[CSMR]

Hi. My music on my h140 is in flac but I'm thinking of using lossy compression on some of it to fit more in.
Bitrates for the flac are between 285 and 1000 kbs, with 600 being about average.
Probably looking for something in the 200-300kbs range.
It's classical music.

I gather Ogg Vorbis modified by "aoTuV" would be a good choice for this.
"guruboolez" on hydrogen audio did some abx tests of a few codecs and found Ogg at 180kbs not transparent but better than the others.

Does anyone have experience with this at bitrates in this region (200-300kbs)?

How much is lost from lossy compression at this level?

Does lossy compression give a worse sound or is it just distinguishable from lossless in certain places on very careful listening?

 

[ILikeMusic]

Quote:

Does lossy compression give a worse sound or is it just distinguishable from lossless in certain places on very careful listening?

That's pretty much it. In spite of the endless hoopla around here, at high bitrates compressed tracks are essentially transparent to the source other than an very occasional difference that may be detected only by very careful listening, if at all. You will hear from some that they can instantly hear a difference between high-bitrate compressed and the source but I've not yet to met anyone who could back up such a claim when put to the test. If you want to be sure you can download PCABX or Foobar and do some blind testing on your own. That should convince you one way or the other.

My suggestion would be to use the LAME MP3 encoder (for maximum portability between platforms) at a variable bitrate centering around 192-256 average but any modern encoder (AAC, OGG, etc.) should work well at these rates.