Lossless music

johnson

johnson

johnson

Permabanned
Joined
12 Apr 2006
Posts
221
Anyone else target lossless music now. I got a 13mbit connection and it just makes sense to get flac and ape files now over mp3.

Lets put these bigger hard drives to use now eh :)
 
johnson said:
Anyone else target lossless music now.
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Target, what like with a shotgun?

johnson said:
I got a 13mbit connection and it just makes sense to get flac and ape files now over mp3.
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Where can you legally download FLAC files?

fini
 
ok apart from the lack of mainstream music available in lossless formats to download....

There are few mp3 players that will play them
The ones that do play them see a much shorter battery life through playing them
There are few mp3 players available that store more than 60GB and thus you might start running out of space
The difference between a GOOD mp3 (encoded at a high bitrate) and a FLAC file is mostly placebo (I did some blind testing at the weekend on my hifi (NAD C352 amp, NAD C542 CD player, JMLabs Focal Chorus S speakers) and I really struggled to hear a difference.

fini
 
Bu the way ipods now support lossless tracks. :cool:

It is however with apples lossless coding of course.
 
fini said:
ok apart from the lack of mainstream music available in lossless formats to download....

There are few mp3 players that will play them
The ones that do play them see a much shorter battery life through playing them
There are few mp3 players available that store more than 60GB and thus you might start running out of space
The difference between a GOOD mp3 (encoded at a high bitrate) and a FLAC file is mostly placebo (I did some blind testing at the weekend on my hifi (NAD C352 amp, NAD C542 CD player, JMLabs Focal Chorus S speakers) and I really struggled to hear a difference.

fini
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I Suppose it is really hard to hear a difference with a highend mp3. I've not got a decent hifi yet so Im thinking when I do have a better one I can always go back to wav.
 
I rip all my cd's to flac, then have a secondary mp3 rip at ~160kpbs for mobile use.. with the price of storage these days there's no reason not to :)
 
I encode 192 to MP3 for convinience, but whenever I listen to music in the house its always from a CD, not because I am an audiophile, I just like using CDs because that's how I buy music. :)


yeh dont concern yourself where I legally get them from, that wasn't the question.
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I would like to see more of this approach, its a good one. :)
 
Just out of interest, why do lossless formats shorten the battery life of the MP3 player? Is it because there's that much more data to read off the memory? I would have thought that it required less decryption of the file...
 
it depends really. in hdd players the biggest drain on the player usually IS the hdd. If your playing a flac file youd have to access the hdd much much more because most mp3 players only have a memory buffer of 8mb or so.
 
StixxUK said:
Just out of interest, why do lossless formats shorten the battery life of the MP3 player? Is it because there's that much more data to read off the memory? I would have thought that it required less decryption of the file...
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I have an iRiver H140 - had it for a couple of years now.

I get 16-20 hours per charge and listen to it almost constantly whenever I'm out the house.

Anyway - decoding Ogg Vorbis requires more processing power than decoding MP3. It is a more CPU-intensive task. This is why battery life is usually shorter.

*n
 
All my MP3s are encoded at 200-300kbps VBR and I simply don't believe the poncy audiophiles who claim it sounds worse than lossless formats.
 
Tru said:
All my MP3s are encoded at 200-300kbps VBR and I simply don't believe the poncy audiophiles who claim it sounds worse than lossless formats.
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Well thats up to you to believe what you like, I was conducting tests at the weekend on my new Linn kit between Mp3 @ 320kbps & WMA lossless (through toslink) & the difference was comparible between MW & FM radio. Admittedly Linn kit is very good & will show up any source track weakness more than your average high street type ' Hi Fi's ' , But the difference is defintly there to be heard :)
 
Oo_Scotty_oO said:
Well thats up to you to believe what you like, I was conducting tests at the weekend on my new Linn kit between Mp3 @ 320kbps & WMA lossless (through toslink) & the difference was comparible between MW & FM radio. Admittedly Linn kit is very good & will show up any source track weakness more than your average high street type ' Hi Fi's ' , But the difference is defintly there to be heard :)
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did you do a blind test with someone else changing between the two copies of the track, not telling you which was which? I ask because when I did my testing (detailed in post 5 of this thread) I thought I could hear a difference, but then when I got someone to change between the tracks themselves so I didn't know which was which I got very very confused. Saying that, unless you've got pretty old Linn kit or some dog speakers, chances are it outclasses my kit by a fair measure.

fini
 
I'll back up Scottys thoughts. Even on my old stereo (Meridian DAC, Cyrus amp and Musical Fidelity speakers), I thought there was a noticeable difference between WAV and 320bps MP3. I dread to think how much difference there would be now.
 
fini said:
did you do a blind test with someone else changing between the two copies of the track, not telling you which was which? I ask because when I did my testing (detailed in post 5 of this thread) I thought I could hear a difference, but then when I got someone to change between the tracks themselves so I didn't know which was which I got very very confused. Saying that, unless you've got pretty old Linn kit or some dog speakers, chances are it outclasses my kit by a fair measure.

fini
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I didn't do a blind test ,no ,however the difference was so apparent it I would have known which was which straight away anyhow :) ,hell even my wife made some comment over the difference. To the OP, as you have plenty drive space & internet bandwidth then your defintly doing the right thing by downloading lossless formats, if in the future you decide to buy a decent to good spec Hifi (if you dont already have) then you will get the absolute best out of it by obtaining lossless now.
 
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