FLAC vs mp3

[deadlegion]

FLAC is for people who try to justify spending thousands of dollars on sound systems when and swear up and down that they can hear a difference when the human ear cannot, in-fact, detect any difference.

I'm sure right now there's somebody here listening to FLAC with headphones using gold wire, smirking to themselves by thinking just how much more WARM their music is compared to us dirty mp3 using masses.

I can hear a difference between FLAC and mp3, even if the mp3 is high bitrate.......and I don't use headphones.
Neither of my sound systems cost me literally thousands of dollars, but they are Yamaha and of reasonable quality (if somewhat old now).
I've had 1 particular pair of speakers for many, many years now......Richter Harlequin Mk2's.
They've got aluminium voice coil tweeters and are quite nice for music considering their age.But then they were not mass produced in some massive factory back then......and they were matched as pairs in factory when tested.

I've honestly wasted way more money on PC's and related hardware in my life than I have on audio gear.........at least you can get your money's worth from it if you really enjoy music and decent quality sound (like for movies).

Even if you're talking about pre-HD compressed audio, I can tell the difference between mid bitrate Dolby digital 5.1 and high bitrate DTS 5.1.......and LPCM is different again.

But then if you're only using desktop computer speakers/surround setup (whatever quality) I guess you could get away with the lowest bitrate possible and still think it's sounds the best it possibly could

mp3's are good for portability, but if you want high quality sound and have the means to appreciate the difference, FLAC is worth a little HDD space (which, less face it, is cheap as chips).


The same kind of arguments can be made for compressed video formats.......quality versus small size (and portability).
And if all you have is a screen that can't even display 720p (1280×720) then HD video formats are a waste of time.
But even with all the right hardware and high quality audio/video, if your eyes and ears aren't 100% then maybe it's all pointless anyway

[mostly_fake]

FLAC is for people who try to justify spending thousands of dollars on sound systems when and swear up and down that they can hear a difference when the human ear cannot, in-fact, detect any difference.

I'm sure right now there's somebody here listening to FLAC with headphones using gold wire, smirking to themselves by thinking just how much more WARM their music is compared to us dirty mp3 using masses.

You're either a troll or terribly ignorant. So, you're a troll. Please go back under the bridge and wait for travellers to come to you, this wandering around the countryside will get you killed with acid.

Now seriously, it's very easy to hear the difference, most people can hear it, there have been experiments to prove the difference and as well as tests to show just which compression format wins. Guess what, people - it's never MP3. It sucks. Sorry. Use Vorbis (OGG) if you need compression, use FLAC if you don't. Personally, any MP3's below 192 kbps are not worth your time / ears.

(And my damn earphones cost less than pizza in Sweden, thank you.)

[Deach]

hddspace is a non-issue. get some flac and get rid of the mp3s.

[ilefys]

Give this a read, and you'll know why you shall ultimately go FLAC/Lossless. Trust me, I'm happy I did.

Serious answer
Personally, I've underwent some listening test: some can hear the difference between lossless and lossy, others don't. End of story. I've witnessed assholes acting like pr0s because they had a collection of lossless encodes being unable to tell the difference between 128kbps FhG and LAME3.98.2 V0 versions of the same file, coming from the actual/official CD. So much for self-conviction.

Sure, lossless is always better because it allows you to restore the original quality... But if all you care about is listening, you're mostly fine with lossy encodes.
In my experience, those who claim they can hear the difference are - in most cases - experiencing a placebo effect.

[eldigato]

FLAC sounds much better to me because of my dad's $400 BOSE speakers. Whenever I turn on the headphones and listen to some good fable music I feel like I'm a very rich warrior alive in a fantasy world on the brink of chaos.. Whenever I listen to some MP3s It feels usual but lacking in true crispness.

The most logical choice would to go for mp3 in my opinion. Slimmer file size at the cost of unnoticeable audio differences in many cases. However if you have good internet and have a modern amount of storage than FLAC can be worth the extra time for the experienced audiophile.

[Slacker Magician]

Give this a read, and you'll know why you shall ultimately go FLAC/Lossless. Trust me, I'm happy I did.

Serious answer
Personally, I've underwent some listening test: some can hear the difference between lossless and lossy, others don't. End of story. I've witnessed assholes acting like pr0s because they had a collection of lossless encodes being unable to tell the difference between 128kbps FhG and LAME3.98.2 V0 versions of the same file, coming from the actual/official CD. So much for self-conviction.

Sure, lossless is always better because it allows you to restore the original quality... But if all you care about is listening, you're mostly fine with lossy encodes.
In my experience, those who claim they can hear the difference are - in most cases - experiencing a placebo effect.

It really depends on what you're listening to. Lots of percussion instruments and you'll need a higher bit rate to maintain the peaks. AAC is an excellent codec if you want to maintain quality (perceived or otherwise) without sacrificing space. Main profile LC-AAC is quite excellent.