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I have been grabbing quite a bit of music lately to feed my new stereo. I find the FLAC albums from What to be quite nice. I have also grabbed some MP3 albums, but don't think they sound quite as amazing. It is easy to get fooled by audio gimmicks (fancy interconnects, speaker wire, etc), and I have to wonder if I am simply biased towards FLAC...
Thoughts?
There are some technical reasons why FLAC is 'really' better, but if it sounds better to you, that's ultimately what matters.
Without going deeper into the discussion, or getting all technical, I don't see any reason to download FLAC instead 320Kb/s. At least on my sound setup, which is quite good btw. Some professional DJ friends of mine also say that it's very rare the case when they need a flac version of a song.
I stopped bothering downloading FLAC, as I used to do a lot, and just moved on to high rate MP3. In the end it was all a waste of bandwidth.
It isn't very technical at all, really. FLAC is a completely lossless format of audio, when referring to quality. MP3, with its varying degrees, has lost some of that quality.Quote:
Originally Posted by haslingdene
Like Cabalo, I have lost nearly all of my interest in FLAC. The real usefulness of FLAC for me is when I'm burning music onto a disc to play in the truck or something. I've always felt in the past that MP3s on a burned disc have a high probability of sounding like shite, so these days I'll download the FLAC version and burn that onto a disc, giving me an exact quality replica of the purchased CD.
I still have a shit-ton of FLAC but I don't download much of anything but V0 these days. I just so rarely tell the difference.
MBM, you should have the wife set up a Pepsi Challenge type thing for you, and play some FLAC and V0 versions of albums and see if you can tell the difference.
That could be fun. I'll see if we have time over the weekend. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Skiz
I only ever downloaded a couple of FLAC albums and tbh I never noticed any massive difference.
Given, I don't have a stupidly priced stereo at home, I don't have time to listen to much music in work and the vast majority of the time the only chance I have to listen to some tunes is in the car driving (I do a lot of motorway driving)...
Maybe it's the fact I don't have the necessary quality of hardware to benefit from the lossless rips, but I find ripping .mp3 copies of albums serves me just as well as the few FLAC albums I have in my collection.
I prefer FLACs myself, mainly because they offer a (hopefully) perfect duplicate of the original. My hobby is to play around with music editing software doing compilations, remixes and mashups, so losses is a must. FLACs are also useful for saving work in progress when removing noise and glitches from captures of vinyl recordings or restoring dynamic range to bootlegs and old radio programs. FLACs offer a true source for conversion to various types of mp3s for the stuff I give to friends and post in forums with full quality control of the output. I also used FLAC to back up all my CDs and stored the originals in a closet, gaining lots of shelf space in the living room.
While spectrum analysis shows a clear loss in high frequencies between FLACs and MP3s, I’m sure only dogs or aliens can notice this difference most of the time. So if you do this kind of geeky music manipulation, like to recreate perfect copies of CDs, fancy yourself an audiophile or simply wanna be a snob, FLAC is the way to go. I would guess this desire for perfection applies to less than 5% of the world’s music-listening population – the rest just want their tunes to sound good!
The price to pay for FLACs is storage – over there on the book shelf, I have six 1 Tb Passport drives that hold my FLAC backups and have started filling number seven. Converted to V0, which I listen to most of the time, all of them fit on a single 500 Mb Passport with room for plenty more.
I download all my music in FLAC format now. I honestly can't tell the difference with the equipment I have, but since disc space isn't an issue for me, I figure why not have the best quality file available.
I only downloaded flac rips since get a Pedros. And I think flac is better than mp3.
To be honest, it all comes down to the audio setup one has. A few years ago I was content listening to 128kbps rips of metallica from youtube. Sure, they sounded like absolute crap, but the novely of not having to run through a whole disc inserting ordeal in order to listen to that one track I had a hankering for had me beat.
Fast forward a few years later, and I sincerely can't listen to 128kbps MP3 without hurting my ears. It's all garbage, to be honest. With any pair of decent headphones you can also easily tell the difference between a 320/V0/V2 to be honest. Between 320kbps MP3's and FLAC's, the difference is more subtle, but still very much existent, especially when it comes to a good number of instruments playing at the same time, and a 320kbps MP3 encode suddenly sounds "crowded". This difference is incredibly noticeable with metal songs that rely heavily on cymbals for example, where they are always washed away by other instruments in crappy encodes.
You need decent equipment and good* ears to tell, the difference is massive then. I only have flac for the music I listen to over and over.
*good isn't really the right word, accustomed? attuned? ie, you know the music you are listening to intimately and are aware of your equipments quirks.
i think yes it is the best and has more fillrate
lol, that's video you retard.Quote:
Originally Posted by vthl
It all depends on how good your hearing is. I have been listening to loud music for many years but still have perfect hearing. It's pretty much a miracle. I have done tests on myself and I can hear the difference between 320kbps and wav and at 35 I can also hear the sounds that only teens are supposed to hear, the kind that will scare them away.
It all depends. If you have average hearing it's fine with both 320 or flac.
i kinda like that from flac, all the other (smaller in size) formats can be created (as needed).
apart from the inherent sound quality differences b/t .flac and .mp3 files, .flac is great for archival purposes: .flac/.wav files could be used to create 100% accurate copies of cds/dvds, where ripping/transcoding .mp3 files would obviously fall very short of an accurate copy not only in the data, but in the sound, too
I wouldn't say it's better unless you have a very good audio equipment to understand the difference . But with flac you are 100% that you get the best quality . I only download in flac quality the albums that i really like .
Well, FLAC is referred to as "lossless" for a good reason :P
Of course, in a cheap set of headphones, the difference isn't obvious. But on a good audio system... :D
i thought you were into this Lossless shit so you would be knowing that its impossible to create a 100% acc copy of the cds. The issues relating to Burn quality,Error concealment etc associated with the Compact Disc mechanism almost make it certain that the same quality cant be achieved. You should really read up on EFM and CIRC to quell any doubts relating to this. But Hey i will give u credit that atleast u knw that Sound and Data are different, not a proponent of the "bit is bit " philosophy.Quote:
Originally Posted by th0r
Also Flac is a Lossless compression rather than just saying Lossless. Its quite misleading that way actually
The only reason I've ever snatched that formatQuote:
Originally Posted by Skiz
I only downloaded flac rips since get a Pedros. And I think flac is better than mp3.
Yeah we will just believe it cuz you say so. Any other facts you wanna create while u r at it?Quote:
Originally Posted by Monteiro
320 pwns flac.. why dl 30mb song ???
Flac is definitely better, and not just the quality, but the filesize too!
An mp3 is three times bigger when it has the same quality as a flac.
I think you may wanna read up on your facts flac<->mp3.... though i dont agree that mp3 is better :)Quote:
Originally Posted by nemo8
I can create facts.... I promise they will be interesting :PQuote:
Originally Posted by apextwin146Yeah we will just believe it cuz you say so. Any other facts you wanna create while u r at it?Quote:
Originally Posted by Monteiro
Flac is pretty much lossless quality (correct me if I'm wrong) but it takes up a huge amount of space. Over 30-40 mb per song depending on the length. I believe MP3 is one of the greatest inventions because how the hell else would you fit 60 000 songs on your ipod? How would you keep your seeding ratio up if you always download flac?
I download all my favorite artists best albums in flac, the others in 320 kbps MP3 or VBR MP3. Then convert them, place in itunes and put the originals away for safe keeping.
FLAC as others have said is lossless. What that means is when decompressed to something like WAV or RAW format, it is bit exact to the original be it CD, DVD, ect.. There are other lossless compressions schemes besides FLAC. Monkey Audio is just as good as FLAC in compression and in some cases better.
MP3 is a lossy compression scheme. Once something is converted to MP3, you have lost things in the music/audio that cannot be recovered. So decompression results in inaccurate copy of the original and won't be bit exact.
My recommendations, listen to FLAC at the house and listen to mp3 on portables. If you have decent audio equipment in your home, you can tell the difference between FLAC and 320bit MP3 or at least I can with my ears. MP3 seems to destroy the high end range of frequencies and makes instruments like cymbals sound washed out.
With that said, today's music is overly compressed, Dynamic Range Compressed that is, and has the loudness jacked up to the point of distortion and clipping so the distinction between FLAC and MP3 will be even harder to tell, the cd version of Death Magnetic by Metallica is a good example of this.
i think yes it is the best and has more fillrate
Thanks for enlightening us. :frusty:Quote:
Originally Posted by Krunch
Its 2032132465749543131657986541 better in every way.
It's much better!
hahahaQuote:
Originally Posted by anon-sbithanks for enlightening us. :frusty:Quote:
Originally Posted by krunch
flac is a lossless audio codec, hence its name free lossless audio codec; .flac (or most lossless audio file formats) files are large because .mp3 files are compressed and lose information when they are ripped that way from audio sourcesQuote:
Originally Posted by Element4l
depending on how you rip audio from its source, you can obtain a 100% exact copy of practically any cd/dvd audio source; it doesn't really matter what your compression scheme is as long as it's lossless and you make tweaks to ensure you get a 100% copyQuote:
Originally Posted by sandman_1
exactly and imo, you don't always need an equipment setup in the $1,000 range just to say this b/c most times, at least for me, you can pick the very subtle differences in the quality of audio b/t the two file formatsQuote:
Originally Posted by sandman_1
Quote:
Thor wrote:
depending on how you rip audio from its source, you can obtain a 100% exact copy of practically any cd/dvd audio source; it doesn't really matter what your compression scheme is as long as it's lossless and you make tweaks to ensure you get a 100% copy
Yes this is true. EAC is a great program for doing this and properly calibrating your drive to get an accurate rip. However, I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say, even though we are both on the same page. I was pretty much making that point since Wav and Raw are uncompressed formats and would be bit exact copies of the original if ripped correctly before hand.
Really all you need is good ears. :D I did a ABX test with Foobar 2000 with a mp3 and wav of the same song. Guessed the mp3 20 times in a row, which basically means less than %1 chance of it being just coincidental. So even with PC speakers, you can tell the difference.Quote:
Thor wrote:
exactly and imo, you don't always need an equipment setup in the $1,000 range just to say this b/c most times, at least for me, you can pick the very subtle differences in the quality of audio b/t the two file formats
MP3 won't be around forever lol, better lossy formats exist already but wont play on ur mp3 player. I keep flcs so that when a more effective format become dominant I don't have to redownload all my mp3s i have now
It's lossless, duh it's better!
Actually, you can't tell the difference on two channel or headphones. Evident with 5 channel or more though. It sounds better.
You must either have bad 2 channel speakers, bad headphones, or bad ears.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renzokuken-
It's obviously better. The problem is sometimes you can't feel it
Offcourse FLAC is much better. You need to have the right equipment in order to hear the difference. If all you have are normal speakers, amplifier and receiver you would hardly notice any difference but as you invest in your system, the detail and clarity improves exponentionaly.