[yepimonfire]

 
Quote:

This will get interesting now that we are at higher bitrates. For some reason these tests always seem to be conducted at 128 kbps or some rate where it has already been demonstrated that some can hear a difference. Much more interesting is testing at the higher rates most of us use in the real world, and where things become increasingly difficult to the point that the samples become essentially transparent even to the experts (unless you cheat by looking at a frequency plot that is

at 320k it is even hard to see a difference on frequency plots

 

[JamesMcProgger]

I know this is old but I downloaded th files and did not read any comment. I've always said that noone is abble to tell the difference from mp3 320 and flac, both well ripped of course.
 
 

Spoiler: my%20ears

 
Flac is A
 
loosy is B
 
But i cant really tell why, just went for it because at the end A sounds 1/1000000000 more open to my ears-
 

 
 
I used AKG K601
 

 

[Snag1e]

I read some comments, but not past the fist page, or far enough that the answer was reviled by the OP. I heard it right away on my K702s, Not a huge difference, but easy enough to hear still. B is lossless, after I listened I looked at the spectrals to be sure. =]

I think that is is possible to tell 320 kbps and lossless, depending on the song.... very difficult, but possible for some people none the less.....Could I differentiate between them reliably? Probably not, I've honestly never tried. Even if I can't, I'll still encode everything in flac...hard drives are cheep, and I don't like the idea of removing information / sound from my songs....

 

[yepimonfire]

the biggest advantage of FLAC is really the ability to re-encode it into anything else without losing quality. for example, right now i use an ipod, winamp automagically converts all my FLAC to 320 AAC, if i get a player that doesn't support AAC, and i ripped all my stuff in AAC, i would be screwed. Also if i got something like a sansa i could have it converted to OGG etc. almost every MP3 player supports MP3  (duh ) but IMO mp3 is an old and inferior compression format, WMA, OGG, and AAC have all outdone it easy.
 
i think someone should come up with a blind test using different formats like AAC/OGG/WMA and see if it is really impossible to hear a difference.
Quote:

I read some comments, but not past the fist page, or far enough that the answer was reviled by the OP. I heard it right away on my K702s, Not a huge difference, but easy enough to hear still. B is lossless, after I listened I looked at the spectrals to be sure. =]

I think that is is possible to tell 320 kbps and lossless, depending on the song.... very difficult, but possible for some people none the less.....Could I differentiate between them reliably? Probably not, I've honestly never tried. Even if I can't, I'll still encode everything in flac...hard drives are cheep, and I don't like the idea of removing information / sound from my songs....

 

 

[Snag1e]

the biggest advantage of FLAC is really the ability to re-encode it into anything else without losing quality. for example, right now i use an ipod, winamp automagically converts all my FLAC to 320 AAC, if i get a player that doesn't support AAC, and i ripped all my stuff in AAC, i would be screwed. Also if i got something like a sansa i could have it converted to OGG etc. almost every MP3 player supports MP3  (duh ) but IMO mp3 is an old and inferior compression format, WMA, OGG, and AAC have all outdone it easy.
 
i think someone should come up with a blind test using different formats like AAC/OGG/WMA and see if it is really impossible to hear a difference.


 

Yes, the ability to transcode flacs to anything else without the quality loss is a huge benefit as well =]. While it is true that most other lossy formats are ahead of most mp3 codecs, I feel that mp3s encoded with lame 3.98 still sound great, and are on par with iTunes aac at an equal bit rate. They also have the advantage of being compatible with literally everything. My mp3 player broke, and im too cheep to get a new one right now, but when I do, I'll probably be converting everything to V0 to put on that .

A blind test between formats themselves / flac would be great. I would be quite interested to see the results. While there would be differences, at similar bit rate the differences would be quite small and very hard to distinguish.......The 128 kbps mp3 compared to lossless in this thread is quite a bit more distinguishable that a 256 kbps aac / wma / ogg vs 256 kbps mp3, and still some had difficulty telling them apart. But yeah, even if the results are that no one can disinguish between lossy formats, or even high bit rate lossy to true lossless, it would still be a very interesting test.

 

[monsun311]

I try with my Goldring DR150 with a dac and without and feel the A is mp3 and B is flac rip.....soo wat is the correct answer????

 

[stv014]

Quote:

I try with my Goldring DR150 with a dac and without and feel the A is mp3 and B is flac rip.....soo wat is the correct answer????

 
You guessed correctly. Note that B is louder than A, so you need to use ReplayGain.

 

[eugenius]

After I ran replaygain on them and discovered they are not at the same level, I compared them with a dacport/hd250 and noticed a little high frequency distortion in A that makes it sound a little brighter and as a result little bit more body in B. I presume A is the MP3 and B is the FLAC, but on some systems A might sound better. In fact the cheaper the system, the better A sounds.

 

[Jun Raito]

Is the B the lossless ones? Somehow I got better live sound stage at B...the B sounded a bit louder too....
Tested using default Lenovo G450 soundcard, AIMP player, and modded RP-HTX7 (http://www.head-fi.org/t/638041/panasonic-rp-htx7-mod-to-the-max)

 

[stv014]

Quote:

the B sounded a bit louder too....

 
It is really louder, so you need to use ReplayGain for a fair comparison.

 

[kramer5150]

Without reading everyones replies (honestly).
 
I think the B file is the lossless file of the two listed in the FIRST (opening) post.  The decay of all the notes sounds more full, ambient and 3-dimensional as the note decays into the venue.  I could only hear it through my RS1 though.  The HF1 was not detail revealing enough.  The Koss A250 is too artificially "colored" in the upper midrange and masks the sound of a hollow wooden instrument.
 
EDIT... my setup:
 
Macbook Pro TOSLINK => ENTECH Number Cruncher (modded with OPA2107 in the analog stage) => Larocco PPA Discrete Diamond buffer => RS1

 

[stv014]

Quote:

Without reading everyones replies (honestly)

 
Hopefully you did read the warnings about the volume mismatch, though.

The OP forgot to mention that ReplayGain needs to be used to level match the files, as "B" is louder by a few tenths of a dB, and that seems to be responsible for the differences described by many people.

 

[loud n clear]

When I first had a listen I immediately thought I could tell it was B easily due to a more realistic reverb. Then I tried it in foobar's ABX tester and phew, it was hard. I managed to pick a muted string in the last half of the track that I could concentrate on and get right with a 4% chance I was guessing. My system was Dell M1530 to Phonak 022's and loads of concentration.