Which audio codec are you people using when ripping cd's? I used wav but the size made it not really fitting on my phone (60GB) I switched to FLAC. Many people I talked to said that CD's just use mp3 codecs in the First place.
There seems to be a lot of misconceptions in the music community regarding the differences between 320kbps mp3 and FLAC format. It is true that 320kbps is technically as good as FLAC, but there are other reasons to get music in a lossless format.
Hearing the difference now isn’t the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is ‘lossy’. What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA – it’s about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don’t want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.
I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrange…well don’t get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren’t stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you’ll be glad you did.
Should have stored them in the freezer. That’s what I did, and I can still enjoy my 128kbps weird al mp3s from before y2k. Had a backup on CD in my attic, and tried it recently just for kicks… got an earful of actual mud. Took me a couple hours to get it all out of there with windex and qtips, but at least I can hear again.
Many people I talked to said that CD's just use mp3 codecs in the first place.
That may be partly true for non-original CDs made out of MP3 files via CD burner, but original CDs should not be "crippled" like that.
I think this debate is kind of late, at least a decade late. FLAC has clearly won; it is available everywhere and shall stay that way thanks to its open-source nature. With increasingly cheaper physical storage (SSD, HDD) and more affordable cloud storage, I think FLAC's longevity aspect just beats everything, even though there may be other codecs such as Opus which may provide a better compression/quality ratio.
But if you only care about lossless, just go with FLAC and enjoy your tunes. ;-)
It’s worth keeping everything archived somewhere in FLAC if you care about it, because that’s lossless and you can convert it to newer cooler formats in the future. Opus is currently the best lossy audio codec - if you need space on your phone, convert an additional ~128kbps Opus copy of your library for transparent quality and super small filesize.
Don’t believe anyone trying to sell you on the idea that FLAC sounds better than an appropriately compressed (read: transparent) lossy format: Opus ~128-160kbps, MP3 ‘V0’ (~215kbps), MP3 320kbps, AAC ~150kbps.
Check the “Music encoding quality” table on this page for more info on Opus bitrates and how they relate to transparency.
Thanks for the information and table of contents to look at. I will maybe switch the content of my personal audio library for my Phone to Opus. Will just take some time for ffmpeg to convert it.
Don’t believe anyone trying to sell you on the idea that FLAC sounds better than an appropriately compressed (read: transparent) lossy format: Opus ~128-160kbps, MP3 ‘V0’ (~215kbps), MP3 320kbps, AAC ~150kbps.
Only partly true. If the rest of the chain is of decent quality (hi-res sound card, proper cables, quality headphones/speakers/monitors), then the difference between lossless and lossy is apparent to a trained ear. Especially the lack of dynamics and space is typical of lossy formats.
Personally, I never understood why I would want to listen to anything but lossless in the first place. I never really had to worry about storage space too much for my music to consider converting it to a lossy format. I am more of a user who likes to archive stuff; therefore, lossless and FLAC are the only future-proof ways if you want to listen to your files in the next 25 years or so.
I'm archiving my music but listening to them on my Phone with like 100€ Bluetooth headphones (which use ACC 128kbit). Doesn't really help the quality even when it is Flac.
Can you post an ABX test of you detecting lossless and lossy files? It’s all fun and games to talk about how $400 cables and “trained ears” are required to tell the difference, but when it comes time to do ABX testing people seem to vanish.
It is not about the price. You can buy great stuff for $500 altogether, and you can only splash $500 for one piece of a sound chain, which was not really necessary in the first place (often people buy super expensive headphones and then listen on a cheap Android phone some 128 kbps MP3s - amazing, really!). It is all about balance. Personally, I do not aim for hi-end sound equipment, but I have also heard enough of the spectrum that I know I will not be satisfied with low-end devices.
That's why I settled for mid-tier offerings, and I am happy with my setup, knowing fully well that if anything goes bad, at least I will be able to replace it without taking a loan. After all, if you want to go hi-end, then you better have the cash to stay hi-end when necessary, and I have plenty of other hobbies to splash too much on sound.
I agree - especially in the audio world, you hit diminishing returns very fast on audio equipment.
This is still not an ABX test though. Placebo effect is very real in audio, and unless you’re using a dedicated ABX test it’s easy to claim that you are just “better trained” than everyone else. Above all else, the most important factor for determining “audio quality” is just volume. Setting up a proper test with exact volume matching is vital, otherwise everyone always picks the track that sounds slightly louder.
If you do not even have high-end audio equipment but can tell the difference between a lossless and (transparent) lossy format, then it should not be difficult to perform an ABX test and confirm this. If you do not know what sort of ABX tests can be used for this task, it makes me wonder how you’ve come to this conclusion about your ears and your equipment in the past. The level of precision needed to definitively pick a lossless codec over a transparent lossy codec requires such extensive test setups in order to be statistically significant.
If anyone else reading wants to have some fun with a not-airtight ABX test, try your ears on these tests. It’s easy to handwave something like this due to it living in-browser and using hand-picked songs, but it’s still a fun experiment to try.
While it depends on a number of variables; such as your own personal preferences and quality of the audio hardware you’re using; FLAC is indeed better. Given appropriate tuning and hardware, you don’t need a trained ear to hear the difference.
It is however possible to prefer compressed music. In fact, I myself tend to be fine with anything down to 128kbps MP3 or comparable compression. That doesn’t mean I do not notice it; but it’s “tolerable” in quality. I grew up around the late stages of Analog FM radio; so anything that can manage to sound better than THAT is actually good! For reference you were lucky to pick up what is equivalent to a 96kbps MP3 if you had optimal signal strength and things very quickly devolved to a staticky 8kbps experience if you had very minimal signal.
For storing music on-the-go; I actually recommend considering 192kbps MP3 if you don’t mind the “Lossy” sound and just wanna cram as much music as possible onto storage without it sounding absolutely terrible.
If “Lossy” is just not an acceptable option for your tender ears; I recommend Ogg Vorbis (Android & all of it’s variants) at standard bitrates or AAC (Apple) depending on your mobile device OS.
If you’re willing to carry around a limited library/playlist and want to emphasize quality; I can’t recommend FLAC enough.
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