Poll: Audible Difference between FLAC and 320kbps MP3? - Page 7

guys, so how about the losseless 16bit/44.1khz and 24bit/96khz or 192khz?

is there significant difference?

Apparently the dynamic range capable within 16/44.1 is enough for our audible range. But, who knows without hearing for yourself?

I've downloaded some free samples of 24/96 FLAC and 24/192 DXD WAV files (need to figure out how to play this monster). When I get some time, I'm planning on testing this out as well. I will downsample 24/96 to 16/44.1, play that on a Lenovo via optical out, 24/96 will be played from my MACBOOK (USB). May be even switch them around as well. That way, I should be able to do a proper AB test.

Will report back to this thread with my findings along with 320kbps mp3 vs FLAC test.

I don't think you'll hear the difference. 22 khz. is more than most peoples' hearing range anyway, and I doubt the waveform shape will make a difference at that frequency.

I have been doing a lot of listening with 320Kbps MP3s vs directly from CD/FLAC. My MP3 encoding process goes like this: EAC (properly set up) import CD to .WAV > LAME 3.97/98

I cannot tell a difference. I genuinely tried but no dice. I listen to trance/electronica and have a lot of well mastered CDs but not once could I tell which was the CD and which was MP3. I found I was not enjoying the music while listening that closely.

If I would have been able to I would be re-ripping all my CDs right now lol.

There are small differences but not enough to worry about unless you are archiving. What really gets me though, is that I can hear tiny differences between .wav and lossless; totally illogical but my obervations were confirmed by a mafia member.

I'll try this test tonite.

I am not sure if I can hear the difference in question but I will look into it, I may not be able to come to a conclusion tonite, my senses are dimmed as I have a cold.

That being said, I have heard a difference when playing music through foobar upsampled to 96khz or 192khz from CD quality files. It wasn't good.

Also, I could hear a difference between WMP and foobar. Not sure how to describe it, but the difference was worth my suffering through foobar's terrible ui (no offense, but I hate it).

Rhythmbox just trumps everything, though.

Music sounds more "realistic" with flac. Spatial cues, slight reverberations etc all add up. Do you really think dropping 2/3 of the info is unnoticeable?

One thing I have noticed is that mp3's distort MORE on lesser equipment and thus artifacts are MORE noticeable. Actually with better equipment it seems more forgiving but clearly there is a difference.

I hear the difference between mp3 and lossless for sure, especially because I listen to this kind of music...

L-NE

And as I listen to this outdoor and in subway, I only can use closed circum cans.

It really depends on how the song was made in the studio. Some songs just sound awesome regardless of which you use, some don't. IMO nothing beats lossless WMA :\
Why bother use flac at all? Idk really. Im too lazy to find a freeware and actually use it to rip or convert my music to FLAC. Im just fine with lossless or the highest quality WMA I can get.

I had to relocate my attempt to differentiate to probably tomorrow or Saturday. I've had a fierce cold.

For me FLAC wins hands down everytime for serious listening. MP3 is fine for casual listening where you are not concentrating that much on the music say on the train, in the car or office.
For me MP3 sounds very compressed and lacks real dymnamics. Also much of the subtle detail is lost, presumably thrown away in the in the conversion.
The attached link takes you to an objective comparison in Stereophile of the different digital formats, and this illustrates why the formats sound different.
Stereophile: MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

I voted "I cannot tell a difference 99% of the time". Yes, see my sig Even though I have "good" equipment (portably wise), I still cannot tell a difference I still use .wav on my main rig (home rig) just for peace of mind im getting the best quality possible for what equipment I have. FLAC I never use because there is almost no support for it (especially on my iPod and Walkman AFAIK).

In my system WAV vs FLAC is a bigger difference than FLAC vs 320 mp3 because WAV takes 0% CPU power while both FLAC and mp3 take 1%. My trance music doesn't have much high frequency information, I like to listen to the midrange resolution the most.

Well now I've seen 2-3 people say there is a difference between uncompressed and compressed lossless . If you are interested, there's a free software called cmp and cplay (csic memory player and cisc ASIO player) that tries to increase efficiency of computer audio playback, reducing cpu usage, storing music in RAM to deal with hard drive I/O interference, replacing explorer.exe with another shell with much less overhead, etc. You have to use them together to get the most out of it, or reconfigure cmp to work with another ASIO media player such as winamp, foobar, or media monkey. Many people using cmp+cplay have used it with emu cards.

main site: cMP² | Main / HomePage
to use cmp with other player: cMP² | CMP / 11CMPShell
cue creator (necessary for accessing music with cmp+cplay): cMP² | CPlay / CueSheets

It's a real pain in the arse to set the software up, but if you need any help getting cmp+cplay to work or setting it up to work with foobar or winamp etc let me know I can guide you through it. If you want to do the BIOS tweaks it mentions you're on your own .

So the consumed cpu power is more important than the data bits it decode?