Best FLAC files(if such a thing exists) on which torrent site?

Greetings,

Maybe this is a dumb thread,but I'm curious to know which FLAC rips are the best?

If you HAD ACCESS to the rips of E, Pedros, (Waffles Iron approved) and What(perfect FLAC) for the SAME album , which would you download?

Please only compare them w.r.t sound quality and explain why.

The only thing considerable before downloading a lossless is that if it isn't transcoded. Transcoded lossless's are as bad as bad MP3's. Quality once lost can't be retained.

From the options you gave, I would download the one, I have better ratio at :P

Also, if I'm that much curious about the quality, I would either download ALAC or transcode the downloaded FLAC in ALAC, from what I have seen, among all the lossless formats AIFF and ALAC has the highest bit rates but they have their own demerits and since all are at around 1000~ kbps, 30~50 kbps more wouldn't matter.

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Originally Posted by whatcdfan

The only thing considerable before downloading a lossless is that if it isn't transcoded. Transcoded lossless's are as bad as bad MP3's. Quality once lost can't be retained.

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There are a few other factors as far as I know, hence why What.cd checks and rates EAC logs. Otherwise, anything that doesn't look like it's had its head chopped off in the spectral views would be a quality rip.

As for the question in the first post, Exigo, obviously. Everyone knows music sounds better if it comes from a l33t tracker. :yup:

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Originally Posted by anon

Everyone knows music sounds better if it comes from a l33t tracker. :yup:

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:lol: Good point, Anon.

I have access to all 4.

With respect to sound quality, there's zero difference (assuming a 100%/WI rip). With respect to overall polish of the upload, proper names and tags, a nice description, full artwork scans, etc, that's what you'll find at Pedro's/E. That being said, they also have a fraction of the torrents available on What/Waffles, which in turn have a fraction of the torrents on Demonoid/Rutracker.

Also it's worth noting that a sub 100%/non-WI rip will still generally sound fine, and unless it's got a ton of skips/suspicious positions it will be undoubtedly better than an MP3 rip. The big difference is it's no longer a 1:1 perfect copy of the original CD.

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Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) is an audio compression codec that employs a lossless data compression algorithm. A digital audio recording compressed by FLAC can be decompressed into an identical copy of the original audio data. Audio sources encoded to FLAC are typically reduced to 50–60% of their original size]

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since it's "lossless" how come you will compare?

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Originally Posted by RedRansom

since it's "lossless" how come you will compare?

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FLAC itself doesn't mean a song is exactly a 1:1 copy from the original disc. Use EAC with the wrong settings and you'll have a FLAC rip that isn't considered "perfect".

It's mostly a matter of read offsets, gap detection, and error correction.

e and btmusic standards are basically the same so they offer the same quality

however other trackers especially the open ones don't enforce the quality

assuming they were the same pressing, it would depend on which one had artwork