WHY ON EARTH DO PEOPLE STILL LISTEN TO mp3?!??!?!

[tedman633]

Hi everyone i just made the switch from mp3 to flac a few days ago and by god even with my ****ty onboard soundcard it still sounds 3x better then mp3. My question is why on earth would the standard still be mp3? I mean sure size but even that is not a factor anymore with harddrives becoming larger and cheaper. Hell even cds can hold more now. So can someone please explain to me why companies like apple have not figured out to make there portable music players support flac by default. I love all you guys for suggesting flac to me you truly saved me from ****ty quality music.

Happy listening my fellow flac listeners

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

MP3 VBR v0 and CBR 320 kbps is still very fine for me, I've had cases where I got flac from one place and MP3 from another source and preferred the sound of MP3 lol. Most of the time it's not a noticable thing or slight advantage for flac possibly but there's cases when buying from online that I preferred the MP3 version for some reason (depending on how it's been encoded obviously), ofc with very subtle differences. Most of the time I prefer VBR V0 over 320 kbps CBR mp3 cuz the VBR algorithm is much newer and to me sounds at least as good if not better and I'm not alone with that opinion but it's a fairly "accepted" view due to the VBR having a new very good algorithm, but only V0 for VBR should be looked at tho, rest isn't good.

 

[streetdragon]

mp3's convinience and availability outweighs the extra 1% or sound quality most of the time, frankly i cant tell the difference between the standard mp3 320 and FLAC most of the time

 

[AKG240mkII]

Quote:

 So can someone please explain to me why companies like apple have not figured out to make there portable music players support flac by default.

That one is easy :
Because they can't get a patent on FLAC, it's open-source and apple didn't 'invent' it .. either
So, they 'invented' their 'own' lossless format instead - just to find nobody would use it, unless they open-sourced the code .
Talk about re-inventing the wheel !
 
Sandisk has seen the light, others are following .
 
But why people accept the lesser quality is hard to answer, many probably feel it's 'good enough' and prefer quantity over quality ?
If they are using whatever ear-plugs came with the player it's probably a good choice

 

[streetdragon]

Quote:

That one is easy :
Because they can't get a patent on FLAC, it's open-source and apple didn't 'invent' it .. either
So, they 'invented' their 'own' lossless format instead - just to find nobody would use it, unless they open-sourced the code .
Talk about re-inventing the wheel !
 
Sandisk has seen the light, others are following .
 
But why people accept the lesser quality is hard to answer, many probably feel it's 'good enough' and prefer quantity over quality ?
If they are using whatever ear-plugs came with the player it's probably a good choice

because its simply hard to spot the difference, the space taken by FLAC is also humongous.
mp3 128: ~0.9mb/min   average song size: ~3.0mb
mp3 320: ~2.3mb/min   average song size: ~7.5mb
FLAC: ~13mb/min        average song size: ~50mb
 

 

[tedman633]

Plus 1000000000000000 for akg's answer it made me laugh a ton and it is sadly true

 

[stv014]

Quote:

FLAC: ~13mb/min        average song size: ~50mb

 
1 minute uncompressed CD quality PCM audio is 10584000 bytes, not including any headers. FLAC should be smaller, but it varies how much (music with less dynamic range and more high frequency content/noise compresses worse).

 

[cel4145]

Quote:

MP3 VBR v0 and CBR 320 kbps is still very fine for me, I've had cases where I got flac from one place and MP3 from another source and preferred the sound of MP3 lol. Most of the time it's not a noticable thing or slight advantage for flac possibly but there's cases when buying from online that I preferred the MP3 version for some reason (depending on how it's been encoded obviously), ofc with very subtle differences. Most of the time I prefer VBR V0 over 320 kbps CBR mp3 cuz the VBR algorithm is much newer and to me sounds at least as good if not better and I'm not alone with that opinion but it's a fairly "accepted" view due to the VBR having a new very good algorithm, but only V0 for VBR should be looked at tho, rest isn't good.

 
Glad you mentioned that. Most people don't realize that VBR V0 can work as well or better than 320 kbps. And you save a little on file size. 

 

[kn19h7]

I'd suggest to try convert some of your flacs' to 320k or v0 mp3 and do some blind test...

 

[Crisdean]

Quite frankly I do hear differences in headphones bit flac/alac and mp3 320 or even 256 is hard to differentiate for me. I believe to hear more depth with lossless but only if I listen critically to a song. Out and about I don't and 256 or 320 aac is fine for me.

If I'll be able to hear a much bigger difference with better headphones I can't say just now. Bit the MP3 and AAC codecs aren't that bad at all.

Sent from my BlackBerry 9780 using Tapatalk

 

[ChipnDalebowl]

Most people, myself included, cannot hear a difference in noisy environments so mp3 at levels even lower than -V0 or CBR 320 (try something like -V5 which is about 130kbps VBR) manage perceptual transparency for many users. Plus mp3 saves on space and battery life--both of which lossless cannot do. I moved over to AAC once I purchased a Walkman because its supported, but I encode at 135kbps and am perfectly happy with this in my car and on the go.

 

[Happy Camper]

Most people, myself included, cannot hear a difference in noisy environments so mp3 at levels even lower than -V0 or CBR 320 (try something like -V5 which is about 130kbps VBR) manage perceptual transparency for many users. Plus mp3 saves on space and battery life--both of which lossless cannot do. I moved over to AAC once I purchased a Walkman because its supported, but I encode at 135kbps and am perfectly happy with this in my car and on the go.

I agree with this. It's a lifestyle issue. My HE-6 get the more elite signals.

 

[Dyaems]

depends on the recording IMHO. there are songs that even if you rip it from the CD as .wav still sounds bad because the way it was recorded.
 
on a good recording, convering it from .wav to 320k mp3 will still make a difference, but the difference is not that big for me. i still use lossless on good recordings though, but on not so good or average recordings, i just stick with 320k mp3.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

Hi everyone i just made the switch from mp3 to flac a few days ago and by god even with my ****ty onboard soundcard it still sounds 3x better then mp3.

 
Rather apples and oranges isn't it?
 
Quote:

My question is why on earth would the standard still be mp3?

 
What standard?
 
Quote:

Hell even cds can hold more now.

 
Far as I'm aware, CDs don't hold any more data now than they ever did.
 
Quote:

So can someone please explain to me why companies like apple have not figured out to make there portable music players support flac by default.

 
Why do they necessarily have to support FLAC? Apple already supports a lossless format.
 
se

 

[proton007]

To the OP:
 
There's a reason compression exists. Reduction of size *while* trying to remove *only* the redundant information.
 
Asking why people use MP3s is the same as asking why all videos on youtube are compressed (streaming would take minutes otherwise), or why does JPEG or PNG exist (images would be 20x the size) , or why doesn't my HDTV signal look like Bluray (full quality live TV will be outrageously expensive).
 
As with anything, there's a limit to how much compression can be done without reducing the perceived quality. (128kbps MP3 vs FLAC,  youtube 240p vs 720p).