320 kbps Mp3 > Flac???

Comes down to taste. Refine is not for everyone. Some people enjoy artifacts and scratchiness.

Similar to the age debate of fun vs accuracy. A wise man on this forum once said this: "A headphone that WOW you in the first 10 seconds is most likely colored." Neutral doesn't grab our attention, color always does.

What Arctia said. Why do you think rock bands still track to tape when digital is so much cleaner? Because tape works for the genre. It's the same reason why people buy tube equipment and listen to vinyl -- subtle treble roll-off, frequency compression, and volume compression.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spydur 

Hey guys,

So I have been listening to my 320 mp3's and then using a flac version I got on allflac.com. What i am hearing is kind of pissing me off. With the mp3 the music sounds alive and i can listen to it at a decent volume. When i listen to the same album in flac it sounds lifeless and I find myself increasing the volume, that doesn't actually help though. The only nice thing about what i hear with flac  is how clean it is, frankly clean sounds boring on many songs. what gives, where is the body to the music?

Numerous things may be at play here. The flac versions may be tweaked , slightly different pressings, or it may be (and I mean this in no derogatory way) that you are simply imagining differences that are not there. To rule out the latter possibility take an mp3 and a flac version of the same track and try to DBT them in FooBar, if you can detect a difference 9/10 times then they are most likely different. If your detection rate is below this then they are not perceptually different.

I may be wrong but, allflac.com doesn't seem very legal to me, exceeding low prices, tracks ripped from CDs instead of directly provided by the majors, strange website design, no reference to the publisher in the info area...

It's probably 128 kbps tracks put into a FLAC file or something lol. . . just buy the dang CD.

Quote:

Originally Posted by khaos974 

I may be wrong but, allflac.com doesn't seem very legal to me, exceeding low prices, tracks ripped from CDs instead of directly provided by the majors, strange website design, no reference to the publisher in the info area...

Allflac.com is a russian site that has switched names many times.  They used to be Allofmp3.com many years ago, and it allowed you to choose the type of file you wanted.  It would transcode it from the original CD-DA files.  It is legal in Russia but technically not legal here.

The FLAC files usually come with a log file that shows the extraction verification.

Thanks for the info, I never said the rips were badly done though.

However I wonder the artists actually receive money from those sells as they don't seem to work with the publishing companies.

Remember that something ripped from cd with glass optics will sound different then ripped from plastic

Quote:

Originally Posted by MacT 

Remember that something ripped from cd with glass optics will sound different then ripped from plastic

Please stop trollin'. Your most recent posts are faux-snake-oil trolls that contribute nothing to the threads.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spydur 

Hey guys,

So I have been listening to my 320 mp3's and then using a flac version I got on allflac.com. What i am hearing is kind of pissing me off. With the mp3 the music sounds alive and i can listen to it at a decent volume. When i listen to the same album in flac it sounds lifeless and I find myself increasing the volume, that doesn't actually help though. The only nice thing about what i hear with flac  is how clean it is, frankly clean sounds boring on many songs. what gives, where is the body to the music?

Are you doing double-blind ABX testing on these files? If not, this is what I suggest is actually happening: You are not actually perceivig any diference between the two files. However, because one is lossless, you expect it to sound much better than the lossy 128 kbs MP3. When it doesn't, your mind over-compensates the other way and you perceive the FLAC fiels as "flat" and lacking in "punch" or "depth" or whatever.

If you are doing double-blind tests then I'd go with what others are suggesting: the FLAC file is just re-coded from a 128 MP3 source.

I remember that site from at least a few years back, but at the time it was called alltunes.com.  A guy I worked with got his semi-legal music from there, but than I think Visa or some other credit card company cut their support for them and I had assumed they went out of business.  So I guess they survived under different names.  Yikes, not sure if I would trust the quality of stuff from that site.

In the words of Boney M, "Oh those russians..."