Quality difference from mp3 rip to FLAC

or someone listening to autechre

flac is great because you can convert it to any other format without worrying about adding new artifacts. it's essentially futureproof.

http://5-against-4.blogspot.com/2008/06/bi...-challenge.html

See how good your ears really are! :angry:

128k mp3 sounds just like CD to me, so i don't care about any other shit.

Question about FLACS:

Recently I started ripping my cdrs to flac as a backup. Does the compression level of the flac file have any effect on the sound quality? I thought flac was lossless, but then, why is there seven levels of compression in my Toast program? thank you wise AE-loving flacxperts.

that compression is not to do with sound quality. It's just to do with file size (afaik).

  dangulberry said:

that compression is not to do with sound quality. It's just to do with file size (afaik).

thanks for the quick reply. But if the file size does not effect sound quality, why would anyone want to keep the file sizes big?

I truely cannot understand how anybody could listen to ANY MUSIC AT ALL at a 128bitrate. ESPECIALLY AUTECHRE!

The lowest I'll go is 160

I can absolutely tell when an mp3 is encoded at 128kbps. The mp3 will just have NO SOUL at all. You can just feel that it is a shadow of it's former self. And your ears will be left unsatiated by the tones, everything is in like a fat pancake of cruddy sound.

FLACs seem sort of silly to me because it is apparently true you can't really hear anything beyond the 320bitrange range. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt though. They may be better in some percievable way but even so it seems like overkill to me.

  Hanratty said:

  dangulberry said:

that compression is not to do with sound quality. It's just to do with file size (afaik).

 

 

thanks for the quick reply. But if the file size does not effect sound quality, why would anyone want to keep the file sizes big?

because it's faster to encode at the lower levels of compression. though still, i'm not sure why encoding speed would matter enough to anyone for them to use the lower levels of compression. but there it is.

  vodor said:

  Hanratty said:

  dangulberry said:

that compression is not to do with sound quality. It's just to do with file size (afaik).

 

 

thanks for the quick reply. But if the file size does not effect sound quality, why would anyone want to keep the file sizes big?

 

because it's faster to encode at the lower levels of compression. though still, i'm not sure why encoding speed would matter enough to anyone for them to use the lower levels of compression. but there it is.

flac is lossless, meaning if you encode it properly there is no loss of data. take a raw wav file encode it to flac decode it to wav and you have the exact same data bit for bit assuming you use a reliable program to encode/decode (official FLAC enocoder). when a music program plays a flac file it decodes it so you hear it in the same quality as a raw WAV file. the file size is smaller because it uses lossless compression, like reformating a bitmap to a png with all the same settings. the only problem that occurs is using a bad software ripper, because CD ripping is KIND OF like an analogue method of reading data, it reads it digitally, but with bad software it may not copy exactly as the CD was pressed, software such as EAC and dbpoweramp (both free as in beer) attempt to assure a perfect rip. flac is the best of the lossless compression files for a number of reasons (see hydrogen audio wiki).

  Hanratty said:

  dangulberry said:

that compression is not to do with sound quality. It's just to do with file size (afaik).

 

 

thanks for the quick reply. But if the file size does not effect sound quality, why would anyone want to keep the file sizes big?

I think they're quicker to encode and 'easier' for the software to decode - I may be wrong.

Eph love your ava.

I can't tell a difference after 192. Try this....rip a cd track as a .wav and the same song at different compressions. Put on some headphones and play them randomly.

I can hear compression at 160. 192 sounds perfect to me. Different people, different ears....

Better yet, to eliminate placebo, download foobar2000 (making sure to select the ABX comparator in the install), and try to ABX different encodings (e.g. LAME 3.97 V0, V1, ..., V5, V6) from your WAV. I'm sure many would be amazed at the results.