[Head Injury]

On the other hand, I see no point in MP3 if you have the space. Lossless may not sound much better if at all, but it's an exact copy of the original and perfect for digital storage.

 

[lee730]

Not to mention when you have good audio equipment it will only make these differences more noticeable and can ruin your music if the quality is not up to par.

 

[Stereodude]

Quote:

Sorry for slightly changing the topic but for those thinking of upgrading their collection of 320kpbs mp3 to loseless audio don't bother: The difference between Flac and 320Kpbs mp3 is almost unidentifiable...

To you on your gear.  You shouldn't assume everyone else will have the same findings.  Personally, I rip everything to FLAC so I know I will never have to re-rip them no matter what lossy format I want them in.  I can always convert from the lossless source.

 

[Head Injury]

Quote:

Not to mention when you have good audio equipment it will only make these differences more noticeable and can ruin your music if the quality is not up to par.

You won't "ruin" your music with high bitrate (320 or V0) MP3. At best the difference will be noticeable, but its effect will always pale in comparison to flaws in the mastering anyway.

 

[lee730]

Quote:

You won't "ruin" your music with high bitrate (320 or V0) MP3. At best the difference will be noticeable, but its effect will always pale in comparison to flaws in the mastering anyway.

Well for me it does. I notice the flaws, even though on some recording it truelly is hard to tell the difference. The fact that there is that difference alone is enough to irritate me and ruin the music experience. The solution to that is to use a source that isn't so revealing to begin with and that is what I use for Mp3s.

 

[Edoardo]

I've written a little guide in which I've tried to give a method to spot differences between lossy and losses formats, and to explain why some people don't find any remarkable differences between lossy and lossless files, and why some others find dynamically compressed tracks to be "better", when blindly compared.
 
It needs a massive update though, since I've been criticized by some IT aficionados for my (actually intended) generalizations on some computing issues.
Funny, I've generalized so much on the other issues also, always trying to give the easiest definitions I could, but no one seem to be caring about electronics or physics, only IT ...
 
Give it a read if you don't mind
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/582354/guide-compressed-uncompressed-and-hd-what-to-look-for-when-comparing-various-formats#post_7934160
 
feedbacks are welcome

 

[DarkAndroid]

Quote:

Sorry for slightly changing the topic but for those thinking of upgrading their collection of 320kpbs mp3 to loseless audio don't bother: The difference between Flac and 320Kpbs mp3 is almost unidentifiable, certain frequencies of MP3s distort, true, but it's not worth replacing all your 320kpbs mp3 with .flac just for those little differences, unless you have a lot of time on your hands and a 500 terabyte hard drive. That's why i always have iTunes encode to MP3 when burning my cds.
 

I agree, I have a few songs I bought off of iTunes including Good Life - OneRepublic, Someone Like You - Adele, Moves Like Jagger - Maroon 5 and Party Rock Anthem - LMAO, out of curiosity I went and got the FLAC versions of these songs and did an A B comparison test between the iTunes 256kbps AAC versions and the FLAC versions, and I could hardly tell a difference each time. Maybe my ears arent that good, or I dont have the right setup, but I think 320kbps MP3 and 266kbps AAC are sufficient enough for most people discerning sound quality of their music.
 

 

[ROBSCIX]

With the price of Hard drives being so cheap, there is really no reason to mess with lossy encoding.
 

 

[Head Injury]

Quote:

With the price of Hard drives being so cheap, there is really no reason to mess with lossy encoding.

Portable players still benefit. And hard drives are a rip-off right now. Thanks Thailand! 

 

[ROBSCIX]

Quote:

Portable players still benefit. And hard drives are a rip-off right now. Thanks Thailand! 

Convert for the player from lossless, if you have an Mp3 player.
Yes, thanks Thailand but in general they are very cheap.
 
I would rather upgrade my storage array then downgrade my music collection.
 

 

[lee730]

Quote:

Convert for the player from lossless, if you have an Mp3 player.
Yes, thanks Thailand but in general they are very cheap.
 
I would rather upgrade my storage array then downgrade my music collection.
 

I got my 2TB HD for $90.00 from amazon. Green Caviar. I see no reason to not have both. The mp3s for portability and the FLAC for archiving and more revealing setups.

 

[ROBSCIX]

Quote:

I got my 2TB HD for $90.00 from amazon. Green Caviar. I see no reason to not have both. The mp3s for portability and the FLAC for archiving and more revealing setups.

2TB can hold a heck of alot of Flac and if you need Mp3 for portability, personally I would just encode them before I needed from the flacs but If you want to have both lossy
and lossless, why not?

 

[lee730]

Quote:

2TB can hold a heck of alot of Flac and if you need Mp3 for portability, personally I would just encode them before I needed from the flacs but If you want to have both lossy
and lossless, why not?

It seems internal HD are even cheaper these days and if you have room inside your pc then why not. Then again its also convenient to be able to take it with you everywhere and use it via USB. I guess it just depends.

 

[ROBSCIX]

Quote:

It seems internal HD are even cheaper these days and if you have room inside your pc then why not. Then again its also convenient to be able to take it with you everywhere and use it via USB. I guess it just depends.

Sure, seem mobos are coming with more and more channels for HDD's and you can buy enclosures pretty cheap to keep them external if that is a concern.
 
 

 

[Head Injury]

Quote:

Convert for the player from lossless, if you have an Mp3 player.

Right. But my point was lossy encoding still has a use. You don't want to rip straight to lossy, but you can and should encode to lossy in many cases.