[kiteki]

 
I agree enjoying music and the quality of the sound is different, my pursuit of Hi-Fi and my pursuit of enjoying music are seperate, I don't go to a club or a venue or a concert based on what kind of speakers they are using

  and I used to enjoy music highly with really cheap earbuds and a portable CD player with mp3's burnt to CD's.
 
On the other hand, If I buy a classical CD and play it via my cd player -> amp -> headphones, I'll enjoy that experience much more than if I downloaded that cd as mp3's and played it via laptop -> headphones, this is purely on a sound quality basis.
If I was in the lossy school of thought and said stuff like "CD's are pointless and expensive, mp3's sound the same" and didn't own my CD player or amp since I thought it was a garbage investment, then I'd really be missing out an enjoyable hi-fi sound, and the temptation of a higher one, like buying an SACD player.
 
In summary I guess the point I'm trying to convey is there is lossy VS lossless with A-B comparison of SQ, and then there is lossy thinking VS lossless thinking, and then there is the pursuit of music and the pursuit of Hi-Fi. 
 
In the pursuit of music lossy is fantastic, internet radio and last.fm can keep streaming in 128kbps until Sierra Lione has unlimited fiber optic internet.  In the pursuit of portable Hi-Fi I am looking for the highest quality sound available, which happens to be flac, ape, wav, wma, lossless aac, alac, etc.  However is someone released a portable SACD player I'd buy it.
 
 
 

 

[supersleuth]

 
Quote:

On the other hand, If I buy a classical CD and play it via my cd player -> amp -> headphones, I'll enjoy that experience much more than if I downloaded that cd as mp3's and played it via laptop -> headphones, this is purely on a sound quality basis.

 
 
But not if you burned CDs of  those high-rate MP3 files and played them on your CD system. (Certainly not, I would wager, if you didn't KNOW that's what you were listening to.)  As I wrote, I've made exactly that kind of apples-to-apples comparison. 
 
I'm not willing to sacrifice the real benefits (in a portable format) of smaller file size for the placebo effect. But hey, it's a free country.

 

[kiteki]

 
Oh, I'd also like to chip in with this, Videophiles have their 60 inch plasma screens and blu-ray players at home, and go the cinema to enjoy the latest visual experience, but on the go they are limited to tiny screens with tiny resolution, at best they could sit on a train with a 17" laptop with blu-ray and 2 hours of battery life.
 
In audio, we are blessed with a rather hi-fi portable sound, we can have the 'highest' sound resolution available in the size and weight of a matchbox, and listen to that while reading a comic on a ghost-train in a themepark.

 

[kiteki]

Quote:

Originally Posted by supersleuth /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
But not if you burned CDs of  those high-rate MP3 files and played them on your CD system. (Certainly not, I would wager, if you didn't KNOW that's what you were listening to.)  As I wrote, I've made exactly that kind of apples-to-apples comparison. 

 
Oh, that's true, haha I didn't think of that... too bad my CD player doesn't play CD-R's  
 
I just 'upgraded' to a new CD player unit (Sony BDP-S370) which can play CD-R's and lossy, so when I get the chance I'll make an MP3 <vs> CD <vs> SACD test for myself and see what I think.  I'm really looking forward to that test actually.
 
 
 
 

 

[kiteki]

Well, I just found this info on lossy vs lossless from a chinese sound engineer with focus on developing DAP's.  What do you think?
 
 
"Why lossless music, is lossy. Such as FLAC / APE formats, such as music, the
singer sounds from the beginning to the moment, after the microphone collection,
the emergence of the first loss of the sound, the microphone by the music
recording equipment recorded to memory, this is the analog to digital
conversion, this is the second loss, to get the CD from your files, or APE /
FLAC file later, through the audio signal may have experienced tens to hundreds
of e- components, and these electronic components, especially capacitors and
inductors features with speakers, the audio signal will cause the occurrence of
small phase shift, this shift will usually be more high-frequency signals to
reach our ears later, and since people ear's auditory characteristics, and feel
the music has become more ambiguous uncertainty, and can not be that accurate to
the person at the scene to locate the instrument, so will the third, fourth
loss. lossless music you hear, is not destructive , is a very comprehensive loss
many times. He has not become the basis of high quality"
 

 

[supersleuth]

I can't make any sense out of that gibberish. And I'm not sure language is the only problem.

 

[kiteki]

 
oh ok it's not lossless vs lossy, he's just saying lossless IS lossy, after reading it 10+ times over it starts to make sense, he's saying from the tongue of the singer to the ear of the listener the sound has to travel through 1000 e-capacitors, which means it's not lossless at all.

 

[dallan]

I had a sansu fuse a while back and if i was using that with Grado SR-80s or lower end in ears/earbuds then i would probably use vbr or something.  Moving up to more accurate equipment things get much dicier though.

 

[mootookang]

Quote:

I can't make any sense out of that gibberish. And I'm not sure language is the only problem.

It is trying to explain the process of compressing music, the more compress the music is, the more damaging it is to the device / human ears.
 
CDs usually play back around 1400-1100 kbps, APE play back around 760-500 kbps, FLAC is usually around 650-460 kbps.
 
Then again, if you're just listening to the amp that comes with the PMP, it probably won't make too much difference.

 

[supersleuth]

Quote:

It is trying to explain the process of compressing music, the more compress the music is, the more damaging it is to the device / human ears.
 
CDs usually play back around 1400-1100 kbps, APE play back around 760-500 kbps, FLAC is usually around 650-460 kbps.
 
Then again, if you're just listening to the amp that comes with the PMP, it probably won't make too much difference.

Again, I have made the apples to apples comparison of CD's and burns of 256K AAC rips of those same CDs through the same non-portable system (Marantz CD5001-->Grado SR80, which is not high end but not chopped liver, either.) If there are any subtle but audible artifacts in the AAC versions they escaped me and certainly did nothing to interfere with my enjoyment of high-quality classical recordings.

 

[cooperpwc]

I just stumbled onto this thread.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Hero Kid /img/forum/go_quote.gif

Even if you can ABX FLAC and a mp3 ask yourself this. Is this (slight) difference worth not having more music with me on the go?
I think in 98% of cases the answer is no.

Hero Kid, I read your double negative at least five times and I still cannot wrap my mind around it. So you conclude: No, this (slight) difference is not worth not having more music with me on the go.
 
I think that I agree... 

 
Quote:

 
Personally I use V0 transcoded from FLAC on the go...

 
 I do agree! 

  And I do exactly the same thing: FLAC at home + V0 on the move.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Hero Kid /img/forum/go_quote.gif

I plan to use 320kbps mp3s with my incoming HM-602.

 
I doubt though that 320 CBR will sound better than V0. You're just wasting space over-encodong simpler passages.

 

[Achmedisdead]

 
Quote:

I just stumbled onto this thread.
 
Quote:

Hero Kid, I read your double negative at least five times and I still cannot wrap my mind around it. So you conclude: No, this (slight) difference is not worth not having more music with me on the go.
 
I think that I agree... 

 
 
 I do agree! 

  And I do exactly the same thing: FLAC at home + V0 on the move.
 
 
I doubt though that 320 CBR will sound better than V0. You're just wasting space over-encodong simpler passages.

Agreed!

 

[xabu]

 
Quote:

The question isn't whether FLAC makes a difference, the question is
 
1. Why do you want to lower the audio quality?
 
2. Lossy will eventually be phased out by lossless, why do you want to hold back advancement? It's like VHS vs DVD and you'll have VHS, what's the point?
 
When mp3 first became popular people were using dial-up (5 Kb/s) and had very limited storage space,
now we are using fibre optics and have insane storage space, so mp3 should be discontinued just like our old harddrives and dial-up connections.
 
Comparing 128 vs 320 vs FLAC on a single device is only a small part of the picture, there are also comparisons like this:
 
1. CD -> CD player -> Amp -> headphones
 
2. MP3 -> soundcard -> Amp -> headphones
 
In the above comparison, on my setup, anyone can tell the difference within 5 seconds of listening.
 
If you rip your CD's to mp3 and then put them in the garage and then they disappear or break, you have just lost a lot of audio quality.
FLAC is lossless which means you can burn your CD's again and they should be exactly the same as the original CD, you cannot do this with mp3.
If your hard-drive crashes, your have a back-up of your music on your CD's.
If your CD's become scratched, break, or go missing, you don't have any back-up if you are using mp3.
 
Please also consider the Vinyl and SACD communities which love their music and think it's better than CD's.  
 
In the pursuit of Hi-Fi, lossy formats should be phased out, so if you have the choice, whether it's burning media or upgrading your mp3 player or mobile phone, choose lossless, preferrably one of the free lossless audio codac's available.
 
 
 
 

 
x2

(... in the pursuit of Hi-Fi ...) (... if it would not be for the question of data space and cost and battery life (... and did I forget something?) (...also don't know what these questions got to do with Hi-Fi)  there would be no discussion ... mp3 wasn't developed to have better sound quality than CD or LP ...) (... and apart from all that what about the influence of frequencies on the unconscious ...)

 

[TyRanT-22]

Little to no difference really.

 

[cooperpwc]

Quote:

Little to no difference really.

How ghoulishly true.