Can you even tell the difference between flac and mp3 320...

Can you even tell the difference between flac and mp3 320? I'm pretty sure you can't and that you just want to feel superior.

with the right equipment you can, I can clearly tell the difference

It depends on the song really. Songs with higher dynamic range benefit more from flac than others.

There isn't a big difference, unless you have $10 grand speakers

yes. some people have better hearing than others m8, just accept it, most people can't even tell a bass apart.

It doesn't matter if I can. Storing lossy formats long-term is fucking stupid when GBs are this cheap.

by that logic storing is fucking stupid if broadband is cheaper, given internet is treated as a fixed cost for most it doesn't make economic sense to invest in storage capacity if you can listen to music online for free

I realize new sites keep coming, but if what.cd can die, anything can die.
If you love something, I think having your own archive only makes sense.
Like current UHD Blu Rays, sure you can download them now in less than a minute, but only through torrents while they have seeds.
Just because it exists, doesn't mean your connection speed makes it always easily accessible.

But that is neither the premise implied (best use of available resources) nor the topic at hand (music). I'm sure you can find complete albums even on youtube.

The two are not comparable. Broadband is not necessarily reliable or fast enough to stream a lossless file.

Though, I will point out, I currently do stream lossless files, so there's that.

You can find albums on YouTube but if you own a mediocre pair of headphones, you can tell the difference between that and even low-quality Spotify. At that point, it's a matter of whether or not you want to listen to shitty quality.

Archive flac, carry mp3 320.

This. I regret having 128 mp3 files. I started collecting them when space was important.

For many yes, not all.
I used UHD Blu rays to as an example to show speed doesn't matter 100GB < a minute.
The issue can be scarcity.
If you want to listen to high bitrate opus quality music on youtube, that's fine while it's there.
The problem is you are relying on someone else to have it readily available for you.

burn music cd from loss{less,y} files and play on a good stereo.
checkmate atheists.

This. If you have 10 dollar skullcandy earbuds it doesn't make a difference. If you have a DAC and nice pair of headphones, it sounds like the difference between a 480p and a 1080p video.

ITT: retards.

The correct answer is no but it can be heard if you set up the right conditions for it:

Really young listener
music with fairly high +20KHz content
listen really loudly

needs to be done in a double blind format

If you truly love something then you buy the blu-rays, if your main concern is preservation of data you store it on a cloud

I use flac but only for archiving: Itranscode everything to OPUS 64kbps but I want to be able to transcode everything to a new better format in 10 years.

>if your main concern is preservation of data you store it on a cloud
It could be a good solution.
You only rely on the cloud still being there 15 years from now, but no longer have to worry about your own media working 15 years from now.
I'd do both.

>ITT: retards.
>music with fairly high +20KHz content
thanks for proving though

You humans are all the same.

>unironically using a 24-year-old codec

this

on my portable music player I've got only 128GB storage so there's no way fitting all my 10k+ flac songs I'd like to shuffle through daily which is why I convert

>t-that was a joke, y-you silly
yeah, nice try

You got me!

>music with fairly high +20KHz content
Pretty sure we're talking 44.1 kHz audio here.

As in, those frequencies are literally not there.

Yes I can. I've done blind ab tests before. You have to have good ears and you have to listen for the more background details to tell the difference but it is possible. That's not the reason I use flacs though, I use them so I can reencode my music for various mobile devices without quality loss.

Wasn't there some sort of prize out there for people who could demonstrate they can tell between FLAC and something else?

Moved onto OGG over MP3, I can.notice a diffrence there, but Flac over Ogg q8 is deprecating for me.

But my ears are fucked. I do use live headphones with a DAC and its great.

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.

I can. Can you?

>Pretty sure we're talking 44.1 kHz audio here
not really since that is actually one of the downsides of mp3. when you downsample the original digital studio record all the noise or artifacts with frequencies above 22.05kHz that were picked up by the equipment get distributed into the original spectrum of the music because aliasing occurs. sampling the record at 96kHz+ reduces the influence of aliasing.

>As in, those frequencies are literally not there.
those frequencies are not there at their initial spectrum but their copies (aliases) are present in the audible frequency range as they are superimposed to the actual music when they downsample the original wave file to 44.kHz to burn it to a CD for instance.

It's not for the audible difference. It's for preventing the audible difference that comes from lossy to lossy transcodes.

can't tell if trolling but yeah the artifacts are reasonably noticeable on a decent system when you are testing for it, or especially when you are soloing just the artifacts.

Granted, in reality it blends into the song and you won't hardly notice it even if you're paying attention. Anyone who tries to argue differently is just a pretentious fuck

>sauce: produce/mix/master my own shit

ogg is a container, you're either using Vorbis or Opus for your codec.

Well, Vorbis

>MP3
>not AAC

>if you can listen to music online for free

Except you can't. Spotify doesn't have everything. Itunes doesn't have everything. Youtube doesn't have everything.

Hydrogenaudio has thoroughly researched this debate. The tl;dr is that under normal listening conditions nobody will be able to tell the difference in a blind test but there are a few very specific "killer samples" which can be blind tested with consistency which do not reflect everyday music listening.
192kbps mp3 is the minimum at which you won't be able to tell a difference under normal listening conditions. The threshold for Opus is likely far lower.

Showing your ignorance? 16/44 Music goes up to 22kHz.
It is.

Once again, retards showing their lack of knowledge and pretending to know about the topic at hand.

>m4a

kek

Close source trash

Yes I do, sir

Open source AAC encoders exist. They just suck because freetards can't program.

This guy gets it. You archive lossless and use lossy on your phone/pmp, but keep the lossless for when superior lossy formats come out in the future so you can encode to those from lossless.

pretty sure he (or you, if you were the poster) wasn't specifically referring to music with high content within the 20-22kHz range but instead, simply higher than half the sampling rate.

Well memed, M'Lord. I had a good laugh.

>FLAC on desktop
>AAC on phone

It's the best solution.

>AAC
>not Opus
vomit

I download lossless albums and encode them to 128kbps Opus. I delete the lossless files afterwards and don't give a fug. I could go even lower, say 96kbps but haven't bothered

Why would you use an inferior codec deliberately?

kek

Yes, all modern lossy codecs are transparent at high bitrates. Killer-samples exist, but 1dB SPL pre-echo on 1 track out of tens of thousands doesn't really bother non-autistic people.

Is .wav the highest quality digital audio format there is? Because it's by definition uncompressed?

WAV is just as high quality as FLAC or ALAC

I don't think FLACs main advantage lies in the listening experience per se, but in its ability to not suffer generational loss when editing said clip multiple times over its lifespan on the internet.

No i can't, but I believe it has to do with the lack of audio output equipment i have

But flac is a compression method?

Lossless compression.

This triggers the autist.

it is a digital compression method specifically for audio files just like deflate or bzip2 is for compressing regular files into zips

>most people can't even tell a bass apart.
that's horrible

You can't. Anybody in this thread who says they can easily are liars, don't believe them. As others have mentioned the only good reason to use FLAC is archive purposes. By quality they are indistinguishable.

I have obscure CDs in perfect condition laying around that can't be found anywhere on any public or private tracker and I personally rip them into AAC.

Feels good.

Assuming both come from a lossless source... Either is fine. People claiming to hear a noticeable difference are either using bad rips. 128upscales or having a placebo effect.

With high end equipment there still isn't a difference. Take audiophiles with a grain of salt.

MP3 - just like a JPEG with compression factor, the higher the compression the worst it gets. 320 quality is great - 64 on the other hand is only good for voice recording, for music it sucks. If I had to pick, I'd go with both FLAC and Mp3 @ 320. Nothing less though. Course if hdd space was no object, you could just rip to .wav format. perfect 1:1 copy then, zero compression used at all. (yes flac uses compression even though it's lossless)

No one cares about your norwegian yodeling anyway so it evens out

Store on CDs or dvds and the price of space doesn't even need to be in the conversation.

.wav is to audio what .bmp is to images

kinda off topic, but you guys notice how some older shows dvd rips with audio at 128 - 64 bitrate sound loud and clear even at low volume when some newer stuff at the same audio rate sound low and you gotta crack up the volume to hear it at all?

If I had to guess the volume difference is probably unrelated to the bitrate

I can't tell the difference, but it's nice habing a future proof collection and being able to transcode to whatever format I like.
Especially when it's so easy to rip FLACs from Tidal or Deezer these days.

You see shit like this on occasion.

I think the difference is more 1440p to 2160p

I deliberately converted all FLAC in my collection to AAC because it's a fucking meme.

Your transcoded AAC collection would be garbage if you didn't start off with that meme

The sad thing is that Sup Forumsfags on the whole forget that everything has a purpose, and that even 128 even has a purpose.
>Archive everything in FLAC
>Need to sync my music on my server to my smartphone.
>convert it to 320 so I can actually fit the goddamn music on my phone.

It started off of CD Audio in the first place, so the meme remains as such.

No, thanks to your initial use of a lossy format you got perfect CD to AAC rip instead of an MP3 to AAC rip that you'd have had you decided to not initially go lossless and then switch to AAC.

I can now listen to my music literally on any device without worrying about conversion. Feels good man.
t.

Yup, I can.

Flac compresses much better to 90 or 140kbit Opus.

*initial use of a lossless format

>MP3 to AAC
Why would I do that?

320kbit MP3 is pointless on a phone, use like 90kbit Opus. Maybe 140kbit if you may stream to a stereo or something at times.

But yep, it is indeed good to have a FLAC repository and then just quickly pull all the songs you currently want as Opus from there.

Me too, I have my FLAC library listening at home and transcodes and my opus library for portable devices.

/thread

Most people don't have the equipment to be able to tell the difference.

did you make the flac FROM the mp3? because if you did that would be cheating.

I can, and that makes me a better person than you.

I too own some CDs of which less than 20 were released and I rip them into 128kbps mp3 and convert them to flac for the best listening experience and to regain what was lost during the mp3 compression

however I do share them on some of the most exclusive private sites you cant even imagine to exist

Is this even a question, MP3 kinda just sucks as a whole, now if were talkin' wav vs flac were in at least at a ballpark.

There is literally no difference in the audio from a WAV and a FLAC.

Generally, no. People who claim otherwise always get outed in a blind test, unless perhaps for very particular samples. 320 is fully transparent, deal with it.
That said, FLAC is not for transparency but for archival. Unless you have no HDD space whatsoever I don't see why you would deal with lossy formats.

>Can you even tell the difference
it doesn't even matter.

flac is lossless, mp3 is lossy so flac is better. it's that simple.

if you have a flac then you can always make a mp3 file later. and you can also make opus files or aac files or what else you may prefer.

if you have a mp3 then you've got a lossy file and you'll get even more losses if you make a aac file for your portable device.

What's the best program for converting audio in batch?

sh and ffmpeg

Why Ian Tidal the only company streaming lossless? It’s not worth $20 a month.
>but meh badwidth.
If YouTube can stream 4K video then companies can stream lossless audio.

>streaming lossless
full retard

So when it comes to quality which is better WAV or FLAC? Also how about AIFF vs WAV?

sh?

ALAC

Do any of you guys use DSD format?