[Gothamm]

lossless? 320?


Almost all of my music is VBR (V0) or 192kbps, and i want to buy a hifi set of IEM's. So far I have the klipsch image x5, and am fairly pleased with these. But these are forgiving headphones.

Let's say for the daily itunes listener like myself, is the venture into higher end audio gear pointless?

I am looking at the westone 3's/se530.

i am leaning towards the 530's, partly because they are forgiving, BUT that the westones will reveal all the nasty artifacts which comes with compressing music.

I like a warm, rich sound signature, with a big soundstage, and am most definitely open to other considerations besides these 2.

 

[Taikero]

I keep FLAC primary files which I convert to V0 MP3 for devices which have less space than I'd like (for instance, DAP or laptop).

I'm still trying to get rid of some pesky 128-192 kbps files, especially the few CBR ones I have left. Eww.

P.S. If you're doing PC listening, I recommend Winamp or foobar2000 with an ASIO (ASIO4ALL) or Kernel Streaming output plugin in order to get the best sound out of whatever bitrate you're listening with. In addition to giving you better sound quality, your CPU utilization will drop to almost nothing. Winamp uses a maximum of 5% of my CPU anymore on my 1.66 GHz dual core laptop.

 

[oldschool]

FLAC for backups some PC listening.

256kbps AAC on the iPod.

 

[fameh]

FLAC for PC and 320 for iPod.
And well, when downloading from internet...the best possible

If you are planning to get one of those good IEMs, i think you should try to go 320 or at least 256. ALAC could be good too if you are going to use then on your ipod.

 

[panda]

192 is plenty good for portable use. don't fret.

there are a crap load of threads that you could have read through to get this info, but here's my line anyway.

i use atrac3 @ 132k as i don't notice any audio qualities when i'm on the go anyway and this gives me a really good battery life. when it is quiet and im actually paying attention to the music, it's good enough to not distract me.

 

[my.self]

i have a range from 192 to 256/320. mainly 320/256 tho. some 192.

 

[DarKu]

only FLACs, on my PC and on my Cowon, deleted all mp3's one year back

 

[TheMarchingMule]

For me, it's FLAC for the computer, and ALAC for the iPod. And yes, I have proven to myself that I can hear the difference between high-bitrate MP3s and lossless.

I'm sure when I run out of space on my iPod though, that's when I'll start using 256 VBR for it. Something like that....

 

[nor_spoon]

Only FLAC, using my computer. Btw, what is an iPod?

 

[uberburger101]

ALAC. Only.

 

[rawrster]

most of my files are from 192 kbps to 320 kbps. Some are flac and very few are 128 kbps

 

[Usama]

Usually averages around 200 .mp3, by the way.

 

[somestranger26]

I have ATH-A900 and Westone 3s, and most of my music is LAME-encoded MP3s: 192-320 CBR or -V2 (~185) to -V0 (~250) VBR, and about 10% of my collection is in FLAC. The Westone 3s are not very forgiving, but as long as what I'm listening to is above 160kbps, it's fine, though minute details may be missing until the bitrate gets up to 256+.

 

[somestranger26]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taikero /img/forum/go_quote.gif P.S. If you're doing PC listening, I recommend Winamp or foobar2000 with an ASIO (ASIO4ALL) or Kernel Streaming output plugin in order to get the best sound out of whatever bitrate you're listening with. In addition to giving you better sound quality, your CPU utilization will drop to almost nothing. Winamp uses a maximum of 5% of my CPU anymore on my 1.66 GHz dual core laptop.

Heh, this post reminded me I forgot to set up ASIO in foobar2000 when my sound card supports it natively...

 

[aj_brown_99]

I had some FLAC files but they are mostly converted to Ogg q8 now due to size constraints on my computer (for the price of an external hard drive I could get a new pair of headphones

). Now I am downloading music almost entirely in mp3 V0 (variable ~256kbps). I've got a lot of my music now as 320, as well as about 1/4 of my music in 192. I also have a couple of really old files (from my first ever mp3 player which was 32mb

) that are 128 and even 96 kbps - been meaning to get rid of those for a while now but I almost never listen to them anymore anyways.

I find that for speakers, the quality of files makes a huge difference (i guess because it is being amplified more), but for headphones anything above 192 is perfectly fine for me, especially since I don't have the greatest ones.