[fordgtlover]

I rip mine to flac not because I can hear the difference, but because I would rather not perform lossy compression on my music for any reason if I can avoid it.

From flac I can vert to wav if I like. Wav from mp3 is not a great conversion.

 

[thebob]

I've been re-ripping all my CD's to Apple lossless because I keep all my files in iTunes. I thought I'd been clever ripping everything at 192k but it just didn't cut it.

What player do you use for FLAC's I need something to browse with artwork ect.

 

[skeeder]

Foobar2000. You can set it up with album art and such.

 

[EnOYiN]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lowfront /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have finally started to convert my collection and even on my sr-60 and move I can notice a huge difference.

I don't want to spoil the fun here, but I have yet to meet someone who actually thinks the difference between a well encoded lossy file and a lossless one is huge. (for as far as SQ goes obviously) Pre-set -v0 is pretty much transparent for most people.

 

[Chri5peed]

I just converted a load of FLAC to Ogg, for portable use. I couldn't do that if I had stuck with mp3.

 

[dagobah]

The part of my collection that's currently in FLAC format still fits nicely on my portable player, but once it doesn't, I'll probably go to v0 mp3.

 

[krmathis]

If you care about sound quality, then lossless audio codecs are the way to go. FLAC is great, and probabaly best known. But there are lots of other codecs out there as well. Apple Lossless, WavPack, Shorten, to name a few.

I prefer Apple Lossless for software and hardware compatibility reasons.

 

[Lowfront]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EnOYiN /img/forum/go_quote.gif I don't want to spoil the fun here, but I have yet to meet someone who actually thinks the difference between a well encoded lossy file and a lossless one is huge. (for as far as SQ goes obviously) Pre-set -v0 is pretty much transparent for most people.

Well I guess I shouldn't of said huge but I did notice a good difference with songs I have listened to many many times before.

 

[elbrickodaviso]

If you have the space, there's absolutely no reason not to rip everything to FLAC. It's made a difference with every type of music I listen to

 

[Chri5peed]

How many times? V0 mp3 may well be transparent the same as FLAC, but SQ is not usually a deciding factor in its use.

For one I love the freedom to be able to convert to any other codec and archiving is not really happening in mp3.

 

[Lowfront]

I don't get it though.

All I read about is how horrible mp3's quality is. How can FLAC be considered transparent to V0?

 

[Febs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lowfront /img/forum/go_quote.gif I don't get it though. All I read about is how horrible mp3's quality is. How can FLAC be considered transparent to V0?

Much of what you read horrible MP3 quality is based on (1) experiences with older codecs, (2) experiences with downloaded files that may not be what they say they are, and (3) hearsay. I can't tell you how many times I've read testimonials from someone who heard one bad 128kbps CBR MP3 five years ago and has generalized that experience into the philosophy that "all MP3s are horrible."

We had a poll a while back about whether people could hear a difference between -V0 and lossless. The rules for the poll specified that you had to use an ABX test to determine whether you could hear a difference. Only 2 out of the 100 respondents could hear a difference in an ABX test. About 25 of the 100 respondents claimed to be able to hear a difference, but did not follow the rules of the poll regarding supporting their claim with an ABX test. Even if you accept the responses from those people who did not provide ABX results, the poll indicated that the substantial majority of the respondents could not distinguish between -V0 and lossless.

Bottom line: While bad MP3 encoders can certainly make bad MP3s, good encoders can make MP3s that sound indistinguishable to lossless for the majority of listeners.

(Incidentally, EnYOiN was one of the two people who proved with ABX test results that he could hear the difference.)

 

[Lowfront]

Well I think I'm going to save a hell of a lot of time and just keep the my V0's.

 

[fordgtlover]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EnOYiN /img/forum/go_quote.gif I don't want to spoil the fun here, but I have yet to meet someone who actually thinks the difference between a well encoded lossy file and a lossless one is huge. (for as far as SQ goes obviously) Pre-set -v0 is pretty much transparent for most people.

I have no particular objection to MP3, but once you have perfromed lossy compression you hav elost part of the music - whether you can hear it is another issue. You can't replace the lost bits when converting back to a lossless format. Fortunately my music is on my PC so I can choose the player I want and not worry too much about limited storage.

 

[Chri5peed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lowfront /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well I think I'm going to save a hell of a lot of time and just keep the my V0's.

What time is that then? Downloading?

If you're on about encoding, converting WAV to FLAC is a mile faster than WAV to V0 mp3.


Oh yeah, what happens when a superior codec is brought out? You'll have to use the original CDs, unless you want to transcode and degrade the mp3s. Man, ripping CDs is no slower at all than just hitting 'convert'.