FLAC vs 320kbps - Page 8

I decided to man up and do an ABX test myself.  The track I chose is The Who - Enimence Front from the greatest hits cd, which I know pretty well.  I converted my FLAC file to 320 CBR.  The gear I use is foobar2k>WASAPI>digital interface with psu>Stello DA100>Marantz PM-84>HE-6

 

 

I did not ace the ABX test, but my results give a very strong correlated that I can tell the difference between FLAC and 320 CBR.  8/10 is pretty damn valid to me.  I honestly don't think I could tell the difference if my gear was at a lower level, especially the headphone and DAC.

 

I really doubt anyone can hear the differences with a budget to midfi setup, especially portable setups.  I tried about a year ago with a HM-602 and e-Q7s and failed miserably.

 

From taking that test, 320 CBR is perfectly fine for non-high end gear.  I won't even bother putting FLAC into my DAPs anymore.  Of course having lossless for everything is perfectly fine too as hard drives are so cheap but lossless can be useful when better gear is obtained.

Edited by ohhgourami - 2/5/12 at 4:50am

^

8/10 is not quite good enough. Why not redo it with say 20 trials,  if you can manage 16/20 that has much more statistical power (the more trials the less the % difference from chance needs to be) , 8/10 can still just be lucky. It does not mean you cannot tell a difference but you cannot reject the null hypothesis until you get a p of < 0.05 - then the thing to do would be repeat with different tracks possible different genres, I suggest a segment from  a beethoven Piano Sonata.

 

 

Edited by nick_charles - 2/5/12 at 10:27am

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Edited by Jaywalk3r - 2/5/12 at 11:17am

When I have more time, I'll do another ABX test then.

I just use Lossless. I bought the harddrives for it. I mean, if I am gonna spend my hard-earned money or risk my ass downloading from the internet I better get all I can get from it.

 

.MP3s are for iPods only IMO. This has inspired me to try out Rihanna's "Only Girl In The World" which I've been listening to a lot lately. I should compare them.

I will always buy the CD or FLAC download and then I have options to whether I downgrade to mp3. Any other option makes no sense to me as I see it as being offered Vhs and Blueray movies for pretty much the same price and opting for the VHS movie...why?

In my experience, FLAC seems to have just a bit more subbass than MP3, but the detail at the rest of the spectrum is identical (when you encode to 320 kbps). Still, I think we'll eventually reach a point where data storage and bandwidth is so cheap that everything will be lossless.

Pretty much this.

 

MP3 (from CD) vs FLAC (from CD) is pretty tough. There are subtle differences that you need to listen multiple times for. It also depends on the mastering of the recording (whether it's had dynamic range compression done to it or not, or how much of it has been done), whether it's an original pressing CD or a modern re-release.

 

With my own setup, MP3 320k sounds good, FLAC sounds better, vinyl rips to 24-bit/96khz sound pretty awesome or pretty average depending on the mastering (I find that my van halen 1984 and the who who are you rips sound better than, say, my queen greatest hits or judas priest screaming for vengeance rips)

I can't differentiate between 320 and FLAC with my setup. That's embarrassing but I'm glad I can't. No need for bigger disk space, ha!

 

But I do keep some FLACs for the purpose of future-proofing my favorite albums.