[sml1226]

We pay for the speakers/drivers to be able to handle the music as it was meant to be. We pay for music the way it was meant to be. Based on that, we don't want to lose any of the music that is supposed to be there due to lossy compression methods. Right?

Even 320 MP3 is going to cut off a little more than necessary. The bass you can feel is still there far below 20Hz and I've heard claims of the need for headroom for the treble so things that may peak above 20KHz isn't like bumped into the 20KHz frequency to make it audible and not what was intentionally done or something like that. I don't remember, but why not get your music the way it's supposed to be? By that I mean uncompressed, not necessarily at insane sample rates and high bit depths. If you are truly concerned about perfect representation of everything, you should probably go analog to remove these barriers and see everything that the original recording could handle.

I have yet to buy 24bit FLAC or anything, so I can't attest to it's superiority, I just rip CDs straight to 16/44.1 FLAC and be done with it. I can't improve on the CDs limitations without buying lossless files or going analog and I don't see the justification in going higher (at this point in my musical quest for excellence anyway )

 

[Permagrin]

Great knowledge in this thread.
 
Unless you're trying to save space on a portable music player there is no reason not to go lossless (as Uncle Erik stated).
 
Everything but has pretty much limitless storage so that's all moot.

 

[Permagrin]

Quote:

I have yet to buy 24bit FLAC or anything, so I can't attest to it's superiority, I just rip CDs straight to 16/44.1 FLAC and be done with it. I can't improve on the CDs limitations without buying lossless files or going analog and I don't see the justification in going higher (at this point in my musical quest for excellence anyway

)

You're saying you don't have an SACD player? 

 

 

[sml1226]

Quote:

I have yet to buy 24bit FLAC or anything, so I can't attest to it's superiority, I just rip CDs straight to 16/44.1 FLAC and be done with it. I can't improve on the CDs limitations without buying lossless files or going analog and I don't see the justification in going higher (at this point in my musical quest for excellence anyway

)

You're saying you don't have an SACD player? 

 

No... but I do have a SACD

Oh and same situation with vinyl, no TT, but I've got an LP sitting here.

 

[Scarzy]

Quote:

I may be wrong, but don't we use lossless because it sounds exactly like the original? Perhaps regarding the frequencies, there are sounds that we percieve but do not hear which adds to the listening experience.  This is a high frequency eqivalent to tactile sound perhaps?

Totally agree, you do it because you want to hear as close to the original as possible.
 
Space is indeed cheap as state by another post, but still, if you cannot make use of loseless then why use it at all? There is also a limited FLAC/Loseless support on the most popular stock built media devices; for example the Ipod classic (unless jailbroken).
 
If I'm honest, these days I tend to spend all the cash I make on other things than my audio equipment, which has hindered my quest for perfection, this also means that unless it is one of my favorite bands, my music collection is mostly made up of lossy (320, though).
 
 

 

[Willakan]

As I see it, the main advantage of lossless is that I have a source from which I can make transcodes of my library with no quality loss - for a hypothetical example, deciding to convert some music to .ogg format instead of .mp3, as supported by my new portable source, to fit more files on it with better or equal audio quality. If my library was all in 320kbps or V0 .mp3, I would then lose even more information transcoding to the new format (and after a few cycles of this I would imagine I would be able to hear the degradation of sound quality) - with lossless I always have a 'master' from which I can create smaller files for portable devices and keep the lossless ones for home listening.
 

 

[xnor]

^ Exactly. For anything other than direct playback lossily compressed tracks are a one-way dead end.

 

[Skylab]

We use lossless because we are audiophiles. We want to do EVERYTHING we can do to make the music sound as good as it can, and we DO NOT want to do things which might make the sound worse.

 

[KuKuBuKu]

320 kbps mp3's sound no different from FLAC. I just get whatever I can.

 

[tuahogary]

 
Quote:

We use lossless because we are audiophiles. We want to do EVERYTHING we can do to make the music sound as good as it can, and we DO NOT want to do things which might make the sound worse.

Agreed. Why debate on FLAC vs MP3 when we're willing to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars of equipment to eek out that extra few percent of sound quality.
 

 

[MacedonianHero]

We use lossless because we are audiophiles. We want to do EVERYTHING we can do to make the music sound as good as it can, and we DO NOT want to do things which might make the sound worse.

Agreed!

We spend thousands on headphones, amps, dacs, transports, cables, etc.... and then it all really starts from the music itself.

 

[Eric_C]

 
[size=medium]

Why lossless? Just in case, that's why.
Based on my very rudimentary understanding of sound: compression loses data within the 20Hz-20KHz range, not just outside of it. No idea if I can reliably hear it, but you have to agree that it's a preventative measure to use lossless.
 
Sennheiser HD 800 btw, not Shure.
​

[/size]

 

[Sumpfkraut]

"Just in case lossless" as it was elaborated upon so far sounds more like "just in case earthquake safe*" and not "just in case lifeboats". That's how I perceive it at any rate.
 
 
*Talking about Central Europe.

 

[Pale Rider]

Being from the Bay Area, the distinction between earthquake and lifeboat preparedness may be lost on me.

IMHO, encoding lossless is about not losing any information, and about not using up any more CPU cycles in decoding files than necessary. Over the course of the last 10 years, I gradually ramped up from 128 to 320 and then to Apple Lossless. as my rig got better, and my ears learned to listen all over again, I became increasingly sensitive to nuances like air, spatial depth, tonal constancy, etc. When more 96/24 and 192/24 files became available, and as hard drive/SSD space continued to expand in size and decrease in price, I started to wonder why I would give up any of that file depth and complexity I was paying for. So, I stopped. I now rip entirely to AIFF. When I receive FLAC files, typically from the hi-res download services, I convert them to AIFF, and I will, when I can, compare them for file integrity to the originals.

I play my music either through Fidelia or Pure Music on a dedicated Mac mini. AIFF files sound better this way than compressed files do. I don't trust my ears entirely, given my age, and some medical issues, so I have asked others to A/B some of the files. Even untrained listeners consistently pick out the higher-resolution files over the lower-res, and while the pick of lossless against uncompressed is less consistent, the two together strike me as a no-brainer. With space as cheap and plentiful as it is, why sacrifice any of the music?

I am aware of the studies that show that ALAC and FLAC both produce 100% integrity waveforms when decoded, which to me is very good news, because it suggests those smart engineers out there know what they are doing. And it bodes well for the future when high-resolution continues to make leaps and bounds and download services will still want to find ways to compress files for bandwidth conservation purposes. But as the end user, I see no reason to sacrifice any of that information further than it might already have been, and I see no reason to ask the CPU to do any more than it has to. So maybe that is a lifeboat and earthquake mentality.

 

[BlackbeardBen]

Quote:

Being from the Bay Area, the distinction between earthquake and lifeboat preparedness may be lost on me.

IMHO, encoding lossless is about not losing any information, and about not using up any more CPU cycles in decoding files than necessary. Over the course of the last 10 years, I gradually ramped up from 128 to 320 and then to Apple Lossless. as my rig got better, and my ears learned to listen all over again, I became increasingly sensitive to nuances like air, spatial depth, tonal constancy, etc. When more 96/24 and 192/24 files became available, and as hard drive/SSD space continued to expand in size and decrease in price, I started to wonder why I would give up any of that file depth and complexity I was paying for. So, I stopped. I now rip entirely to AIFF. When I receive FLAC files, typically from the hi-res download services, I convert them to AIFF, and I will, when I can, compare them for file integrity to the originals.

I play my music either through Fidelia or Pure Music on a dedicated Mac mini. AIFF files sound better this way than compressed files do. I don't trust my ears entirely, given my age, and some medical issues, so I have asked others to A/B some of the files. Even untrained listeners consistently pick out the higher-resolution files over the lower-res, and while the pick of lossless against uncompressed is less consistent, the two together strike me as a no-brainer. With space as cheap and plentiful as it is, why sacrifice any of the music?

I am aware of the studies that show that ALAC and FLAC both produce 100% integrity waveforms when decoded, which to me is very good news, because it suggests those smart engineers out there know what they are doing. And it bodes well for the future when high-resolution continues to make leaps and bounds and download services will still want to find ways to compress files for bandwidth conservation purposes. But as the end user, I see no reason to sacrifice any of that information further than it might already have been, and I see no reason to ask the CPU to do any more than it has to. So maybe that is a lifeboat and earthquake mentality.

lol, "studies show"...  No, not that.  Mathematically they contain exactly the same information.  This is not up for debate, it is mathematical certainty insofar as you're willing to accept the constructs of math that make modern life possible.  Yes, it is the way they were designed - to maintain every single last bit of the original information, unlike lossy compression which intends to sound the same to humans while throwing out as much data as possible.
 
As a result, "Lossless" is by definition not the opposite of "compressed".
 
Functionally, FLAC files are compressed losslessly in a similar manner to how "6!" is a losslessly compressed way of writing "6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1" (also equal to "720").  You don't lose any information when you write "6!" - it has exactly the same information as "6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1".  But it is compressed.