Author Topic: Which format is better? (Read 2346 times)

Tatsujin · « **Reply #20 on:** April 28, 2012, 05:52:12 PM »

Quote from: mgz on April 28, 2012, 10:38:02 AM

Quote from: Tatsujin on April 28, 2012, 01:07:23 AM
Quote from: Clannad_92 on April 27, 2012, 03:30:26 PM
so FLAC is good bcause it preserve sound quality?
Interesting...thank s all...
Yes. If you have some good or high-end speakers - on the plus side, for maximum sound quality, you want a good sound card and real speaker cables for pure quality - and to notice the real difference between lossless vs. lossy. If you got some shit speakers/audio-output/cables then you can go with MP3 or Vorbis.

Quote from: kitamesume on April 28, 2012, 12:35:37 AM
1) MP3 - most, if not all, affordable portable players supports it. small in size so you could put a whole lot of songs on the player, quality is still great since i doubt you'd be bringing a 500$ headpiece with you.

problems : lossy format. thats it.

2) FLAC - lossless, not as large as wav. good for archives and occasional listening if you want pure quality.

problems : pretty big in size. not every songs has a flac version available. theres only a few portable player that supports flac. needs a really good headpiece and soundcard to be appreciated.
^ What this person said.
tatsu speaker wire has been proven to make very little difference, they have taken tons of audiophiles and played music over the "nicest" speaker wire money could buy and over the same speakers with clothes hangars and people couldnt tell the difference.

Just getting decent speaker wire that isnt the thin as fuck shit that comes in like HTiB is all you need

Yea, that's why I mentioned good or high-end speakers.

You get what you spend on.

AceD · « **Reply #21 on:** April 28, 2012, 06:14:14 PM »

For music....320kbps MP3, its highly compatible and sounds great. I cannot tell any difference between that and flac....and in all likeliness anybody who says they can is full of shit.

halfelite · « **Reply #22 on:** April 28, 2012, 09:08:43 PM »

Quote from: AceD on April 28, 2012, 06:14:14 PM

For music....320kbps MP3, its highly compatible and sounds great. I cannot tell any difference between that and flac....and in all likeliness anybody who says they can is full of shit.

It depends what you are listening to, if its 2 channel stuff I can tell a difference on very few songs. But when you start getting into multi channel music is where flac shines. But I also Have a decent Home theater setup. For normal stuff I stick to mp3 as most of the listening I do in my car or over my sonos system, For multi-channel releases I go flac.

The difference between flac and mp3 is subtle kinda like when you listen to a song on decent headphones and notice that small cymbal in the background for the first time.

320kbps mp3 and flac I would be hard press to tell any difference. 192kbps mp3 and flac I can tell the difference.

kitamesume · « **Reply #23 on:** April 28, 2012, 09:13:35 PM »

^pretty much thats the most difference between MP3 and FLAC XD

oh yea, sometimes you'd hear the singers breathing heavily on the FLAC records when you only hear muffled noise in the MP3.

kamuixtv99 · « **Reply #24 on:** April 28, 2012, 11:11:47 PM »

Have you heard of SHM-CD and Blu-Spec CD? There's a reasonable amount of improvement.
http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/popular_formats/SHM-CD/index.html

FLAC have preserved the quality of these discs and they are indeed better than regular CDs. I did convert them to 320kbps MP3, the result was...it's only good for head/ear phones. Too bad its momentum of this 2 formats is too slow and mostly available in Japan.

vuzedome · « **Reply #25 on:** April 29, 2012, 12:04:12 AM »

Multi-channel is easy, use AAC.

(click to show/hide)

kamuixtv99 · « **Reply #26 on:** April 29, 2012, 02:31:15 AM »

I don't like AAC. What? Multichannel? SHM-CD (2 ch) not SHM-SACD (or plain SACD). The op didn't mention his/her hardware.

Sure, AAC is way more better than MP3 or FLAC if that your ears tell you. But I have some devices that are not compatible with AAC.

kitamesume · « **Reply #27 on:** April 29, 2012, 02:43:18 AM »

TL;DR - the equipment you use decides which to pick on either MP3 or FLAC.

got crappy equipment? 20$ headphones? onboard legacy soundcard? MP3 it is.

got professional equipment? 500$ headphones? never-ending hunger for top-of-the-line quality? FLAC it is.

/thread

Tatsujin · « **Reply #28 on:** April 29, 2012, 05:31:36 AM »

Quote from: kitamesume on April 29, 2012, 02:43:18 AM

TL;DR - the equipment you use decides which to pick on either MP3 or FLAC.

got crappy equipment? 20$ headphones? onboard legacy soundcard? MP3 it is.

got professional equipment? 500$ headphones? never-ending hunger for top-of-the-line quality? FLAC it is.

/thread

^ That's the whole thread, really. I want to put it in very light words so I don't offend anyone - Don't say stuff like this:

Quote from: AceD on April 28, 2012, 06:14:14 PM

For music....320kbps MP3, its highly compatible and sounds great. I cannot tell any difference between that and flac....and in all likeliness anybody who says they can is full of shit.

What song did you listen to? Formats? What sound card do you have (NOT your motherboard's)? What speakers or headphones are you using?! If speakers, what wires/cables are you using? ... Those who own good hardware and the format is converted from an original piece to FLAC will notice the difference in quality to those that were converted to MP3.

Clannad_92 · « **Reply #29 on:** April 29, 2012, 06:55:13 AM »

ack!! i dunno that FLAC have larger filesize...
sigh, im sticking with mp3 (galaxy s2 got 16GB left, n8 left 8GB)...

AceD · « **Reply #30 on:** April 29, 2012, 12:12:15 PM »

Quote from: Tatsujin on April 29, 2012, 05:31:36 AM

Quote from: kitamesume on April 29, 2012, 02:43:18 AM
TL;DR - the equipment you use decides which to pick on either MP3 or FLAC.

got crappy equipment? 20$ headphones? onboard legacy soundcard? MP3 it is.

got professional equipment? 500$ headphones? never-ending hunger for top-of-the-line quality? FLAC it is.

/thread
^ That's the whole thread, really. I want to put it in very light words so I don't offend anyone - Don't say stuff like this:

Quote from: AceD on April 28, 2012, 06:14:14 PM
For music....320kbps MP3, its highly compatible and sounds great. I cannot tell any difference between that and flac....and in all likeliness anybody who says they can is full of shit.
What song did you listen to? Formats? What sound card do you have (NOT your motherboard's)? What speakers or headphones are you using?! If speakers, what wires/cables are you using? ... Those who own good hardware and the format is converted from an original piece to FLAC will notice the difference in quality to those that were converted to MP3.

Sound blaster fata1ity pro, usually my gaming headset...Logitech G35. It's like 720p and 1080p anime....i cannot see any difference unless the 720p is bitrate starved/fucked in some way. Or maybe it's just the fact am not picky enough to notice such small differences to begin with.

In anime, i do prefer AAC over flac again....

kamuixtv99 · « **Reply #31 on:** April 29, 2012, 12:54:54 PM »

Quote from: kitamesume on April 29, 2012, 02:43:18 AM

TL;DR - the equipment you use decides which to pick on either MP3 or FLAC.

got crappy equipment? 20$ headphones? onboard legacy soundcard? MP3 it is.

got professional equipment? 500$ headphones? never-ending hunger for top-of-the-line quality? FLAC it is.

/thread

^This. I pity those people who buy and brag their Dr. Dre beats or similar then don't have any idea about lossless audio.

vuzedome · « **Reply #32 on:** April 29, 2012, 02:03:03 PM »

Quote from: kamuixtv99 on April 29, 2012, 02:31:15 AM

SHM-CD (2 ch) not SHM-SACD (or plain SACD).

I put it in the spoiler for obvious reasons.

And here we go again. I'm done here so you guys can continue arguing how your need to use FLAC to justify your oh so expensive audio hardware purchases.

Bob2004 · « **Reply #33 on:** April 29, 2012, 05:17:24 PM »

Quote from: Clannad_92 on April 29, 2012, 06:55:13 AM

ack!! i dunno that FLAC have larger filesize...
sigh, im sticking with mp3 (galaxy s2 got 16GB left, n8 left 8GB)...

If you're planning to listen to it with your Galaxy S2, then I would definitely consider using .ogg instead of .mp3 (I know I mentioned it before, but it's worth reiterating). Android is very, very good at handling ogg files out of the box - it treats them basically the same as mp3 - so there's no reason not to use it. Unless your collection is entirely mp3 already anyway, in which case I can understand not bothering to change it unless you're running out of space.

Basically, as said, you're not going to hear any difference between ogg and mp3 as such, but the compression used by the ogg format is significantly better, so tracks will take up literally half as much space, or less, at the same quality level.

If you're planning to re-encode any of your music to mp3, you may as well just encode it as ogg instead. If your music is in mp3 format already anyway though, then there's probably not too much point in going to the effort of reencoding unless you need the space.

metro. · « **Reply #34 on:** April 30, 2012, 04:17:25 AM »

.mp3 needs to stop being such a dominant force. It's subpar at best, but yet everyone uses it so unless you plan on converting everything you have to, which is a pain.

kamuixtv99 · « **Reply #35 on:** April 30, 2012, 04:47:56 AM »

It depends with the listener, if you're convinced that there is no difference and you can live with lossy go ahead. I keep my sources on FLAC (coz some lossless formats are annoying) and by CD images, it's good as the original disc. As I can convert it to any lossy format whenever I need to.

halfelite · « **Reply #36 on:** April 30, 2012, 07:35:01 AM »

Quote from: vuzedome on April 29, 2012, 02:03:03 PM

I put it in the spoiler for obvious reasons.

And here we go again. I'm done here so you guys can continue arguing how your need to use FLAC to justify your oh so expensive audio hardware purchases.

There is no issue with going AAC except for there is very little audio equipment which actually handles it outside of pc. So the player itself is taking the AAC and decoding it to PCM Anyways. So while yes AAC is an option it has its downfalls as well. the player has to be able to decode to PCM or the amp/avr needs to be able to bitstream AAC which there is no models on the market at current that do. Flac is the choice to go with for the most compatibility outside the PC world. Same goes for WMA loseless for some reason MS only gives out WMA9 but does not cover loseless with all profiles .

Tatsujin · « **Reply #37 on:** April 30, 2012, 08:40:59 PM »

Quote from: AceD on April 29, 2012, 12:12:15 PM

Quote from: Tatsujin on April 29, 2012, 05:31:36 AM
Quote from: kitamesume on April 29, 2012, 02:43:18 AM
TL;DR - the equipment you use decides which to pick on either MP3 or FLAC.

got crappy equipment? 20$ headphones? onboard legacy soundcard? MP3 it is.

got professional equipment? 500$ headphones? never-ending hunger for top-of-the-line quality? FLAC it is.

/thread
^ That's the whole thread, really. I want to put it in very light words so I don't offend anyone - Don't say stuff like this:

Quote from: AceD on April 28, 2012, 06:14:14 PM
For music....320kbps MP3, its highly compatible and sounds great. I cannot tell any difference between that and flac....and in all likeliness anybody who says they can is full of shit.
What song did you listen to? Formats? What sound card do you have (NOT your motherboard's)? What speakers or headphones are you using?! If speakers, what wires/cables are you using? ... Those who own good hardware and the format is converted from an original piece to FLAC will notice the difference in quality to those that were converted to MP3.
Sound blaster fata1ity pro, usually my gaming headset...Logitech G35. It's like 720p and 1080p anime....i cannot see any difference unless the 720p is bitrate starved/fucked in some way. Or maybe it's just the fact am not picky enough to notice such small differences to begin with.

In anime, i do prefer AAC over flac again....

Which songs or anime. I'm going to bring couple of my friends over today and go over through a series of testings on 3 different hardwares. We're also going to pick several formats on our sides.

halfelite · « **Reply #38 on:** April 30, 2012, 09:26:16 PM »

Quote from: Tatsujin on April 30, 2012, 08:40:59 PM

Which songs or anime. I'm going to bring couple of my friends over today and go over through a series of testings on 3 different hardwares. We're also going to pick several formats on our sides.

What sampling rates are you thinking about and what are you playing them through? and what is the source. 24/192 falc samples can be had here http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html

nstgc · « **Reply #39 on:** April 30, 2012, 10:33:35 PM »

Upon seeing a comment about FLAC in anime I must emphatically agree that FLAC is wasted on anime. AAC is far more reasonable. I dobut with the quality level set to 1 (which gives bit rates of about 400kbps) you could tell the difference between AAC and FLAC even with an uber set up.