[ilovesocks]

I used to rip my CD's into 320kbps CBR MP3's because it made transferring to my Zen Micro simple, and I thought I couldn't hear a difference. But I got bored a few days ago and decided to re-rip everything into FLACs because I figured I could get rid of the clipping problems I'd been having by setting a lower encoding level (I set it to 5). I can hear the difference! The sound is smoother, and instrument separation and soundstage are improved. I'm never going back. Never!

If you rip your CDs into MP3 format, and have been wondering if there's something more, THERE IS! Re-rip those CDs now! It's not true that you need high-quality equipment and golden ears (I know I don't have them) to hear the difference - all I've got is a FireWire Audiophile and HF-1's (or Ultrasone HFI-650's); no amp or anything. Hooray for FLAC! WAV quality with 2/3 to 3/4 the size. And no more clipping warnings (yes I know you can turn them off

). I was originally going to go Monkey's Audio instead of FLAC, but the FLAC frontend seems so much more professionally done.

 

[pedxing]

From the title, I thought you stared into the red blinking light of the optical out and blinded yourself.

FLAC is cool. You can download other frontends for FLAC.

 

[Tachikoma]

I don't think you could actually go blind from looking at the optical light, its just a red led after all

 

[evilgnome]

Joined the FLAC bandwagon when I got my EMU.

I love this site.

 

[xand1x]

Same, my 20,000+ mp3s before hifi are useless now hehe. Upgraded to lossless relatively quickly though. I have 500gb of hdd space now but need another 250 to sustain my lossless addiction

 

[ootput]

Oh, yeah! Storage size for Flac can get pretty insane. I've had to move my flac collection to a separate dedicated fileserver ( which contain HDD's in place of Media Drives.)

 

[atx]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ilovesocks I can hear the difference! The sound is smoother, and instrument separation and soundstage are improved. I'm never going back. Never!

Do some abx testing and come back.

 

[lord.hypnos]

One of the other compelling reasons to use FLAC is that you can have any lossy format for your portable in about two mouse clicks. And if there is a better lossless compression format in the future, you don't have to rerip your CD collection.

 

[corrosive_nf]

I use apple lossless so i know what you mean.

 

[ilovesocks]

Quote:

Originally Posted by atx Do some abx testing and come back.

I have done some abx testing, and yes, certain songs sound identical to me - especially rougher stuff like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and old jazz recordings that were fuzzy to begin with, but with smoother things like strings, vocals, etc. have such a nice, yet subtle difference that it's worth nearly doubling the disk size of my collection (went from about 11gb to 19.5). And with nearly every song, instrument separation is affected, as well as soundstage. Then when I add crossfeed, it's like listening to speakers.

Plus, I like foobar's icon for FLACs more than the one for MP3s.