Quality difference from mp3 rip to FLAC

This morning i was wondering if the FLAC files (with which i had had no experience) are actually noticably better quality than mp3 rips.

I bought a couple of tracks off of bleep some in high quality mp3 some in FLAC, and compared them to some of the lower quality mp3 rips i have.

I have determined that 320 kbps is definately clearer than 128 but not my much, and i could hardly tell the difference between 192 and FLAC. Is it worth the extra 2-3 times the hard drive space? Maybe i need better speakers? honestly though its a tiny difference between 128 and FLAC for me, and hardly, if any, difference between >128 bitrates and FLAC.

Maybe my ears are broken?

please enlighten me, perhaps suggest a track that the comparison is easy to make?

the flac files give you the higher frequency lushness, AE is one of the few groups (along with other industrial-esque groups) that i will only listen to in FLAC. in other words if you want to go flac for only part of your collection, AE would be the ideal group for that.

listen to drane2 @ 128

then flac

  rocky path said:

listen to drane2 @ 128

then flac

i will do so once i get my laptop because my current computer is full of tons of shit and alot of it is my families' stuff so once i get a lappy i will buy the albums in flac

If i could buy just Drane2 in flac then i would but i think you have to buy the entire album if you want flac.

i will go buy it in high quality mp3 though.

theres quite a bit of AE flac on slsk i believe, probably a torrent of an album or two on piratebay

yeah but i dont have the room on my hard drive for alot more stuff and with the new ae material coming out soon i want alot of space, I will buy them on flac mos likely

also I downloaded the mp3 of drane2 from bleep and it was 104kbps!!!!!!!!!!! wtf i got ripped so hard as if i payed like $2 for a worse quality rip than default windows media player.

hard drives are pretty cheap, but whats the point of asking if you should get something if you dont want it in the first place?

your media player probably doesn't play nice with VBR mp3s. some players will only show the kbps of the first frame, or will show a running average. 104 certainly isn't an average.

OH, actually, drane2 has a buttload silence. 104 might be the average then.

bleep has only encoded --alt-preset standard and 320 CBR as far as i know. aps is good quality.

CATS its because i'm getting a lappy for myself soon

Update vodor i double checked the file quality in my browser instead of the winamp menu and its actually 192 kbps and man with drane2 its an obvious difference from just 128 to 192, i want the flac!

also what to do about if you have an mp3 phone/ipod i dont think FLAC runs on those... that means i need both the flac and mp3 versions of the songs...

if you can hardly tell the difference, constantly use an mp3 player, and are concerned about HD space, you shouldn't bother with flac.

i use flac when buying from bleep or ripping CDs. i can't really tell the difference between high-quality mp3s and CD audio either, but i rarely use an mp3 player, and i feel better knowing that i have the best quality that's available to us regular folk. if i really want to put something on my MP3 player, i'm happy converting from flac to mp3. it doesn't take too long, and, of course, there's no quality loss.

i also don't really care how much HD space i use because my collection is usually kept moderately small.

really depends on the material... i recently got some FLAC files of old dinosaur behemoth black sabbath and noticed some shades to the music i hadn't heard before... but in general, electronic bands tend to benefit more from flac... some of coil's FLAC stuff sounds a lot fuller... of course it depends on your stereo settup, too

  thehauntingsoul said:

also what to do about if you have an mp3 phone/ipod i dont think FLAC runs on those... that means i need both the flac and mp3 versions of the songs...

just get the flacs and convert them yourself to appropriate filetype, would be the same as ripping the cd. to get ipods to act like proper audio players, check out http://www.rockbox.org/ , they have new firmware that can be installed to allow ipods to play flacs,oggs etc.

i'd suggest buying an external hard drive, throwing away your ipod and getting a real DAP like cowon iaudio which plays formats which the consumer wants rather than the apple lock-in bullshit game.

  thehauntingsoul said:

This morning i was wondering if the FLAC files (with which i had had no experience) are actually noticably better quality than mp3 rips.

yes. unless your ears are limited and/or you are listening on a crap system.

the other plus to having FLAC is archiving purposes. you can transcode to whatever format you want, for mp3 players or whatnot, make your own edits or mixes for comps, etc. having the original in a lossless format means you always have the highest quality available as your source.

  maldoror said:

really depends on the material... i recently got some FLAC files of old dinosaur behemoth black sabbath and noticed some shades to the music i hadn't heard before... but in general, electronic bands tend to benefit more from flac... some of coil's FLAC stuff sounds a lot fuller... of course it depends on your stereo settup, too

yes the coil stuff is great on flac!

  CATS said:

the flac files give you the higher frequency lushness, AE is one of the few groups (along with other industrial-esque groups) that i will only listen to in FLAC. in other words if you want to go flac for only part of your collection, AE would be the ideal group for that.

Yeah, I usually don't give a fuck about the bitrate.

Until......

I heard Gantz Graf on CD. It was so fucking better than the 256kbps mp3 that I used to have on my hard drive.

FLAC is soooo overrated.

yeah, apple lossless are so much better... :D

if you like propriety formats that cost money to produce, yea

if you like open standards that fees cannot be imposed on, no

for me, at least, it's really hard to tell ... though i will say, the uber-high and uber-low end sound much different depending on file quality. the best example from Ae would be the last two minutes of 'augmatic disport'; on my vinyl, the bass comes through loud and clear; on a 320kbps mp3, it's like a huge chunk of the song is missing.

flac is bullshit (unless you're archiving your own material). If you have a 320kbps or a V0 VBR there's no audible difference in sound quality at all, it's all holistic shite.

EDIT: caveat'd.

actually there is a audible difference, because right up to the highest .5hz frequency of CD frequency range is clearly audible.

if you're a bat.

or a cat

or someone listening to the music^H^H^H^H^H noise of Merzbow