the FM system.

We used to have a couple of Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS cards in both those PC's I mentioned, and boy, did they make the final audio sound horrible. It would sound just alright in the studio, but once it was re-encoded as MP3 and sent to the transmitter, it sounded like a speaker in a fishbowl. Switching to the highly accurate DAC boxes fixed that.

(btw, I'm sure there are people out there somewhere who can't tell the difference between 192 kbps and lossless - and I bet my mom is one of them. She keeps trying to get me to buy any old dinky little Bluetooth single speaker for my dorm room, and doesn't seem to fully appreciate the difference between that and my excellent speakers at home that she wouldn't let me take 😐)

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

i just download a flac ripped version of a day to remember to compare to my mp3 320 kbps and i don't really here a difference maybe like a 3% better quality in the flac.

What speakers are you using?

Very shity $15 computer speakers i got on ebay 5 years ago, im working on getting a good stereo.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

Keep the MP3s and upgrade your speakers instead. You won't hear a difference going from 320K MP3 to FLAC, but you'll have multiple eargasms as soon as you ditch that soundbar and get a set of real speakers.

whynotboth.gif

Jade Falcon wrote:

WAV. plain and simple, works on just about everything.

Literally no difference between WAV and FLAC except FLAC is half the size of WAV.

MusicallyInspired wrote:

Jade Falcon wrote:

WAV. plain and simple, works on just about everything.

Literally no difference between WAV and FLAC except FLAC is half the size of WAV.

Flac requires more cpu usage to paly and or ram and a plugin/app or a newer media player.
True wav is bigger as it's not compressed like flac, but I'll stick with wav as it works on just about anything without having to mess around with a different media player or plugin/app.

That and I like that I can just open a CD and pull of the music off by just copying the wav files on some cd's.
That and no need to install a app to rip cd's into a flac file. Just use sound recorder or windows media player. Or pull the wav files of the cd if it has them.

Wav to me is just less hassle and simpler and is why I use it.

Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

i just download a flac ripped version of a day to remember to compare to my mp3 320 kbps and i don't really here a difference maybe like a 3% better quality in the flac.

What speakers are you using?

Very shity $15 computer speakers i got on ebay 5 years ago, im working on getting a good stereo.

Okay, so I guess that's the reason you cannot hear the difference between lossy and lossless.

Yah, you really have to have a nice system to truly hear a real difference. Not just the speakers but the DAC/amp too.
But speakers make the biggest difference. If you don't mind a small project I'd get some older book shelf speakers and refome them and recap the crossovers (if they have any) Speakers from the 60/70s tend to be cheap and after a little restoring they make for some nice speakers. But that's just me, I like the sound of 60's early 70's speakers my self.

Even with a very good system, you won't hear the difference between a properly encoded 320K MP3 and a FLAC sourced from the same CD. Human hearing just isn't good enough. It's as simple as that.

You'll save time and space & maintain compatibility by keeping your 320K MP3s. Just worry about getting the best amp/speakers or headphones you can afford.

Regarding CPU usage, MP3 is actually a little more demanding than FLAC. But if your Win95 machine is too slow to handle MP3s without taking a huge performance hit, you probably shouldn't be playing anything other than plain old audio CDs in the first place.

why did nnone even compare the sound of those to the good old vinyl record?

All the loveliness & warmth of vinyl sound can be perfectly reproduced in a well-recorded 44/16 wav file. 😉

(I have a SHIT TON of records and a really good turntable setup, don't even start with me on the "you've never heard vinyl properly, digital is cold and thin and just can't capture all the harmonics, staircase quantization, etc." Just to pre-empt that little argument.)

Standard Def Steve wrote:

Even with a very good system, you won't hear the difference between a properly encoded 320K MP3 and a FLAC sourced from the same CD. Human hearing just isn't good enough. It's as simple as that.

^^ Yep, this. With the caveat of 'properly encoded', i.e. not transcoded from something else or squished through a whole bunch of unnecessary processing. (The default settings on recent versions of LAME (-b 320) are generally very good.)

I usually encode at VBR -V 0 myself, but CBR 320 is fine too.

quite frankly i have never heard cds sounding as good as vinyl, there always seems to be sth missing; also it depends on music if its a big difference or not

The usual reason vinyl sounds better is because CDs were mastered *terribly* for most of the lifetime of the format. It took the "old guard" industry at least 20 years to figure out digital music production and by the time they got it down the 'loudness war' was already in full swing killing any sense of dynamic range or fidelity.

If you play a record on a nice turntable and record it directly to digital (using good quality cables, ADC, etc. and setting the levels properly so it doesn't clip), the recording will sound ... well, exactly like the record. It's not the *format's* fault.

well, ok, thats a point 😀