Is FLAC worth it?

[KeeperOfThePizza]

 Is flac really at all worth it? is there a noticeably big difference or is it minimal? I have 500watt sound system with sub. Just wondering if that format is worth it or not. Thanks!

[ViperAFK]

Someone who obviously doesn't know what he's talking about...

 

1) Beats were engineered and designed by Dr. Dre. He has a doctorate in music. What do you have?

2) Beats have 4th order low pass filter that nobody else has.

3) Beats are the most stylish on the market.

4) Beats are able to stimulate RCH (reserve capacity hearing) which means it increases the ability of the human ear to hear a wider range of frequencies, like magic.

5) Beats are iPhone® and iPod® compatible and certified.

 

Now let's see your Soundheizers or Bose match even one of those features.

[TPreston]

For something that's "so obvious" i wonder why its "so difficult" to get flac evangelists' to use ABX, Its easier to get a psychic to take the James randi million dollar challenge. You all want us to just take your word Tha you can tell the difference on your expensive audio equipment as if there's no chance that you could be wrong. You are human just like everyone else and humans are TERRIBLE at judging things like this which has been tested time and time again.

If this is so obvious fire up an abx tool and try for yourselves.

[Bi4me]

1) Beats were engineered and designed by Dr. Dre. He has a doctorate in music. What do you have?

 

:laugh:  What's the connection between a music doctor and an engineer?

 

Wait I know... NONE.

 

On topic. I have Beats by Dre. I also have a 15? headset. Tell you what. They sound the same. And to my hearing that's all that matters.

[Andre S. Veteran]

It's a proven fact that human hearing is sensitive to up to 20khz for pure test tones (sine waves). In music, higher frequencies are effectively masked for the vast majority of humans, because:

1) instruments don't output that much high freq in the first place

2) our sense of hearing is very insensitive to high freq (i.e. need to boost the volume to hear the same loudness as a lower freq tone)

3) research has repeatedly shown that louder sounds block out softer sounds (i.e. lower freqs will mask higher freqs easily)

My point was simply that 128kbps MP3 loses audible information, not that this is very significant for most people, so I'm not sure what you're counter-arguing against. 

 

If you can NEVER hear it, and you won't with age, why insist on overkill unless you really have access to so much hard disk space for archival use?

I really have access to so much hard disk space. It's not that bad really, a FLAC album is on the order of 300-500MB (depending on the source), a 320kbps MP3 album is about 190MB, so it's maybe twice as much space on average, still considerably less than a CD image. With 1TB+ drives being so cheap , nothing compels me to choose anything else than the highest quality source. I just don't see for what reason I should somehow choose the worst format that I can't tell apart from the original - saving disk space seems irrelevant.

[T3X4S]

Someone who obviously doesn't know what he's talking about...

 

1) Beats were engineered and designed by Dr. Dre. He has a doctorate in music. What do you have?

2) Beats have 4th order low pass filter that nobody else has.

3) Beats are the most stylish on the market.

4) Beats are able to stimulate RCH (reserve capacity hearing) which means it increases the ability of the human ear to hear a wider range of frequencies, like magic.

5) Beats are iPhone® and iPod® compatible and certified.

 

Now let's see your Soundheizers or Bose match even one of those features.

Your post is funny, but you really need to look outside that tiny fishbowl of yours.

LOL - I dont know what Im talking about - OK.  I wont argue with you, it will be pointless - its just because you have never heard/seen/ know about what else is out there - aka the good stuff.

This is no different than the person who thinks a Honda is the best car there is -- simply because he never drove a Rolls Royce.... but if you like the Honda - thats all that matters.

Bose & Sennheiser?  That is funny.

I thought Dre had a PhD in gangster rap -  NWA told me so.

[Active.]

Your post is funny 

Guess why...

[Ace]

AAC plays on all my devices and compared to FLAC I just can't hear the difference.

 

If something better than AAC comes along, wouldn't the lossy to lossy conversion bother you if you converted your tracks to the new format?

[Andre S. Veteran]

Someone who obviously doesn't know what he's talking about...

 

1) Beats were engineered and designed by Dr. Dre. He has a doctorate in music. What do you have?

2) Beats have 4th order low pass filter that nobody else has.

3) Beats are the most stylish on the market.

4) Beats are able to stimulate RCH (reserve capacity hearing) which means it increases the ability of the human ear to hear a wider range of frequencies, like magic.

5) Beats are iPhone® and iPod® compatible and certified.

 

Now let's see your Soundheizers or Bose match even one of those features.

Lol! I assume this was tongue-in-cheek, but just in case it wasn't:

1) Beats headphones are not engineered and designed by Dr Dre. Dr Dre's skills as a musician and producer are practically irrelevant to engineering headphones.

2) What does that even mean? What's the source?

3) Subjective and irrelevant to sound reproduction

4) Did you just make up the expression "Reserve capacity hearing"?

5) You mean they have 3.5mm jacks?

[webdev511]

Its easy when you have the answers on front of you not so easy when you don't...

 

http://mp3ornot.com/

 

Forget lossy vs lossless can you even tell the difference between 128/320 mp3 ? post your results here

Online MP3 to MP3 ABX test? Why not just do what I did and use foobar2000 with the ABX plug-in and test with music you actually listen to? That's what I did.

It's almost like when you post this you're saying "What's the matter McFly, Chicken?" You do have your position, which is cheaper & "good enough" for probably 90% of music listeners. I've opted to push things a bit farther. My money is spent, and my advice to people when they ask me about it is that for ripping & archiving lossless is a no brainer. For listening, well that depends on a lot of things, but if your archive is lossless and you decide that lossless IS for you then you don't have to go back and re-rip everything.

[123456789A]

Lol! I assume this was tongue-in-cheek, but just in case it wasn't:

1) Beats headphones are not engineered and designed by Dr Dre. Dr Dre's skills as a musician and producer are practically irrelevant to engineering headphones.

2) What does that even mean? What's the source?

3) Subjective and irrelevant to sound reproduction

4) Did you just make up the expression "Reserve capacity hearing"?

5) You mean they have 3.5mm jacks?

 

1) Dr. Dre didn't engineer them?

2) Something I heard on the Internet.

3) Things sound better when they look better.

4) Yes.

5) Yes.

[Draconian Guppy]

Someone who obviously doesn't know what he's talking about...

 

1) Beats were engineered and designed by Dr. Dre. He has a doctorate in music. What do you have?

2) Beats have 4th order low pass filter that nobody else has.

3) Beats are the most stylish on the market.

4) Beats are able to stimulate RCH (reserve capacity hearing) which means it increases the ability of the human ear to hear a wider range of frequencies, like magic.

5) Beats are iPhone® and iPod® compatible and certified.

 

Now let's see your Soundheizers or Bose match even one of those features.

Please, come post this at  http://www.head-fi.org/  and maybe get a second opinion, please?

 

Oh and:

 

[Draconian Guppy]

If you CAN hear the difference it matters if you can't, then it doesn't...  (Aside archival purposes of course)

[Active.]

If you CAN hear the difference it matters if you can't, then it doesn't... 

I can't hear the difference between AAC at a bitrate of 256kbps and lossless audio (as far as I can tell), yet it sure makes me feel better and lets me more easily enjoy the music if I am under the impression that I am listening to lossless music (doesn't really matter whether it's actually lossless or not).

[T3X4S]

Please, come post this at  http://www.head-fi.org/  and maybe get a second opinion, please?

 

Oh and:

 

I decided to go to the site you mentioned.... pretty funny.

Beats are not even in top 100 (I stopped looking after 100)

I dont want to kick a dead horse, but I think it is like a Cadiilac.  The average layman think they are pretty awesome, but people who have had the pleasure of driving a Rolls Royce feel sorry for the Cadillac lovers, and what to show them what they are missing...thats all.

Enron, I am not picking on you per se, just want you to look @ the bigger picture.  When you listen to the high-end stuff - you too will want to show the people who think the Beats by Dre are the among the best, what the best actually is. ;)

[Active.]

 Enron, I am not picking on you per se, just want you to look @ the bigger picture.   

 

For heaven's sake. Please tell me you have realized by now that he's putting you on...  :|

[+devHead Subscriber²]

Someone who obviously doesn't know what he's talking about...

 

1) Beats were engineered and designed by Dr. Dre. He has a doctorate in music. What do you have?

2) Beats have 4th order low pass filter that nobody else has.

3) Beats are the most stylish on the market.

4) Beats are able to stimulate RCH (reserve capacity hearing) which means it increases the ability of the human ear to hear a wider range of frequencies, like magic.

5) Beats are iPhone® and iPod® compatible and certified.

 

Now let's see your Soundheizers or Bose match even one of those features.

 

I'm sure you have to be making a mockery of Beats Audio headphones.  Dr. Dre has a doctorate in music?  He's an idiot rapper.

All headphones are compatible with iPhone and iPod.

 

But you must be using sarcasm.

[Luc2k]

For heaven's sake. Please tell me you have realized by now that he's putting you on...  :|

Probably 90% of Enron's replies on Neowin are (stupid) joke posts. I can't believe how some old and/or active members fall for it when he's that obvious.

[123456789A]

Probably 90% of Enron's replies on Neowin are (stupid) joke posts. I can't believe how some old and/or active members fall for it when he's that obvious.

 

Hey now, watch whose posts you are calling stupid. :(

 

Truth be told, I borrowed some Beats headphones. I think they were marginally better than those uncomfortable things that come with an iPod.

[Boo Berry]

Sennheiser or nothing for me.

[random_n]

I've done my own ABX tests some years back and I'd determined that although I could identify A vs B consistently on some tracks, I could not say which one was MP3/LAME320 or which was FLAC. I could tell between the two encodings, but not decide whether one sounded better than the other. Many of the points that were easiest to identify a difference had an absolute balls-to-the-wall dynamics compressor so the signal was approaching straight noise (ie: garbage in, garbage out).

 

I would say FLAC is worth it as an archival format; it lets you know for sure that you have 100% of the source and can transcode it to the format du jour when the need arises. Compatibility is awful though, and you'll probably need to transcode it to ALAC, WMA Lossless, AAC or MP3 to get use out of your library on anything aside from a PC or Android with custom software, and most things with batteries won't run for nearly as long while decoding FLAC.

 

I would say that MP3 encoded by LAME 3.98 or newer at 320kbps is perfect for day-to-day use since you would be hard pressed to find anything that won't play the file and it sounds perfectly fine. LAME at V0 is also excellent, but I've found some low-end devices that have a harder time seeking within the file when VBR is in use and the storage savings aren't worth that potential issue.

 

I personally don't bother with FLAC since I have enough confidence that MP3 decoding will be supported on devices I would likely buy for long enough that the doubled up library management isn't worth it, and I have proven to myself that the quality level of a good MP3 is indistinguishable from the source even when there are differences which may be heard.

[Luc2k]

Hey now, watch whose posts you are calling stupid. :(

 

Truth be told, I borrowed some Beats headphones. I think they were marginally better than those uncomfortable things that come with an iPod.

Just my opinion of most of them (the joke ones I mean), no offence intended. It's a huge site, you won't be able to please everybody and I've had my fair share of critical misses in the jokes department.

[Starbuck84]

If something better than AAC comes along, wouldn't the lossy to lossy conversion bother you if you converted your tracks to the new format?

If I can hear the difference, sure it would. But either new devices should stop offering AAC playback or something like that for me to stop using it. It was a careful decision at the time, supported by hours of listening tests and I can't see myself switching any time soon.

 

Although admittedly not the best thought, as CD's do tend to wear of the years: I always have the original CD's as an original source to rip again if needed.

[Dolan]

320kbps mp3 do the job :D

[taim]

Think how many rare music from the past that don't have original/lossless versions available anymore, in a few decades it would be nice to have continued access to has much of the source as possible with the internet it should be easier to keep things around though. 

 

P.S if you have any cds/audio that's lossless but not available on the net as lossless, we should create a service for them that someone creates that makes it available once the copyright runs out. That would be the coolest and perfectly legal, none of us would benefit from it but the future generations would.

[trieste]

 

My point was simply that 128kbps MP3 loses audible information, not that this is very significant for most people, so I'm not sure what you're counter-arguing against. 

 

I really have access to so much hard disk space. It's not that bad really, a FLAC album is on the order of 300-500MB (depending on the source), a 320kbps MP3 album is about 190MB, so it's maybe twice as much space on average, still considerably less than a CD image. With 1TB+ drives being so cheap , nothing compels me to choose anything else than the highest quality source. I just don't see for what reason I should somehow choose the worst format that I can't tell apart from the original - saving disk space seems irrelevant.

 

128 kbps mp3 is passe... you picked a very weak format to pick on. Try 128 kbps Opus and m4a, which were engineered to eliminate mpeg 1 layer 3's weaknesses and more.

 

Yes as I said, if one of your reasons is archival, I am not quibbling over that. I encode my limited music to TAK, a lossless format with better compression size/decompression speed sweet zones than FLAC for today's desktop CPUs.