No real difference between flac and 320kbps mp3?

I was messing around the other day with a mate playing different versions of a song to see if we could hear the difference - streaming either ALAC, 192mp3(napster) or 320(spotify) all into my yammy and quads.

It was easy to hear the difference between 192 and either 320/ALAC - mainly the clarity and dynamic range, it was much harder to hear the difference between the 320 and ALAC but we could both identify the ALAC over the 320 file on some tracks.

I have re ripped all my CD's into ALAC, my iphone gets real basic AAC versions (64 or 96, whatever the auto is on transfer) as its only used in my car or cheapy headphones. I plan to store al my CD's so it would be madness to not rip them lossless, i can do what ever i want with those files now they are on a NAS and HDD space is so cheap i have a separate NAS just for music so will probably never hit space issues!
 
AFAIK, mp3 removes and discards very fine frequency bands using a comb filter, as the ear cannot hear frequencies very close to each other simultaneously the theory is it'll sound the same to us. The lower the bitrate mp3, the more will be removed.

You arn't likely to see much difference if any between waveforms. You'd need a very high resolution spectrum anylyser to see it, and if you had one you'd see it VERY clearly which should be quite obvious by the amount of filesize which is shaved off by the conversion process!
 
:p I understand it's a file format thank you very much.

I was just never the type to learn about base level coding. We each have our own specialities.

Am I right to think, binary is passed through many algorithms before outputted as music? Does the media program you use decode the mp3 before playback, or is it on the fly decoding as it plays?
 
Unless you have very good quality audio equipment, you're very unlikely to genuinely tell the difference between 320kbps MP3 and FLAC. As Mr_Sukebe has said, storage space is cheap now, and it is probably worth your while to make an initial FLAC rip.

My music is ripped to FLAC, and I convert them to V0 MP3 (the best quality variable bitrate) as well. I used to convert them to 320kbps, but V0 is smaller and the quality is pretty much the same as 320kbps.
 
ripping to FLAC using EAC is a pain in ***, takes forever etc... I tried it and couldn't hear any difference to WMA lossless - I guess my system sucks and i must be deaf. so now I use WMA lossless and not looking back.
 
I agree you can't go wrong ripping to flac and storing as it is pretty cheap now, also i guess encoding to mp3 can be done rather quickly if you want to put them on a player, though it does sound like theres not a lot in it quality wise for most people so it might not hurt to just rip straight to mp3 if you're not bothered about quality taking a tiny hit.
 
lunarwolf said:
ripping to FLAC using EAC is a pain in ***, takes forever etc... I tried it and couldn't hear any difference to WMA lossless - I guess my system sucks and i must be deaf. so now I use WMA lossless and not looking back.
Click to expand...

Just use the AutoFLAC addon for EAC, makes it very fast and easy, it requires a little bit of setting up and configuring but there are instructions and once you've done it all you do is put a disc in and click one button and that's it basically. You wouldn't hear any differance with WMA Lossless though, as it's loessless! ...regular lossy formats you will though, or could do depending on your ears, the music, the equipment etc.
 
lunarwolf said:
ripping to FLAC using EAC is a pain in ***, takes forever etc... I tried it and couldn't hear any difference to WMA lossless - I guess my system sucks and i must be deaf. so now I use WMA lossless and not looking back.
Click to expand...

It's no different to MP3? You just specify the encoder settings like you would with LAME?

I've moved over to dbPoweramp but it's still, put disc in drive, let it fetch the metadata then hit Rip. Not really a pain in the arse.
 
A random name said:
But then again, aren't you the guy who said he could actually hear a difference in quality when using a different power cable?

I've got what I'd consider to be an upper-mid range system consisting of B&W 683's and a Nad C325BEE. Thats nearly a grand and a halfs worth of gear, so id class that as a system where it's 'possible' to tell the difference. Yet i cannot hear even a minute bit of difference between 320kb/s rips and FLAC. Moreso, the fact that if you compare the waveforms of 320 and FLAC you will find no difference furthers the point... That FLAC is a waste of time and space.

You seem to be the master of the placebo effect mate, ever since I saw your argument about power cables (as long as they're not total tripe) making a marked improvement to sound quality, I can't take anything you post seriously!
Click to expand...

Nope that's very much a budget system....... what streamer or DAC are you using ?...... As that is the part that's got to deal with the compression and expand it back out to analogue.


The difference will be small or not heard, as 320 isn't doing huge processing on the signal, 192 does show up though. ... Also the type of music also has an effect.... so if people are comparing you all need to be using the same track..... As many have said it's system dependant........
So any one tried or compared 24/96 FLAC files ?
 
I have heard some 24/96 Flac and its impressive, Sonos cant run it but heard it on a mates system that is leagues better than mine anyway - you can get loads on Linn records and i think they are on offer at the moment too.
 
hedgey said:
never mind 320kbps, you cant tell the difference in a blind test at 192kbps. people who say they can are deluded. its been scientifically tested. there's a paper on it somewhere.
Click to expand...

No, that's not true. (i can hear the shock of certain people to see me writing such a statement ;)). For starters, the idea of a paper proving for certain that it is impossible to tell a difference strikes me as highly unlikely, given the fact that there will be differences in the underlying data.

I've seen plenty of double-blinded trials on various sites with people demonstrating the ability for certain audio samples between 192kbps and FLAC @ P < 0.05, and i've seen succesful tests at 320kbps too. Now, these could have all been made up/faked but i find it unlikely. There's a bit of discussion here:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=72542
And here's one particular sample which is supposedly easy to ABX @320:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=72395

It's pretty easy to conduct a DBT of two different samples to prove you can tell the difference using fubar2000

Personally, I'm not that bothered about the possibility that i might after many attempts be able to tell the difference between a high-ish bitrate mp3 and a FLAC, so i stick to the smaller one, but each to their own.
 
lunarwolf said:
ripping to FLAC using EAC is a pain in ***, takes forever etc... I tried it and couldn't hear any difference to WMA lossless - I guess my system sucks and i must be deaf. so now I use WMA lossless and not looking back.
Click to expand...

does it ?? what are you using to encode? my pc encodes almost as fast as it rips (3.6ghz phenomII quad). it actually rips and encodes 3 cd's at once, 4 if i had another optical drive. i wouldnt say ripping to flac is at all slow.

FrankJH said:
the problem Im having (apart from 700+ albums, so could easily hit 800GB with double /triple albums) is BR rips taking over cd storage (as it were), or nearly 2 TB incl backups - and thats before you have a mobile version of each track/album (and backup of that too if one is to do it properly)
Click to expand...

you dont need lossy versions of all your music on the pc, surely? my pc munches through flac > mp3 so quickly that i do it on the fly when i put music on my mp3 player or on a memory stick for the car - it encoded quicker than i can write to the sticks. I dont bother keeping lossy versions any more :)
 
Last edited:
You will need very decent quality equipment to tell the difference between 320Kbit and FLAC - and even then I only really notice it on a small number of tunes.

If your using an average set of headphones i.e. plantronics then yeah you probably won't notice the difference between 192kbit and FLAC - if I use my Sennheiser PC163Ds or HD600 then its painfully apparent I can hear every last artifact in anything under 320kbit tho 256 is fairly reasonable :(
 
9designs2 said:
...So any one tried or compared 24/96 FLAC files ?
Click to expand...

Yep, I have.
I've downloaded an albums worth of plinky plonky test tracks, and also some stuff by Fiona Mckenzie (odd, but lovely) and Steve Vai (not his best stuff).
At least IMO, there is an improvement on 16/48. Better low end control, more "air", just more natural really. Just a shame there's so little content on it.
I understand that it's possible to rip from DVD-A to FLAC, but I have to say that I really struggled to decide which tracks to rip when I had a go with an album that has CD, DVD-DTS, and DVD-A encoded. I promise that it really wasn't obvious.
 
james.miller said:
you dont need lossy versions of all your music on the pc, surely? my pc munches through flac > mp3 so quickly that i do it on the fly when i put music on my mp3 player or on a memory stick for the car - it encoded quicker than i can write to the sticks. I dont bother keeping lossy versions any more :)
Click to expand...

I would suggest this is still a huge waste of energy/power - re-encoding every time you transfer? It may well be quicker than the USB write, but you are still repeating the job you did however long ago

I can see the benefit undoubtedly - and its fully dependant on how many times you change over the tracks for the mp3/car I guess

As stated its not really the cd's that are the issue - I could easily do a 2tb "live" disc and the same again for the backup - its the BR's that are the space hogs :D
 
That's not what I meant, I meant rip all your music and dvds then, just don't rip the Blue Rays, just use the disks. You can reduce the quality and rip them as 720p MKV's though, which puts a 45 minute tv episode at 1.1GB there and abouts, I can well understand why you might not want to do that though.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom