Converting MP3 to Flac good or bad idea?

[Permagrin]

why don't you try it yourself and see whether it works for you?
 
I'm using dbPowerAmp Music Convertor to get from lossy to lossless......why shouldn't it work

But honestly 192kbps is really worth converting, for me.
In my ears the difference between 192 and Flac in very noticeable.
 

i am very sorry, but i don't understand what you mean.
 
do you mean that converters only resize the songs?

Never mind. :rolleyes:

 

[danroche]

Responses below in bold....
 
Quote:

320 vs 256, yeah thats a big difference...

Just use LAME? I'm not an expert but isn't that the best mp3 encoder? Yeah I'd take that bet in a heartbeat.

 

Yeah, if I could reliably get people to put money down on their ability to discern 320kbps from FLAC in DBTs, I could likely quit my job.  If I could do the same with 256kbps, I could probably put the money down for a nice beach house somewhere.

"The question remains "why would you ever go lossy when space is so cheap?"   This is a good point, but practicality and saving money, even just a little of it, are perfectly reasonable ends."

You're on a hi-fi headphone forum and you're talking about practicality? You could buy a 1/2 terabyte drive for the price of 3 CDs right now, that's quite frugal.

 

Yes, but I'm horrifically cheap. Also, the 160 gig limit on the iPod is probably more of an obstacle to me than the availability of raw storage.  With kids running around, I'm rarely able to listen to anything sitting still.  Did I mention I'm really, really cheap?

I have a LOT of music as well. Being able to store it all on my iPod doesn't matter to me as a lot of it I don't listen to frequently and I also have a PC.

Please elucidate your definition of "original files".

 

Original files = original media (CDs) = error-checked WAVs from the original CDs.   And to clarify, there are some CDs I do own that I HAVE chosen to store in FLAC (or ALAC), they' re just usually ones that I want to reserve the right to re-burn or re-distribute at a later date, such as discs I've recorded or performed on.  If re-burning something would constitute piracy, it's "LAME vbr -q2" all day long and no regrets, no lookbacks.

 

 

[Permagrin]

That's a lot more clear now. Especially the having kids and WAV storage part. I've met a lot of people that have Terabytes of music like it's something special even though they downloaded all of it and never paid a dime. Meanwhile I've been collecting CDs for ~17 years, only lost some, and spent probably well over $10k now so I could enjoy that music at my leisure. It's really a pet peeve of mine, so I apologize if I came across as accusatory.

 

[danroche]

Quote:

That's a lot more clear now. Especially the having kids and WAV storage part. I've met a lot of people that have Terabytes of music like it's something special even though they downloaded all of it and never paid a dime. Meanwhile I've been collecting CDs for ~17 years, only lost some, and spent probably well over $10k now so I could enjoy that music at my leisure. It's really a pet peeve of mine, so I apologize if I came across as accusatory.

You didn't come across that way at all. No worries. I know some people on my own who were turned on to torrent sites and quickly accumulated multiple terrabytes of music. I once started trying to estimate how much I had spent, lifetime, on CDs and other music-related material. I had to stop as it got to be really, really depressing.  It's also kind of annoying to suggest a CD to somebody else, and then the next day they've magically accumulated the artist's entire discography.  The irony here is that some of these same people wouldn't DARE degrade the music they just completely stole by compressing it down to MP3 or AAC.
 

 

[dsf3g]

 
Quote:

I tried the blind test mp3 vs FLAC with my crappy Nano 3G and NC Denon and i still noticed a slight difference in sound.
As I don't have a High-Res Headphone yet, i would be interested to know whether then difference is more obvious on the more expensive models.

 
Please describe your test. I'm suspicious of any "blind" test that doesn't involve a purpose designed ABX system like the Foobar ABX plugin. 

 

[TheDreamthinker]

i just listened to it while a friend of mine randomly picked a song from a playlist filled with one song in different formats.
i only tried 128, mp3 and aiff.
I used Recovery, because it was the only cd i had at hand.
 
sadly, i can't retest it now, because my headphones are broken and my new iems will arrive some time this month.

 

[dsf3g]

Quote:

i just listened to it while a friend of mine randomly picked a song from a playlist filled with one song in different formats.
i only tried 128, mp3 and aiff.
I used Recovery, because it was the only cd i had at hand.
 
sadly, i can't retest it now, because my headphones are broken and my new iems will arrive some time this month.

Too much room for fudging there. I can see potential problems with everything from possible differences in the volume levels of your encoded tracks, to the statistical significance of your results.  To really see what you can and cannot distinguish, try Foobar on your computer with the ABX plugin. Foobar will normalize both tracks and produce precise statistics on your performance, allowing you to determine how statistically significant your results really are.

 

[TheDreamthinker]

do you mean foobar2000.org?

 

[nikongod]

 
Quote:

Quote:

I tried the blind test mp3 vs FLAC with my crappy Nano 3G and NC Denon and i still noticed a slight difference in sound.
As I don't have a High-Res Headphone yet, i would be interested to know whether then difference is more obvious on the more expensive models.

Ahh, the classic placebo effect.

The cup analogy is actually pretty good, I like it.

As for 128kbps, erm, no. 128k is easily distinguishable. 192 is distinguishable. 256 is distinguishable with effort. 320 is not distinguishable (all IMHO, YMMV, of course.)

I wouldnt quite go that far... 
 
It is not uncommon for a certain fruity computer company to use VERY PATHETIC MP3 decoder software. This was the topic of MUCH debate back when people were first comparing low quality AAC to high quality MP3 and finding some disturbing trends. 

 

[revolink24]

 


I wouldnt quite go that far... 
 
It is not uncommon for a certain fruity computer company to use VERY PATHETIC MP3 decoder software. This was the topic of MUCH debate back when people were first comparing low quality AAC to high quality MP3 and finding some disturbing trends. 

True. Any music I've listened to with the fruity MP3 encoder and decoded with, well, anything has sounded pretty much dreadful, so I'm not ruling out decoder issues.

I think 320kbps LAME is pretty darn good. That said, I still use FLAC. Hard drive space is cheap these days, so why bother? Heck, for $100, I can store my library in both FLAC and 320 MP3.
Running foobar2000, however, I honestly am hard pressed to successfully ABX 320kbps converted via LAME from a FLAC original. If he's using an equally good MP3 decoder, I can't think what might be causing the audible differences.

 

[Snag1e]

 
Quote:

 The irony here is that some of these same people wouldn't DARE degrade the music they just completely stole by compressing it down to MP3 or AAC.
 

Downloading music does not equate to stealing it. If I shoplift an album from a store, no one else can buy it. When I download a song, no one loses it and another person gets it. There’s no ethical problem here. Also, downloading music may very well help the artist because they become better known from it.... If I download music and like it, I'll recommend it to my friends ect....
 
I have been to many concerts where the bands playing told people to buy their album, or go home and download it. They said they didn't care how we got their music as long as we were listing to it. 
 
Out of every $1000 dollars of CDs sold, each member of the band on average makes $23.40. Most of the rest of the money goes to the record labels, and distributors. Even if "Piracy" is causing a decline of CD sales (which is debatable), I personally have no problem ripping record labels off. They are the ones that are brickwalling all the life out of music and making it sound like garbage with the loudness war. I "pirate" lossless flacs, and support the bands that I like by buying their merch, and going to their shows....that way they actually benefit from it, and not label........
 

 

[Permagrin]

 

Downloading music does not equate to stealing it. If I shoplift an album from a store, no one else can buy it. When I download a song, no one loses it and another person gets it. There’s no ethical problem here. Also, downloading music may very well help the artist because they become better known from it.... If I download music and like it, I'll recommend it to my friends ect....
 
I have been to many concerts where the bands playing told people to buy their album, or go home and download it. They said they didn't care how we got their music as long as we were listing to it. 
 
Out of every $1000 dollars of CDs sold, each member of the band on average makes $23.40. Most of the rest of the money goes to the record labels, and distributors. Even if "Piracy" is causing a decline of CD sales (which is debatable), I personally have no problem ripping record labels off. They are the ones that are brickwalling all the life out of music and making it sound like garbage with the loudness war. I "pirate" lossless flacs, and support the bands that I like by buying their merch, and going to their shows....that way they actually benefit from it, and not label........
 

That's nice, it's still illegal though...

 

[kyuuketsuki]

OK, that is fine, but I have a question for you, and all of your infinite wisdom. If you pirate music, and the label goes down in flames or is forced to make cut backs, how will you be able to download said tracks? If the studio cannot record and master the tracks, then they can't distribute them. Sure you can make the argument that making CDs is easy now, but they won't be the same quality. Also it is the label that usually sets up concerts for promotions. So again, another thing will collapse if you remove labels from the equation. There is a lot more to the music industry than what you are making out. There are reasons why artists prefer to be signed to a major label than an indie label. 
 
And as Permagrin said, no matter how you justify it in your head, it is still illegal. I try to keep my downloading to a minimum and buy the actual CDs. Besides... there is something nice about having the physical media in your hand.
 
Quote:

 

Downloading music does not equate to stealing it. If I shoplift an album from a store, no one else can buy it. When I download a song, no one loses it and another person gets it. There’s no ethical problem here. Also, downloading music may very well help the artist because they become better known from it.... If I download music and like it, I'll recommend it to my friends ect....
 
I have been to many concerts where the bands playing told people to buy their album, or go home and download it. They said they didn't care how we got their music as long as we were listing to it. 
 
Out of every $1000 dollars of CDs sold, each member of the band on average makes $23.40. Most of the rest of the money goes to the record labels, and distributors. Even if "Piracy" is causing a decline of CD sales (which is debatable), I personally have no problem ripping record labels off. They are the ones that are brickwalling all the life out of music and making it sound like garbage with the loudness war. I "pirate" lossless flacs, and support the bands that I like by buying their merch, and going to their shows....that way they actually benefit from it, and not label........
 

 

 

[loremipsum]

Converting from .mp3 to .flac would be like resizing an 800x600 .jpeg image saved at 50% quality (i.e, artifacts everywhere) to 1920x1080 and saving it as a .png file. (just straight resizing, no actual editing involved). The 1920x1080 .png file would be a lossless, high resolution reproduction, but it would be a high-res reproduction of 800x600 pixels worth of artifacts.
 
Unless you're a CSI character, that is.

 

[Snag1e]

...So is driving to fast, showing a movie depicting felonious content (Montana), fishing from the back of a camel (Idaho),
 Singing off key (North Carolina) etc....
 
Legality is a horrible barometer for morality. Slavery was once legal, and is a horrible practice, there are many things today that are illegal, and do not harm anyone.
 
Also, there are many countries that "Pirating" music is perfectly legal in.
 
If you have the money and the desire to buy all of your albums then that is great, 

 however I do not feel that it is immoral or "stealing" for anyone to acquire copyrighted music for free over the Internet.
 
Edit @ Permagrin =]