[Malux]

I hope this is the right forum to post this in.

Lately, I've been trying to determine whether or not to go loseless. I just spent a good amount of time listening to Pink Floyd (the wall) using an audigy 2 soundcard and UE triple.fi 10. I just simply can't tell the differences between apple loseless and AAC 256.

Is the difference so subtle that it's barely noticeable or am i missing something? Is there something I should be listening for?

The difference in file size is considerable. The losesless file is almost 3 times as big so i'm trying to avoid going loseless. I can tell a difference between 160 and 256 but not between 256 and loseless.

Can you tell the difference between 256 and loseless? If so, is the difference subtle or night and day? Just curious...

 

[leveller1642]

Listen for cymbals. I have aac 192 and they don't sound right in a revealing system like my Adam a5 studio monitors.

 

[robjrock]

subtle enough but it depends what set up your using.
iPhone > CX300s? Very subtle.

Computer > Benchmark DAC1 > Beta22 > HD800? Not so subtle.

Try giving yourself a blind test. Put both tracks onto your ipod under the artist name 'blind test' - put the ipod away from you and press 'shuffle' - see which one you think sounds better.

BTW out a blind test I have myself I picked from best to worst (using iPhone into ATH-M50s) ALAC > Mp3 256 > Aac256 -- Take it with a grain of salt of course, but consider throwing a Mp3 into the mix, using the latest LAME encoder. I thought the cymbols / highs on the Mp3 sounded a little more natural. YMMV.

 

[blownsi]

The difference depends alot on the source material and the dac decoding it. That said, space is cheap nowadays. You can find an external drive with 500gb almost anywhere for under $100. Considering you should only waste your time ripping once, why not go with the best avail? I use EAC for bit perfect rips and apple lossless exclusively. Could I pick it out of a blind test? Maybe and maybe not but I paid for those bits on the cd so I want them. Besides maybe one day in the future I'll own equipment capable of that kind of resolution and I would hate to have to re-rip everything again. I own a ton of music compared to the average joe, like over 5k cd's and probably half as much vinyl and so far I'm nearly halfway thru and haven't come close to filling a 1TB drive. When I do I'll simply buy another and start filling it. Then one day when 2tb drives are cheap I'll consolidate the two. You will be amazed by how little space the ALA files actually take up when you start ripping only the tracks that you actually like and/or listen to.

Oh and BTW: The audigy isn't exactly known for it's quality. I have the supposedly better X-FI and it pales in comparisson to a decent dac.

 

[jimmychan]

I can hear the differences between AAC 320 and lossless AAC/AIFF.

Storages are inexpensive these days, go ahead to use non compress AIFF.

 

[robjrock]

1TB external hard-drive can hold a lot of flacs. What I do (well, what I'm starting to do) is rip CDs to FLAC, keep them in one folder, then convert those flacs to 256mp3s for my iPhone.

Flacs > uDac > Headphones
Mp3s > iPhone > Phonaks

Best of both worlds

 

[Valens7]

It can be subtle but, depending on the music, I can usually tell the difference. Sometimes it's actually easy. Basically, there's a lot of things that just sound off. As one might expect, I've found that my ability to do so is quite dependent on what gear I'm listening through.