[Young Spade]

Just realized again how big of a difference you can get in terms of sound quality by just changing your source files. I was using a 320kbs ripped copy of Sherlock Holmes OST and loved the sound.
 
I Just recently re-ripped the CD to FLAC and going back, I love every single song on the CD, absolutely love them. Making the switch though, I instantly noticed how much fuller, wider, and just plain better the FLAC version sounded. 
 
I'm not going to attribute it to burn in on my cans although they are quite new because of the fact that I listen to the CD daily, although making the switch 20 minutes ago was a night and day difference.
 
Meh, just wanted to share this tidbit of information to you all. 
 
The equipment I'm using right now:
Teclast T51 (sflo2)
Copper/Gold mini
ALO Rx
AKG K702s. 

 

[HipHopScribe]

Did you do a blind test?

 

[plonter]

thanks for sharing. I am not asking for proof,I totally believe you.

 

[Head Injury]

I can't tell the difference between 320kbps and FLAC, but boy do I think I can when I'm listening! Since FLAC is free, it's worth it.

 

[Young Spade]

Quote:

Did you do a blind test?

Don't need to. Music sounds a lot better. I know a lot of people state that I need to do a blind test or whatever to really see if I can tell the difference but IMO it's my ears and I obviously hear a difference in all areas. I don't need to do a blind test to tell me what I already know.
 
I'm not discrediting the whole blind testing thing and honestly I think it's a good thing but I feel that sometimes people here get a little too caught up in it and feel they need to tell everyone to ABX something to PROVE they're right or wrong. 
 
IMO it seriously comes down to how good your equipment is.If your equipment isn't revealing enough, you obviously won't hear the differences. 

 

[HipHopScribe]

 
Quote:

Don't need to. Music sounds a lot better. I know a lot of people state that I need to do a blind test or whatever to really see if I can tell the difference but IMO it's my ears and I obviously hear a difference in all areas. I don't need to do a blind test to tell me what I already know.
 
I'm not discrediting the whole blind testing thing and honestly I think it's a good thing but I feel that sometimes people here get a little too caught up in it and feel they need to tell everyone to ABX something to PROVE they're right or wrong. 
 
IMO it seriously comes down to how good your equipment is.If your equipment isn't revealing enough, you obviously won't hear the differences. 

No offense, but you're not exempt from human psychology, and since you decided to broadcast your result here, I have to point out that's it's unreliable, no matter how genuinely you feel it.

 

[Young Spade]

Quote:

 

No offense, but you're not exempt from human psychology, and since you decided to broadcast your result here, I have to point out that's it's unreliable, no matter how genuinely you feel it.

Never said my post was reliable or to be taken for truth did I? Just stating how I felt and what I heard, nothing more. I thought I put IMO in that post enough for others to see that it was IN MY OPINION. Nowhere did I back anything up with something relatively factual at all. 

 

[HipHopScribe]

There's no reason to post this unless you wanted to discuss it. I'm discussing.

 

[Superfrag]

IMO, it also depends on how well the CD is recorded.

 

[khaos974]

Hehe, human psychology is indeed powerful, I can appreciate how more open, dynamic and tonally just FLAC is 100% of the time, I really feel it's better sound quality compared to 320 kbps MP3, except that I fail 99% of the blind test that don't include a tricky passage. Even though I know what failing those blind test means, I still hear that FLAC is better when i know it's FLAC.

 

[sgrossklass]

Apparently MP3 starts to get encoder/format limited once you're beyond -V 2 (in terms of LAME) or so. There may be more to gain by going to -q 0 rather than a higher bitrate at this point.
 
Yours truly must be pretty insensitive, for while I can hear artifacts in old, badly-encoded 128 kbps MP3s, I have been utterly unable to ABX even my old LAME 3.97 -V 6 -q 0 --athaa-sensitivity 1 MP3s vs. the originals in most cases (much less the current -V 4 -q 0 from 3.98.x). If anything, the differences were so subtle as to not distract from the musical experience. (My hearing does not stretch much beyond 16 kHz these days, so I guess -V 4 upwards should be transparent for me.) Of course I'm using FLAC for the library anyway, as I know it's identical to the original and can be recoded to anything if needed. The Clip only gets MP3s though.

 

[moriez]

Quote:

There's no reason to post this unless you wanted to discuss it. I'm discussing.

 
There's no reason for you but there is reason for Young Spade as he said:
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Young Spade /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
just wanted to share this tidbit of information to you all. 
 

 
Sometimes people just wanna express themselves without necessarily discussing. I know I do.

 

[Andhyka]

When a disc is ripped to mp3 regardless of its bit rate, sonic information is lost.
 
Hence it's called lossy compression and the process is one-way, irreversible.
 
If that mp3 is converted to lossless format such as flac, ape, wave, the sound will be exactly same as the mp3 and will not match the original.
 
Sorry, it's all in your head.

 

[HipHopScribe]

Quote:

 
There's no reason for you but there is reason for Young Spade as he said:
 
 
Sometimes people just wanna express themselves without necessarily discussing. I know I do.

Sharing something on a discussion forum = opening a discussion.
 
Quote:

When a disc is ripped to mp3 regardless of its bit rate, sonic information is lost.
 
Hence it's called lossy compression and the process is one-way, irreversible.
 
If that mp3 is converted to lossless format such as flac, ape, wave, the sound will be exactly same as the mp3 and will not match the original.
 
Sorry, it's all in your head.

He said re-ripped the CDs to FLAC.

 

[A Love Supreme]

Hearing the difference now isn't the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is 'lossy'. What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA - it's about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don't want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.

I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrange...well don't get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren't stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you'll be glad you did.