[yepimonfire]

above 256kbps mp3 sound the same as a lossless file. as ive stated before you will never hear a difference even with the best phones on the planet.

 

[eric0531]

Quote:

You know, I've said this before but all this is just a rehash of the debate about Minidisc and ATRAC from 15 years ago. Once ATRAC reached a certain level of refinement it was effectively transparent even to hi-fi reviewers, and most admitted it, but because it was a compression system the Golden Ears were just not going to have it and Minidisc slowly died, or is dying. One of the best formats of all time, but that idea that information was being discarded just kept seeping back into some people's brains. Eventually Sony came out with Hi-MD, a lossless system, which of course sounded exactly the same, but by then it was too late. And now we're going through it all again, and it wouldn't matter how many ABX tests proved conclusively that the discarded information was inaudible some people will still insist on lossless and will still lobby the powers that be until all downloads are lossless, however incompatable it is with everyday equipment (see post above). Sheesh....   

While I understand where you are coming from, if the current benchmark for digital audio is the CD why would you want to accept inferior lossy formats when you buy music downloads?  Almost all of my music listening is with MP3 files (either LAME VBR -0 or fixed at 320) and I've done enough double-blind tests to be comfortable that I can't tell the difference between those and lossless on my system.  But I still want to have the full lossless version of the file archived, because perhaps someday I'll have a good enough system that I could tell the difference.  Like others have said, storage is cheap.  I don't want downloads to *not* be available in MP3 format, I would just like to have lossless available since that's the format I want to download whenever possible.  
 

 

[audiogamma]

Many tracks are not available natively in lossless due to the ubiquity of itunes and the like. I may hear a Rihanna track on FM that I like, but I'm unwilling to buy the CD and rip it to FLAC. I will have a difficult time finding a trance compilation on CD. For some, the a la carte convenience overwhelms the benefits of lossless, provided the lossy bitrate is decent.

 

[TheOtus]

Quote:

above 256kbps mp3 sound the same as a lossless file. as ive stated before you will never hear a difference even with the best phones on the planet.

Now that's a bold statement, and also bull. Maybe you can't, but someone can for sure.
 
Well, everyone has their own style, I just can't get the same out of a file folder I've downloaded illegally, and I'm not paying for something I can also buy on a CD and actually hold in my hands.
 
 
And this is WAY off topic. xD

 

[VanCitySound]

Quote:

Maybe you can't, but someone can for sure.
 

+1
 
 

 

[changwang54]

whats the difference between 320 mp3 and wav? also is wav from CD's or Vinyls?

 

[peskypesky]

Quote:

whats the difference between 320 mp3 and wav? also is wav from CD's or Vinyls?

wav's are not usually compressed. mp3s always are.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV
 
 
"Though a WAV file can hold compressed audio, the most common WAV format contains uncompressed audio in the linear pulse code modulation (LPCM) format. The standard audio file format for CDs, for example, is LPCM-encoded, containing two channels of 44,100 samples per second, 16 bits per sample. Since LPCM uses an uncompressed storage method which keeps all the samples of an audio track, professional users or audio experts may use the WAV format for maximum audio quality."
 

 

[LugBug1]

 
Quote:

whats the difference between 320 mp3 and wav? also is wav from CD's or Vinyls?

320 mp3 is a compressed format to make a smaller file but is the highest quality with mp3. Wav is lossless so it should be an exact copy of the original but is a very big file in comparison. Both Cd's and Vinyls can be ripped with both formats.
 

 

[Ikarios]

FWIW I did an ABX test in Foobar and couldn't tell the difference between FLAC and a re-encoded 320kbps MP3 file through my ESI Juli@ -> SRS2050A system. The Stax have better detail resolution than most dynamics in the <$500 range so I guess my ears can't tell the difference. I'll continue to re-encode my music library to 320kbps, then.

 

[tws1]

After the MP3 has been through its reconstruction filters, etc, and with the complexity of the modern MP3 encoders, I wouldn't worry about FLAC vs. MP3, as they are going to be extremely similar. After all, assuming that the FLAC has been created from a 44.1kHz CD the extra accuracy is the detail of the wave every 441000th of a second. We can only hear the difference in lower quality MP3's because the 16/24bit value is limited by the xxxxkpbs, so the encoder compresses as best it can whilst maintaining as much audio quality. Noticed how VBR MP3's bitrate drops up and down, on 'simple' segments of the track, the bitrate falls to meet the V0, size, etc, contstraints.
 
Anyway...
 
Spend the money on better amplifing the headphone, speaker, etc. The better you can reproduce the reformed MP3 the better it will sound, regardless of the bitrate. Think of listening to FLAC through Apple crappy buds, vs. a 128k MP3 through Grado's..... an extreme situation yes, but at least proves where the easiest and most dramatic improvement can be made.
 
OP, in a word, YES, upgrade up to your point of diminishing returns!

 

[peskypesky]

for Mac users, there is a free app called ABXTester. I just installed it and am going to try it out.

 

[keanex]

Quote:

FWIW I did an ABX test in Foobar and couldn't tell the difference between FLAC and a re-encoded 320kbps MP3 file through my ESI Juli@ -> SRS2050A system. The Stax have better detail resolution than most dynamics in the <$500 range so I guess my ears can't tell the difference. I'll continue to re-encode my music library to 320kbps, then.

ABX Flac and V0, after you install the LAME codecs that is. Once you realize it's the same sound as 320 while saving space then you can come thank me =P

 

[yepimonfire]

wav is actually just a container format and any codec can be intergrated into it but the most popular one is PCM. wav, au, aiff, etc are all the exact same codecs with different headers and they all contain raw PCM.
Quote:

wav's are not usually compressed. mp3s always are.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV
 
 

"Though a WAV file can hold compressed audio, the most common WAV format contains uncompressed audio in the linear pulse code modulation (LPCM) format. The standard audio file format for CDs, for example, is LPCM-encoded, containing two channels of 44,100 samples per second, 16 bits per sample. Since LPCM uses an uncompressed storage method which keeps all the samples of an audio track, professional users or audio experts may use the WAV format for maximum audio quality."
 

 

 

[Skarecrow77]

Quote:

you sir, are an idiot. science trumps foolish unfounded claims all the time.

 
That's a pretty ironic statement considering that technically his statement was right and you're the one who is wrong.
 
Last I checked, there are still killer samples that even the newest revisions of LAME can't encode transparently no matter what the bitrate, the psychoacoustical model is not perfect and still screws some things up. Granted, we're at the point where we're talking about the 1-out-of-a-thousand special case here, but it's still there. There are still tracks that you can ABX even 320 cbr or -v 0 tracks from lossless on even modest equipment. The TRUE shining benefit of today's lossy compression is that the other 999 songs out of that thousand are transparent. If that was your point, you need to stop talking in absolutes. Also, the psychoacoustical model is just that, a model. It is not a perfect mapping of the aural capacity of even a single human being, let alone the entire human race. There is always room for a given person's ears to be "outliers" from the statistical bell curve. That sort of thing happens FAR less frequently than the users in this forum tend to claim, but it's still there, and will always be there as long as there is lossy compression. Humans are not a single model with concretely defined capabilities. My wife can usually ABX music easier than I can, and in turn am usually able to pick out video artifacts in stronger levels of h.264 compression before she can.
 
Oh, also, your earlier statement that WMA and AAC at 128kbps are the equivilent of MP3 at 256kbps is WAY off. newer codecs are inherently better designed than MP3 is, but the counter to that is that MP3 (LAME specifically) has received far more tuning and attention than the other codecs (yes, even Apple's baby AAC) due to the market penetration. That is, in simple terms, more people care to make mp3 better because it is supported in damn near everything made in the last 5-10 years. Today's LAME is almost equal to AAC and WMA at equivilent bitrates, It really comes down to the specific encoding which is better. Also, you'd do well to check out Ogg Vorbis if you haven't already, its performance at medium/low bitrates (~96kbps to ~160kbps) is probably the best of the bunch, especially the aoTuV b5.7 version of Vorbis. I am unable to reliably ABX -q 6 (~118kbps) from lossless on either my HD-650s or my DT880s (let alone my MS1s) on the vast majority of my music.
 
By the way, just a general FYI people, generally 320cbr or even -v 0 are a waste. If you can't tell the difference between 320 and lossless, you probably can't tell the difference between -v 2 and lossless either. -v 2 has recieved the strongest tuning and tweaking and is the sweet spot of the codec. That said, LAME is so strong nowadays that on a portable setup in an environment with some noise, etc, even the much-maligned 128kbps is a very strong contender.
 
 

 

[Ypoknons]

My 2c on the OP: I can tell the difference between my ESW10JPN and W1000X whether I'm listening to 96kbps mp3 or 24/96 flac. These are both $550-700 headphones (although you can get competitive performance for cheaper) from the same brand. That's because their respective frequency response and soundstage are noticeably differenent. It's not about whether a headphone is 'better' than mp3 or not - I buy headphones for their sonic qualities. If headphones sound different, they will always sound different. It's only where with some equipment in the high, high end where differences become quite small where compressed music may play a role - but even then that's debateable.