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Is the whole flac thing overrated in anyone else's opinion? I was struggling to get some music I DL'd in flac working...I couldn't get any of the fucking quicktime plugins to work (I have an ipod and so use itunes to organize my music...it would've been convenient). I gave up and tried using other programs to at least give it a listen for a noticeable difference.
I have a Creative X-fi sound card and an old but decent 4.1 Altec Lansing speaker system...and I noticed virtually NO difference between mp3 and flac versions of the same song.
There is a SLIGHT difference...the sound does seem a bit more full and rich at times, but it's not worth the gi-fucking-normous file sizes.
Does anyone else share this feeling, or was it possibly my software (I was using VLC of all things...-___- )?
   
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I think the high bitrate mp3's are probably similar enough that you won't be able to discern the difference with your current system. IMO flac is something pushed around by audiophiles for their more specialised systems.
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What rate were you using for the mp3s?
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Normally, I would say that high rate mp3 is good enough. If you have an amazing sound system though, then you will definitely notice a difference. But for casual, and not obsessive music listening (i.e. listening to flac just because the number is so much higher!), then I'd say that it isn't worth it. Then again, it usually depends on the song or genre.
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To really notice advantage of FLAC: 1. Use properly configured foobar or winamp 2. Use a real source. There are some good USB DACs. For example: Stello DA100 or Benchmark DAC1 USB. 3a. Use a nice set of speakers + amplifier (either integrated or pre+power combo), i.e., not something designed for computers. 3b. Alternatively, use good headphones + amplifier.
In a typical computer setup such as yours, FLAC won't make much difference since the music file won't be the bottleneck.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
I think mp3 encoded at 192kbps with the newest Lame encoder sounds very close to loseless. Even audiophiles might not be able to tell it apart. aac sounds better than mp3 at the same bitrate though.
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you can use flac to create identical copy of the original cd
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Hmm...yeah, most of the mp3s I tried comparing were 192kbps.
I have a decent set of headphones...nothing pro, so I'll try comparing them through there as well.
zgl, can you explain what you mean by real source? What is a USB DAC?
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i doubt there is noticeable difference, its like playing at 60fps and 100fps, can't be detected by human.
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51386 Posts
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On April 18 2009 12:54 sexsexpussyhair wrote: i doubt there is noticeable difference, its like playing at 60fps and 100fps, can't be detected by human.
You are very misinformed the human eye can sense the difference between 60 fps and 100 fps. Please stop spreading this rumor.
http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm
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mp3 is loosy it throws away a ton of info that is given that most people and sets up wont be able to hear or produce FLAC is a lossless it keeps all quality thus size at similar bitrates size is quite different
i just use AAC myself encoding though a cmd line death weeks with neroAAC great size and a ton better quality then mp3 although i can't really tell unless im using my higher quality headphones
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On April 18 2009 13:04 crabsman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2009 12:54 sexsexpussyhair wrote: i doubt there is noticeable difference, its like playing at 60fps and 100fps, can't be detected by human. You are very misinformed the human eye can sense the difference between 60 fps and 100 fps. Please stop spreading this rumor. http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm =p but most monitors can't display over 60.
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I agree with zgl. FLAC won't make a difference unless the rest of your gear can convey the differences. Of course, a good/musical ear will help differentiate between lossless and lossy formats, so you may not hear the different regardless of your rig.
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mp3 is one of the worst lossly formats AAC is much better in keeping quality When i rip music i do full lossless .wav and then transcode into AAC making a mp3 ish sized file but smaller with much high quality i don't have a rig to make use of a lossless files so i just do the best loosy fomart there is
although you can do aac in lossless (it's file size is just a wedge smaller then flac) but i dont
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lossless formats are useless unless your some weird audiophile who has super high end hardware and insists they can tell the difference. other wise 320kbps mp3 or VBR mp3s are fine.
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I don't have many 320kbps mp3s...most are around 192-256...or VBR.
btw guys...it's lossy vs lossless. Not loosy or lossly or whatever else...
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Yup, most people even with high end hardware cannot tell the difference between 256-320kbps and flac/lossless, 192 though is easier to tell. However I find when possible people rather listen to lossless just knowing they will not be missing out on anything. After all why listen to lower quality if storage space is not an issue, $80-$100 for 1 terabyte.
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lossless is great for certain applications, just make sure you have one of those applications (also FLAC is the best lossless format out there, despite some having fractionally better compression ratios)
if not, v0 all the way
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v0 and v2 all the way. I don't have room for those FLACs
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Also, i went nuts installing over 5 plugins trying to play flac. Almost gave up until i found out vlc can play it inherently.
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FLAC is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better quality. anyone who says otherwise doesnt have the ear to appreciate it. test for yourself. flacs are much larger files however.. but the difference is noticeable to anyone with a good ear.
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On April 18 2009 12:54 sexsexpussyhair wrote:i doubt there is noticeable difference, its like playing at 60fps and 100fps, can't be detected by human. it so can. have you ever used a CRT with 60/75/85/100/120 Hz refresh rates? I can tell the difference between ALL of them.
100/120 Hz counterstrike FTW
(which leads to 120 Hz starcraft, which might be what they use in PL/MSL/OSL?)
as for mp3 vs flac, I'm an audiophile (not necessarily with all the gear though), and i tweak my sound heavily to have it sound exactly the way I want it.. and I still cannot tell the difference between a well-encoded 192+ kbps VBR/CBR MP3 and FLAC. i have various sets of Sennheiser headphones and earbuds.
I use Winamp with DFX on an integrated sound card (lol) and Rockbox on my Sansa with bass/treble way high (+12-16 dB each).
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On April 18 2009 14:18 rwong48 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2009 12:54 sexsexpussyhair wrote:i doubt there is noticeable difference, its like playing at 60fps and 100fps, can't be detected by human. it so can. have you ever used a CRT with 60/75/85/100/120 Hz refresh rates? I can tell the difference between ALL of them. 100/120 Hz counterstrike FTW (which leads to 120 Hz starcraft, which might be what they use in PL/MSL/OSL?) as for mp3 vs flac, I'm an audiophile (not necessarily with all the gear though), and i tweak my sound heavily to have it sound exactly the way I want it.. and I still cannot tell the difference between a well-encoded 192+ kbps VBR/CBR MP3 and FLAC. i have various sets of Sennheiser headphones and earbuds. I use Winamp with DFX on an integrated sound card (lol) and Rockbox on my Sansa with bass/treble way high (+12-16 dB each).
I think the reason why you won't be able to is because of your setup.
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use something like vlc, foobar, beatport sync for flac. lke others said it comes down to your hardware and what your listening abilities are, as to whether the quality of encoding will matter. foobar supports abx testing so you can see what what your limit is. I keep stuff mostly V0 (~256kpbs variable) and i can only very rarely hear a difference between that and lossless with my equation rp21s. The real reason to keep in lossless is so you can rerip into whatever you want at any time.
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ogg is definitely better than mp3 right now in terms of space efficiency...
My cowon d2 supports both flac and ogg, but in a portable setup flac isn't really worth it: hp out is not that great, noisy listening environment, etc. etc.
What flac is useful for is archival purposes. You rip a cd to flac you don't have to worry about reencoding issues in the future, when you upgrade your system. It's gonna be identical quality to the original cd.
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On April 18 2009 14:12 omninmo wrote: FLAC is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better quality. anyone who says otherwise doesnt have the ear to appreciate it. test for yourself. flacs are much larger files however.. but the difference is noticeable to anyone with a good ear. I'm sure it is...but like everyone else has said...without the hardware to make use of that, you won't be able to tell the difference.
My hardware is bottlenecking it, and I don't have the money, nor a good reason to go out and purchase a sound system that can make use of flac.
So...
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On April 18 2009 13:37 benjammin wrote: lossless is great for certain applications, just make sure you have one of those applications (also FLAC is the best lossless format out there, despite some having fractionally better compression ratios)
if not, v0 all the way Lol its lossless as long as it plays in terms of quality it's all the same.
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On April 18 2009 14:22 FirstProbe wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2009 14:18 rwong48 wrote:On April 18 2009 12:54 sexsexpussyhair wrote:i doubt there is noticeable difference, its like playing at 60fps and 100fps, can't be detected by human. it so can. have you ever used a CRT with 60/75/85/100/120 Hz refresh rates? I can tell the difference between ALL of them. 100/120 Hz counterstrike FTW (which leads to 120 Hz starcraft, which might be what they use in PL/MSL/OSL?) as for mp3 vs flac, I'm an audiophile (not necessarily with all the gear though), and i tweak my sound heavily to have it sound exactly the way I want it.. and I still cannot tell the difference between a well-encoded 192+ kbps VBR/CBR MP3 and FLAC. i have various sets of Sennheiser headphones and earbuds. I use Winamp with DFX on an integrated sound card (lol) and Rockbox on my Sansa with bass/treble way high (+12-16 dB each). I think the reason why you won't be able to is because of your setup. Lol 120hz sc you do know sc doesn't acutlly display any frames over 23.793? or something like that.
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On April 18 2009 15:27 IzzyCraft wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2009 13:37 benjammin wrote: lossless is great for certain applications, just make sure you have one of those applications (also FLAC is the best lossless format out there, despite some having fractionally better compression ratios)
if not, v0 all the way Lol its lossless as long as it plays in terms of quality it's all the same.
uh, what?
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If you can't hear the difference, use AAC. Some people can, some people can't. There isn't a clear-cut answer.
But seriously, for lossy codecs, AAC or even Vorbis is better than MP3.
It's kind of like comparing jpg to png. Both viewed at resolution, you probably won't notice the difference, but if you magnify them, the differences can be rather striking.
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On April 18 2009 15:27 IzzyCraft wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2009 13:37 benjammin wrote: lossless is great for certain applications, just make sure you have one of those applications (also FLAC is the best lossless format out there, despite some having fractionally better compression ratios)
if not, v0 all the way Lol its lossless as long as it plays in terms of quality it's all the same. I guess he means FLAC is widely supported and requires minimal CPU usage for playback.
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jpg would be loosy and png would be lossless in that.
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On April 18 2009 16:14 IzzyCraft wrote: jpg would be loosy and png would be lossless in that.
Yeah, like MP3 is lossy and FLAC is lossless.
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jpg is great as long as you don't have to zoom in to the image lol
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i don't know if it's worth to encode random pop music with flac. i suggest encoding at least classical music with flac or if you want to build a digital archiv of all your music cd's flac would be better. i encode all cd's in flac btw.
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One question though...how do you split songs in flac or whatever?
I've DL'd many (more than a couple dozen) albums in flac format, and they come all in one big .flac file and some kind of .cue file. I can play the flac file just fine in VLC and whatnot, but it's all the tracks of the album packed together.
What am I supposed to do with that?
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Split it? Or idk maybe the cue file can be read in Foobar as separate songs.
128 v 256/320k mp3 = obvious difference 320k v Lossless = not so much.
The only difference I can think of is in the upper spectrum of sound. If you're older, there's a chance you won't be able to hear it in the first place. Even if you CAN hear, you're going to need balls-to-the-walls expensive sound devices (nice sound card, dedicated amp, ~$200+ headphones, etc) to appreciate it.
I'm going to a headphone store tomorrow to buy my first nice headphones, hopefully =D
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Way overrated imo
320kbps or v0 for me please
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On April 18 2009 17:31 PH wrote: One question though...how do you split songs in flac or whatever?
I've DL'd many (more than a couple dozen) albums in flac format, and they come all in one big .flac file and some kind of .cue file. I can play the flac file just fine in VLC and whatnot, but it's all the tracks of the album packed together.
What am I supposed to do with that? You need a cue splitter (I use medieval) http://www.medieval.it/content/view/28/70/
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99% of everyone should just use mp3. You either don't have the proper hardware/software to tell the difference can't even tell anyways don't listen to the kinds of music where it will even matter don't have the drive space to store the x3 size files don't have the software to convert/rip/burn/play/trade these files types
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