MP3 vs FLAC

[Somnambulist]

Can't tell the difference on my portable set up (which is just as well due to available memory on said devices), and on decent equipment I can't tell the difference with 95% of the music I listen to, mainly since most of it isn't produced to a super high standard or has the kind of dynamics and detail that highlight the (not night and day) difference. The main thing decent, revealing equipment makes is it just shows how badly a lot of music is recorded which can put you off listening to it, when on cheaper coloured gear it sounds fine.

This to me is more important than high bitrate lossy vs lossless, although I'm still ripping all my CDs to ALAC though (on a Mac with XLD) purely because it is an exact copy of the CD and I know I'll have ripped it bit-for-bit, where as with downloading you're stuck with whatever quality of rip someone else has done.

 

[Alexrose1uk]

Tbh, I tend to go for max quality VBR rather than CBR (LAME encoded), as you still generally maintain high levels of sound quality whilst being a little more space efficient, so I'm talking from a slightly different perspective, but sometimes I've noticed a difference, usually just little details though or slight 'wierdness' on more complex tracks in the background. That said by very nature VBR does drop to lower bitrates so its unavoidable.

I wouldnt notice on my car stereo or via my phone though thats for sure, and a lot of the time it's not particularly noticeable. Some tracks sound great at lower bitrate, its all down to the nature of the material in use.

 

[Breeny]

I've never been able to tell the difference between the two, but then I haven't invested audio wise. (Sennheiser CX500 with UL30 laptop, or PC with onboard sound card and some old altec lansing 2.1 speakers)

 

[Participant]

I use FLAC these days simply because if I'm going to go to the effort of ripping all my music, I might as well start with the best possible source in case one day I have ten grands worth of HiFi sitting in my living room.

That and as mentioned, size is no issue.

 

[xenithuk]

Flac for Backups, MP3 for on the move

Personally, I make FLAC backups of my own CDs in case they get damaged or lost, and they can be stored on my 1tb hard drive.

For my Cowon S9 32gb (on which I wan't to squeeze the majority of my music collection - and have one or two films) I have music from Amazon and my own CD's encoded with Lame using it's standard setting (not fast).

Both lots are usually variable bit rate around 256 kbps.

I use sennheiser IE8 IEMs (and HD25s through an iBasso D2+) and when I'm out and about, the difference in quality is hardly noticeable.

 

[robgmun]

FLAC sound a lot clearer to me. But i'm happy enough with MP3 at 320Kbps

 

[C.R.A.Z.Y]

FLAC, APE OR SHORTEN for me, lossy is for losers

 

[p4radox]

FLAC sound a lot clearer to me. But i'm happy enough with MP3 at 320Kbps

Out of interest, what equipment do you use for it to sound a lot clearer?

FLAC, APE OR SHORTEN for me, lossy is for losers

But the question was can you tell the difference?

Personally I rip to FLAC and then encode in mp3 for portable use. I can't tell any difference at all on any equipment I've used.

 

[Knubje]

the claim that you're making is so outlandish

Just like the one where he claimed to have invented the question mark?




Last time I bothered to test the two on a standard set of creative speakers, I couldn't tell the difference.

 

[Participant]

I thought I could tell the difference, got panned for claiming I could in a Cinema thread, went to try a blind test, and failed the blind test. So I guess I can't tell the difference.

Good ol' OcUK.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Mp3s the stabdard, eveyone uses it, all equipment suppots it, i cant see it being replaced, even though size is no longer an issue.

I prefer WAV. Although size is a concern when you're talking hundreds of MB per album.

 

[marc2003]

I prefer WAV. Although size is a concern when you're talking hundreds of MB per album.

oh dear lord.... why don't you use a proper lossless codec with tagging support? you can save around 45% disk space and have a bit for bit identical copy. the clue is in the name.... lossless.

i hope you're not as deluded as this muppet....

I can tell the difference between flac and WAV trance tracks.

 

[Somnambulist]

WAV makes little sense these days since FLAC and ALAC offer much better tagging support, take up less space and are indeed identical since the lossless file is just a compressed container for the bit-for-bit track to be extracted from.

 

[Barzini]

On standard speakers you won't notice a difference. On good equipment FLAC is clearly superior.

 

[Somnambulist]

Some tracks sound great at lower bitrate, its all down to the nature of the material in use.

A lot of music produced for the iTunes generation is actually made so it sounds pleasing at lower bitrates (see my point about albums sounding crap on revealing gear but fine on general consumer stuff). A classic example is Californication by RHCP; infamous for being one of the worst sounding albums ever on a good quality system, unless you include stuff like black metal bands who recorded their stuff on a casette player in the woods.

 

[Calabi]

I thought I could tell the difference but think I might be lying.

I always rip my cds to flac, though you never know. Future enhancements like better ears may not be that far away.

 

[aceface57]

What equipment are people using that can notice the difference? I haven't actually tried a test between the two yet, might do soon. Out of interest does anyone know what spotify spits out on high quality?

 

[titaniumx3]

Really, for most people the main reason why it's a good idea to use lossless compression these days is that storage capacity isn't a problem anymore (even on portables) and it's always better to archive your music in a lossless format, since if you ever need to transcode to different format, it's always better to have a lossless source, to avoid transcoding artifacts.

Personally I think the whole lossly/lossless arguement is getting to peoples heads and some forget just how amazing the tech behind some of these lossy codecs really is.

 

[Sinny]

You won't notice a difference unless your signal is amplified and you're using some good quality headphones.

Normally if you're listening from an mp3 player your mp3 player won't have the ability to handle the power of the earphones unless you amplify the signal.

I can tell the difference in Classical music on some Beyerdynamics connected to a CMOY amp, but from my mp3 player on my Shure's I'd be hard pressed at 320k.

 

[aceface57]

Reason I'm getting a bit more interested in the file types now is that I'm running better equipment than I was, Monitor Audio BR2 Bronze and a Cambridge Audio 640A, still looking to get a new cd player for it and getting a nice DAC very soon.