[unwelcomeguest]

Hello, I am fairly new to the whole audiophile thing, esp the portable side of things, but I am wondering:

How many of you people are listening to lossless audio files on your portable players?

I have an iPod Classic 160Gb and almost insist on buying all my music on cd so I can copy the music down to iTunes via Apple's lossless encoder.

I am wondering because ya'all are using very high-quality (and expensive) headphones and portable amps, lod's, etc, but a lot of you seem to be using small-capacity music players, like 8Gb Sansa's, etc - which would make using large digital audio files difficult.

 

[Bennyboy71]

My Cowon J3 has 32gb capacity without using sd cards.  Thats more than enough for me to have a whole load of great music ripped in flac format. 
 
I'd argue that walking around with 160gb of lossless music in your pocket might seem like a great idea, but in the end it depends how often you listen to it all. Fair enough if you can listen all day at work, but my listening is limited to a couple hours a day pretty much.

 

[Hero Kid]

If you've got the space to use I see no reason not to use a lossless format such as FLAC but if you're limited good old trusty V0 is hard to overlook.
Personally I think V0 is the best option but with that being said I also use FLAC on my 80gb iPod just because I can.
It all comes down to the individual user. Hell if your ears aren't up to it you might be completely wasting your time with any lossless codec...

 

[unwelcomeguest]

It just seems kinda strange that people are using super high-end headphones and portable amps with lossy files. Like, surely they wouldn't be getting the best out of their equiptment with lossy files..? I dunno, just an observation..

 

[Goratrix]

Quote:

Like, surely they wouldn't be getting the best out of their equiptment with lossy files..?

Why not? The LAME mp3 presets are tested and finetuned constantly on very high-end equipment and are proven to be transparent for most people under normal circumstances. If you can ABX FLAC from LAME -V0, good for you, but 99.9% can't.

 

[MayaTlab]

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to tell the difference with my current level of equipment between 320 mbps mp3 and FLAC with most modern recordings, very often badly recorded (example : lady gaga). However, since my library is already in FLAC, it's more convenient not to have to reencode everything.
 
The second and most important reason is that I also listen to quite a lot of fantastically well recorded albums (example : AKIRA soundtrack), with which I can instantly tell if it's a FLAC or a mp3 with my S9 and the ESW10.
 
Another example would be spectral music : since it requires harmonics to sound interesting, using an MP3 file (which tend to supress harmonics) would be a total waste.

 

[MrProggie]

Why settle for less than CD quality? Disk space are not that much of a problem these days. FLAC files can't get any bigger than they already are and flash memory get cheaper by the day.

 

[Achmedisdead]

Quote:

Why not? The LAME mp3 presets are tested and finetuned constantly on very high-end equipment and are proven to be transparent for most people under normal circumstances. If you can ABX FLAC from LAME -V0, good for you, but 99.9% can't.

I'm actually using V2.....with my portable gear that works just fine. Even if I had a higher-capacity player, a well-encoded LAME mp3 is perfectly fine for on-the-go.

 

[Hero Kid]

Yeah FLAC is great don't get me wrong. But for portable use you really have to be realistic. Even is you can successfully ABX FLAC and 302kbps for portable us it probably won't be worth it.

 

[Phiber33]

I found an interesting link for you guys to look at.
It compares mp3 @128 and mp3 @ 320.
Of course it has some important limitations:
- extract quite short
- only one type of music
- goes through your PC sound card
 
Nevertheless it's an interesting experience. So can you find which one is @128 and which one is @320?
I sure couldn't.

here it is:
 
http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/mp3-sound-quality-test-128-320/

 

[uofmtiger]

 
Quote:

 How many of you people are listening to lossless audio files on your portable players?

I use lossless.  I also have a 160GB for my car, but even for my 32GB ipad and iPhone I choose lossless.  I have no disagreement that on some songs, especially those of an already over-compressed and clipped variety, it might not make a huge difference between 128k and lossless. 
 
However, to be sure I was not losing sound quality, I would have to test every song in my library against every mp3 compression method to find out where that particular song was transparent.  I would also need to test it on my iPad, iPhone, Zen W and Classic to see if the player itself makes a difference. Not to mention, I would need to have both libraries available with separate playlists for listening on my main rig/archiving and for my portable rig.  In short, it is just takes too much time to prove that I am not compromising...especially, when I know I have the choice (lossless) that eliminates that concern.
 
I should mention that I often listen to lossy files via Jukefly, Rhapsody, XM, Pandora, etc...  However, I don't really want to compromise on SQ when I don't need to.  Even if I had an 8GB player, I would just change out playlists on a more frequent basis.

 

[Dalamar]

Quote:

 
I use lossless.  I also have a 160GB for my car, but even for my 32GB ipad and iPhone I choose lossless.  I have no disagreement that on some songs, especially those of an already over-compressed and clipped variety, it might not make a huge difference between 128k and lossless. 
 
However, to be sure I was not losing sound quality, I would have to test every song in my library against every mp3 compression method to find out where that particular song was transparent.  I would also need to test it on my iPad, iPhone, Zen W and Classic to see if the player itself makes a difference. Not to mention, I would need to have both libraries available with separate playlists for listening on my main rig/archiving and for my portable rig.  In short, it is just takes too much time to prove that I am not compromising...especially, when I know I have the choice (lossless) that eliminates that concern.
 
I should mention that I often listen to lossy files via Jukefly, Rhapsody, XM, Pandora, etc...  However, I don't really want to compromise on SQ when I don't need to.  Even if I had an 8GB player, I would just change out playlists on a more frequent basis.

If you're going to obsess over quality THAT much, it's time you made a promise with yourself to stop buying anything made by Apple.
All gimmick, fads, and advertising, no build quality. That and you need to void your warranty to get an acceptable firmware...

 

[uofmtiger]

 
Quote:

 If you're going to obsess over quality THAT much, it's time you made a promise with yourself to stop buying anything made by Apple.
All gimmick, fads, and advertising, no build quality. That and you need to void your warranty to get an acceptable firmware... 
 

I think you missed my point.  With lossless files I don't have to obsess or even consider sound quality where it relates to the source file.
 
 
As for your Apple comments, I will let someone else feed the troll.

 

[krmathis]

I mainly use lossless of my iPods, for two simple reasons:
* Just one library to manage, which can be used "everywhere".
* The sake of mind, knowing that it is lossless and hence no need to wonder if I am missing out of anything.

 

[Somnambulist]

I think the things to consider with portable lossless is balancing where you're going to be doing your listening with your portable set-up, how much you want available at any one time and if it's your main rig. E.g. if you do the majority of your listening during the work commute, are you really going to be able to tell the difference with the inevitable background noise?
 
Even then it doesn't have to be black and white, if you want to keep your favourite, well-recorded stuff in lossless and the not-so-well recorded stuff in lossy then go for it. You don't have to be either/or, particularly if your home digital set-up has the space for everything to be archived in lossless.