[SomeGuyDude]

  If you can hear the difference, by all means record in lossless. Certainly no one here is going to object. But for most people it's clearly a useless exercise. And my point about unwieldy files is still valid, as you'll know if you've ever tried to fill a 16gb thumb drive with music files. Plenty of time for a cup of coffee and a shower.
 
I'm not sure about that 'why bother with fidelity?' remark.Fidelity is a matter of perception. For myself, if I could hear the slightest difference I'd definitely record in lossless, so if you can hear the difference you should record in lossless, no question. For the rest of us, unless we expect a sudden improvement in our hearing in the near future, there's no point.

 
 

  as others have said, 192 sounds fine and you'd have a hard time telling the difference.  If someone was listening to 128 mp3s i might say that they'd be limited since those often don't sound great.

 
Wholly agreed on both. I don't think anyone is ever going to tell anyone to STOP using lossless. If you have the storage and you like doing it then by all means. Just I hope those people understand that it's mostly a comfort thing, there really isn't an audible difference.
 
You can search the internet for ABX tests and the results really never change: from 128 to 320 people are generally successful, but 320 vs lossless it's basically a coin flip. And keep in mind that's when they're sitting there trying to compare them knowing that there is one of each. Explaining the test to you guys would ruin it, but I can nearly guarantee that if you had two files at 192 and one at 96 and told people they were lossless/320/128 and asked them to differentiate them, no one would question the numbers you gave them. I play you a song and say "what's this encoded at?" and you're not gonna know.
 
Now keep in mind, I use Spotify largely because it plays 320kbps OGG as opposed to Rdio's 192mp3, but the difference there is that, all else being equal, why not go for the larger files? I'm streaming on WiFi, space is irrelevant. But when I do store music on my phone, I use 192 and don't stress about it even slightly. Hell even 96kbps isn't bad, it's just audibly compressed. 
 
There's actually a thread where I'm talking about Rdio's 192 vs Google's 320 and I said I could hear it. Scratch that. I'd been A/Bing and thought I was hearing differences, but eventually conceded that I really couldn't. 

 

[3X0]

Maybe if you have truly, truly world class equipment you'll feel a need for that level of fidelity but outside of people like the above poster I'm not convinced.

I wouldn't suggest that I could ABX between 320Kbps and FLAC reliably. The older portions of my collection are still in lossy formats and I still listen to them regularly.
 
The older the crowd, the more stigma against lossy you'll find. Elderly vinyl die-hards decry all digital formats, even FLAC.
 
Generally speaking the individuals who spend money on higher-end headphones (e.g. $1000+) or "high-end hi-fi" are an older crowd, so naturally there's an increasingly strong predisposition against lossy correlated with spend and age.

Storage may be cheap but it's still a pain to transfer large files to USBs etc. Large files are just a pain, period.

If you have a sufficiently fast processor you can transcode to something like V0 directly onto the transfer media with minimum overhead compared to moving a lossy file. Lossless can remain on your desktop storage for desktop listening and/or archiving.

 

[Schonen]

"The truth is, very little is lost in 320 files. What is lost is mostly color and dynamics, but the essence of the music is still there."
 
Ever done ABX testing of MP3 compared to loss-less? I have, (you can do that with foobar) I tested on a friend and I and we both failed to be able to tell the difference. I was using 192kb/s mp3 and not even 320kb/s. Maybe there are a few golden ears that can tell the dif but most who claim they can have never even done ABX testing and are FoS. What is lost are inaudible frequencies, that is how MP3 works, sure, 128kb/s you can probably hear the dif but not 320kb/s.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

  "The truth is, very little is lost in 320 files. What is lost is mostly color and dynamics, but the essence of the music is still there."
 
Ever done ABX testing of MP3 compared to loss-less? I have, (you can do that with foobar) I tested on a friend and I and we both failed to be able to tell the difference. I was using 192kb/s mp3 and not even 320kb/s. Maybe there are a few golden ears that can tell the dif but most who claim they can have never even done ABX testing and are FoS. What is lost are inaudible frequencies, that is how MP3 works, sure, 128kb/s you can probably hear the dif but not 320kb/s.

 
It used to be really true in the dark ages of MP3 when the codec was new and not especially optimized, but now? Just use the highest you have the space/bandwidth for. No need to think you HAVE to have a terabyte of storage for all FLAC files or anything. 

 

[zazex]

  I wouldn't suggest that I could ABX between 320Kbps and FLAC reliably. The older portions of my collection are still in lossy formats and I still listen to them regularly.
 
The older the crowd, the more stigma against lossy you'll find. Elderly vinyl die-hards decry all digital formats, even FLAC.
 
Generally speaking the individuals who spend money on higher-end headphones (e.g. $1000+) or "high-end hi-fi" are an older crowd, so naturally there's an increasingly strong predisposition against lossy correlated with spend and age.
If you have a sufficiently fast processor you can transcode to something like V0 directly onto the transfer media with minimum overhead compared to moving a lossy file. Lossless can remain on your desktop storage for desktop listening and/or archiving.

 
What's the source of that information?  Urban legend?
 
Personally, FWIW, the strongest supporter of vinyl I've met was an "elderly" 27 y.o.
who works in professional audio. 

 

[3X0]

Personally, FWIW, the strongest supporter of vinyl I've met was an "elderly" 27 y.o. who works in professional audio. 

You're right, I forgot about the bogus resurgence of the format by hipsters for all the wrong reasons.

 

[zazex]

   
It used to be really true in the dark ages of MP3 when the codec was new and not especially optimized, but now? Just use the highest you have the space/bandwidth for. No need to think you HAVE to have a terabyte of storage for all FLAC files or anything. 

 
Especially in Europe and the UK, but in other places as well,
there are engineers, studios, and manufacturers
devoting their skills, resources, and knowledge to turning out
recordings of the highest fidelity.
 
Then there are those, many of whom are posting in this thread, who
are saying "well I'm not sure I can hear the difference" and "it's a pain
to record a FLAC file as opposed to a 320K file", so bugger all,
I'm fine with 192 or 256."
 
 
From reading on other forums and elsewhere, it seems there's a
strong desire to move away from lossy entirely except for voice
recordings - lectures and the like - as lossless encoding becomes
easier, faster, and cheaper still.

 

[jring]

  You can't just compare numbers… Google Play is MP3, while Spotify is Vorbis… That makes 320 not the same as 320, and so on, and so forth…

 
This! With 320 it's probably a moot point since both MP3 and Vorbis will be actually undiscernible from lossless but at lower bitrates Vorbis wins. I have to say that I can happily listen to free spotify streams at 160 but 192kbit MP3 from old encoders makes my ears bleed...
 
Joachim

 

[AmericasTeam]

Yes, it's definitely worth it, but you'll get the most with a lossless format. I just re-ripped my entire library in lossless and was amazed at the difference. This comes from someone that was extremely picky with my conversion methods. The better the cans the more noticeable things get. Good and bad.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

Yes, it's definitely worth it, but you'll get the most with a lossless format. 

 
Yeah, about that...

 

[pp312]

Yes, it's definitely worth it, but you'll get the most with a lossless format. I just re-ripped my entire library in lossless and was amazed at the difference.

 
Re-ripped from what?

 

[SomeGuyDude]

  You're right, I forgot about the bogus resurgence of the format by hipsters for all the wrong reasons.

 
There are very few right reasons to think vinyl is superior beyond just a personal preference to the character of it. 

 

[conheo]

^ Agree. The feeling of holing vinyl on your hand, putting on turntable, playing etc....is must better than you play with cd. That why vinyl or reel are special. And also, people who enjoy vinyl have collected a good-old-day vinyl records.
 
IMO

 

[bassophile]

Yes, it's definitely worth it, but you'll get the most with a lossless format. I just re-ripped my entire library in lossless and was amazed at the difference. This comes from someone that was extremely picky with my conversion methods. The better the cans the more noticeable things get. Good and bad.

You noticed a big difference?
 
What bitrate was your music ripped at before you went to lossless?
 
Are you saying you could notice a big difference between 320 and lossless?

 

[pp312]

I'm suspecting that the 'big difference' heard here is like the big difference people hear when they change cables.
 
Of course, if you do hear a big difference after switching cables I'll have to switch metaphors.