Mp3, flac or ??

What is actually good for my music? Are differences noticeable?

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listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm
abx.digitalfeed.net/list.lame.html
git.xiph.org/?p=flac.git;a=commit;h=bb750734287a4079ca3de9ff85c71cc62160ac46
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/a priori
hardwarezone.com.sg/blog-so-you-think-you-have-golden-ears
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

wav best.

OP has good taste

4kb amr-nb

MIDI

lossless format for storing music on your server/home pc.
opus, ogg or mp3 for putting them on you're smartphone/portable media player.

320kbps mp3, unless you like to pretend that the minor difference with flac is worth the extra disk space

for music that you want to be extremely high quality, your favorite songs and albums, get FLAC, for other stuff, stuff you don't listen to that often, 320kbps.

FLAC and Opus are the only formats you'll need.

a good first generation encode to mp3, aac, whatever fad format of the decade is pretty much transparant. though I find the bitrate has to be pretty high on large speakers.

there's several problems with this. first you have no way of guaranteeing that the encode is actually good. I remember buying some songs on itunes which were horribly compressed. a complete ripoff. streaming services also tend to have way too low bitrates.
second, you may need to change the format into another one to store on some mobile device, upload or whatever. re-encoding lossy files amplifies the errors through generational loss. so a file that was transparent might become bad.

all in all the extra storage space for flac is not that much, and you're guaranteed for it to have no flaws, even if it is overkill.

Thanks anons

Flac if you have enough space available.
Opus if you go lossy, but don't care about compatibility.
Aac if you care about space and compatibility.
See listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm

Flac a best. If you require compression, use ogg vorbis.

flac primarily and stored on your archiving server, opus converted from your archived flacs in case storage on the device you want to listen to your music on is a problem. never convert from lossy.

collect everything in FLAC (or other lossless format)

When you need parts of your collection somewhere else, but you don't care about quality, convert to MP3 or whatever. I've been doing it this way for over ten years now; about 30% or so of my entire collection is in both FLAC and MP3, the rest is in FLAC only. I only ever convert a directory once (when needed), store the conversion, then copy whichever version I need later on per circumstances. Total music collection is about 10 TB, about 1 TB of that (or less) is MP3 duplicates (virtually all @320). Perfect compromise. I always have the original lossless as go-to for listening, sampling, conversion, etc. Primarily I collect in 24-bit whenever possible, so most of my down-conversions were for road-trips or camping when 16-bit MP3 let me pack a 32 or 64 GB flash drive with 3x or 5x more music. Should there ever be a superior format to FLAC (as in, more than 30%-50% reduction in space and remaining lossless, for example), I can convert my entire FLAC collection to the new format.

Heed my words, grasshopper. This is The Way.

FLAC for storing and creating more compressed copies of.
MP3 V0 for portable devices and such.
An MP3 file with a constant bitrate of 192 kbps will sound almost the same if not the same as FLAC. V0 will be more than adequate for listening. MP3 is also a very well supported format. You could probably reduce the file sizes by using better codecs like Opus or Ogg Vorbis.

Flac for production or if you have professional hardware or because you have ton of space to use.
Opus or Ogg Vorbis for casual use.

FLAC for home PC, with obscure albums in MP3 (when there is not FLAC available). And for phones opus.

Not to mention 1000x1000 px album covers (not embedded) and logs for every album

>flac for production
uncompressed wav is for production nigga

>And for phones opus
care to elaborate?

Stop being a stupid, lying nigger. If you require something to be in uncompressed wav, you convert to it from FLAC.

>he doesn't know what "lossless" means

Aac

>Do you want to keep your music long-term?
FLAC

>Do you only want to listen to an album for a few months then delete it?
MP3

>Are differences noticeable?
No, if you use a recent version of LAME and sufficiently high bitrate; >=192kbps

opus 128kbps sounds almost the same as lossless and MP3 320. So for on the go, where storage is limited, opus is the best choice.

> If you require something to be in uncompressed wav, you convert to it from FLAC.
For production you need uncompressed wav, so what I said was true. Try to think before you post something on the internet.

this

>doesn't know about rotational velocidensity

>16-bit MP3
Protip: MP3 doesn't have sampling depth

otherwise solid post

Excellent taste indeed. Mariya Takeuchi is elder god tier.

>For production you need uncompressed wav, so what I said was true.
No it's not, you're a dumb nigger with half-knowledge like so many others on gee.

DAWs today can work with FLAC.

Flac is lossless and take less space than wav, sure it needs more power to sue it compared to wav but it's not a problem in 2018.

haha yes I also click on my youtube recommendations excellent taste my fellow redditor

* use

>it's not a problem in 2018.
yes it is you dont want to waste time compressing/decompressing it while you're working with it, it's not like hard disk space is an issue

It's literally instant on every post 2005 home computer.
We are not editing wav on a raspberry pi.

>Are differences noticeable?
Not by humans (that is between a lossy format like 320 kbps MP3s and FLAC, WAV).
abx.digitalfeed.net/list.lame.html

Interesting. My bad, I guess. It's been over a year since my last conversion, Father. Lot me confess my sins ....

It's kind of a legacy habit. 24-bit used to be hard to find. I generally would downsample 24-bit to 16-bit/44 and then convert that to MP3. Just on the assumption that I would be converting a CD quality file to MP3 and that MP3 couldn't handle a 24 bit file conversion.

Memory is foggy after a decade, but I think I developed that method because I had trouble converting 24-bit direct to MP3. Seems that might have been a software failing at the time.

I stand corrected. Thank you.

Depends on your headphones/ speakers. As you get better equipment FLACs are going to start to sound better, not by a noticeable amount but you will miss it when it's gone

128k aac from youtube

24bit FLAC really necessary?

plastic looooooohoooooove

Ah, look sonny. I spent almost 15 years recording music across North America and Europe. Live shows, clubs and upscale venues, studio, ad hoc in cafes and the kitchens of friends and musicians. I then took those recordings and worked with audio engineers to get that music played, for commercial production, artist archives and private collections.

You are so fucking full of shit that you could clog up the entire sewer system of New York City for the remainder of 2018. My suggestion is that you insert your mouth up your anus and blow your brains out with your next bowel surge, you fucking know-nothing turd smear.

Necessary? No.

Nice to have? Yes. Very nice.

you seem upset

>what are compressors

>t's literally instant on every post 2005 home computer.
no its not

AAC or MP3. Anything beyond that is for faggots

>Ah, look sonny. I spent almost 15 years recording music across North America and Europe. Live shows, clubs and upscale venues, studio, ad hoc in cafes and the kitchens of friends and musicians. I then took those recordings and worked with audio engineers to get that music played, for commercial production, artist archives and private collections.
I'm really impressed

FLAC for archiving
AAC for portable devices and "music consuming"
MP3 if your portable device is 20 yrs old

>Opus
end the opus meme already. It makes sense for streaming.

>Should there ever be a superior format to FLAC (as in, more than 30%-50% reduction in space and remaining lossless, for example), I can convert my entire FLAC collection to the new format.
That's the way to go. I've a script which uses ffmpeg's loudnorm with
loudnorm=I=-18.0:LRA=20.0:TP=-0.50
so it's not as aggressive as ebur128, nor as aggressive as other ancient techniques (mp3gain, v1 and v2) yet it yields similar results (but better ones and more true to the original). Spotify still keeps it at -16 IIRC but it's too much imho, also most of the current Hi-Res releases are next to -18dBFS.
Then I usually convert to AAC, VBR ( --bandwidth 20000 --bitrate-mode 5 is overkill, --bandwidth 18000 --bitrate-mode 3 is the best transparent trade off imho, --bitrate-mode 4 if you're paranoid) and auto-import tags from FLACs during AAC generations, then I clean up the results with AtomicParsley

WAVPACK is actually MORE efficient than FLAC for archival purposes and the generations of LOSSY wavpacks which can be transformed into a LOSSLESS one have always been fascinating, but LOSSY wavpacks don't have wide support on portable devices

A word of warning: the FLAC format fucked up the way it hi-depth wavs were compressed (it didn't set a flag on compression and more importantly on decompression). The current release (FLAC 1.3.2) is STILL fucked up. You need the git version. More on this in the next post.

>mp3, aac, whatever fad format of the decade is pretty much transparant
AAC is more convenient. There's a point where HE is almost transparent too for some purposes and for some audience.

will not lying, flac is waaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy better.

you will know the difference if you have a great earphone/headphone whatever

why do you think opus is bad for storing music at 256kbps, vbr, for instance

Opus is the only alternative to AAC if you want high quality encodes but don't want to get cucked by Apple's proprietary encoder since the reference encoder is actually shown to be slightly better than AppleAAC.

It should have ended with this. This is obvious.

>>A word of warning: the FLAC format fucked up the way it hi-depth wavs were compressed (it didn't set a flag on compression and more importantly on decompression). The current release (FLAC 1.3.2) is STILL fucked up. You need the git version. More on this in the next post.

Here it is.
git.xiph.org/?p=flac.git;a=commit;h=bb750734287a4079ca3de9ff85c71cc62160ac46

>for storing
don't use a lossy codec for storing purposes. I could AT MOST consider downsampling if you got a 24bit/192kHz releases which, honestly, probably isn't needed in your case

>cucked
fdkaac is absolutely fine and it will yield better results than lame.

I don't mind if it's lossy or lossless as long as dynamic range is not butchered by mastering

ah i meant storing on a mobile phone for playback

FLAC for my favorite artists, mp3 320 for everything else. never tried exotic formats

...

lmao

anyone else think her expression looks dead and creepy as fuck?

>eyes the width of her arms
you have a problem

There is no meme, though. opus is shown to have great compression and is able to retain good quality. It works well enough on the devices that I use it for. So far the only argument I see against opus is "muh compatibility".

Why can't vinyl rips have clean rip? I always hear clicking sound

>The Opus encoder is heavily tuned for 48 kHz now and using it at 44.1 kHz will cause it to make sub-optimal decisions.

This kills the opus, right?

Opus @ 96 kbps for EVERYTHING. Not even memeing

This and also no hardware decoding. But really it's fine to use with portable devices.
No, it's a non-issue.

you're past the way of "diminishing returns" and I'd encourage you to try double-blind tests yourself with a carefully crafted vbr AAC. Chances are they'll be both perfectly transparent for you, yet the AAC will be smaller. Do an ABX.

Opus is interesting and a new beta has been released just two days ago. It's also incorrect to believe that opus is not generally suitable for music consumption in general (sometimes it's argued that if you have 44100 you always have to artificially upsample, while the technical details are different: check the devs on hydrogenaudio for more in-depth purposes). Also, opus *decoding* isn't really resource hungry (sometimes the argument that "AAC is native in smarphones" is considered). But it's not an industry standard for music consumption and it yield no benefits over AAC. None. It's a forced meme because muh Apple is bad. If you want to produce copies for music consumption and you can't be 100% sure of the target devices, AAC is your best bet. MP3 if you live in a time capsule.

>It works well enough on the devices that I use it for.
This is a good case of "It works for me®".

>This is a good case of "It works for me®".
I meant in a sense that it's compatible with the devices I use it on. The "werks for me" meme doesn't apply here.

>I meant in a sense that it's compatible with the devices I use it on. The "werks for me" meme doesn't apply here.
Quite the contrary.

So the only argument against opus is still compatibility.

>quite the contrary
"werks for me" implies unexpected behaviour in a situation that is similar enough to another situation where the thing works. It should work but it doesn't. A device that is known to be incompatible with opus not playing nice with opus is not unexpected.

320 kBs mp3 is perfectly fine

>using cbr encoding
>cutting bitrate where it's needed
>padding bitrate where it's not
kys yourself

>A device that is known to be incompatible with opus [or] not playing nice with opus is not unexpected.
and this is supposed to be an argument for a priori opus adoption?

take a load of this guy

mp3 vbr -v2

>and this is supposed to be an argument for a priori opus adoption?
Speak English, please

sadly normies are still considering 320kbps MP3 as a "golden rule" for "best quality" audio
it's not efficient (quality/space) for archival purposes
it's not efficient (quality/space) for music consumption

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori
>en.wikipedia

>implying I haven't read that already
The definition doesn't really help because of the way you used it.

>thank you for the wikipedia link, I still can't grasp it!
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/a priori
>being without examination or analysis : presumptive
>formed or conceived beforehand
no need to thank me, kid.

You'll notice if you use high end headphones.

After further analysis, I have concluded that most phones already support opus. Youtube is big enough on its own to push this format and most android phones can already use it just fine. It's just Apple that refuses to give it proper support.

That's a meme; _actually_, the shittier the headphones, the more likely you'll be able to be more affected by audio distortions.

THERE IS LITERALLY NO PERCEIVABLE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FLAC AND 320 TO AN ADULT HUMAN'S EARS. THIS HAS BEEN TESTED IN MUTIPLE STUDIES AND BACKED UP BY THE SCIENCE. STOP LYING OR FALLING FOR A PLACEBO.

Why do you think most tests compare between lossy codecs at bitrates lower than 128kbps? FLAC is useful if you want an archive that is readily-usable while still being able to save space. wav sucks for metadata and ape isn't in the category of "readily-usable" because of it's symmetric encoding.

tta > flac

hardwarezone.com.sg/blog-so-you-think-you-have-golden-ears

Please fuck off and stop shilling that shit album.

Back on Sup Forums there should be YTrec-core charts per language and genre.

most of the music i listen to i cant find higher than mp3192 kbps most of the time, this shit is placebo anyways

this picture a cute

most lossy codecs will become transparent within the 256kbps territory

In general, there's hardly a difference between everything higher than 256kbps (MP3 V0 or equivalent better) when using headphones.

However, there tends to be a difference from exactly 192kbps and 300+kbps when using good speakers. It should be noted that above 192kbps, almost all audio formats are exactly the same in quality for equal bitrates.

This.

mp3 pleb here since always, explain why I should change it all to something else, and why? Is there some good alternative to flac file sizes? Currently running about 5 gb worth of mp3 on 32gb microsd, I would probably run out of space if I were to get it all in flac.

No reason to if you're a pleb. However, if you're the type that likes to archive (not necessarily an audiophile) you would want your shit to be lossless. Generational loss is a real thing when re-encoding from lossless to lossless

>lossless to lossless
meant lossy to lossy

192k or v1 mp3 on mobile devices, flac or 320k mp3 for archive. Vorbis is OK too but barely anything except autistic shit is in that format.

Are you torrenting music on you're phone?
Are you ripping cds on you're phone?
No you silly twit. You're doing that on you're computer.
So get the flacs.
Your library will now be full of lossless files and still be relevant when that big inexpensive hifi home audio revolution comes in 2026.
And you can burn a music cd to play on that excellent deal on a vintage stereo you find in the second hand store and play it without your grandmother with the tin horn stuck in her ear asking you why it sounds so shitty, because trust me, even she will be able to tell the difference.
You can transcode your flacs to formats more suitabe to your limited storage or power devices in the meantime.
Hope that answers you're quetions. Now fuck off and stop reposting this same fucking thread three times a week. Nobody gives a fuck how awesome you thing opus is. I've got one word to repond to that, and that's "lossy". Lossy. Now fuck off.

Android music player apps don't show album arts of opus.
This is the only reason I avoid opus.

>explain why I should change it all to something else, and why?
because every other format (vorbis, AAC, Opus) is more efficient (as in: more quality for the same size)
>Is there some good alternative to flac file sizes?
Wavpack has been mentioned in the thread. You won't get much support on portable devices. Wavpacks could be both lossless and lossy. The peculiarity of lossy wavpacks is that you they can be "reconstructed" to the original lossless wavpack file, so, at least in theory, you avoid duplicating your library. Lossy wavpacks are not as efficient as other solutions anyway.

That would make it 100% hotter

Calm down your titties, everyone distinguished "archival purposes" and "music consumption purposes". Next time you jump in a thread to post your unwarranted unoriginal reply at least try to pretend you read something of it.

Noob here, could someone explain why transcoding FLAC to MP3 V0 isn't enough and why we need all these other codecs?

I mean, many audiophiles seem to agree that MP3 V0 is transparent. If so, who bother moving to Opus? Does it really save so much space that it's worth the effort?