Which format is better?

[vuzedome]

(click to show/hide)

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 .

Why are you making this so complicated? Bitstreaming AAC? Forget it. Not everybody has the money buy high-end or even consumer grade AV receivers, money is money and that goes to food and bills first.
You're forgetting that, AAC is everywhere, and it's been here since the time of Nokia phones, it's only the silly Androids not running it native but that can easily be remedied.

[nstgc]

My Prime runs AAC just fine. All the music on it is ripped as AAC.

[halfelite]

Why are you making this so complicated? Bitstreaming AAC? Forget it. Not everybody has the money buy high-end or even consumer grade AV receivers, money is money and that goes to food and bills first.
You're forgetting that, AAC is everywhere, and it's been here since the time of Nokia phones, it's only the silly Androids not running it native but that can easily be remedied.

Consumer grade AV is cheap these days a decent AVR that can handle dts-hd,truehd and things are 300$, less then I see people here spend on a machine to watch 10bit anime. So I dont understand its Ok to build a rig to watch 10bit anime but not audio gear to listen to some decent audio. You are stuck inside your own little bubble of I have no money there for good quality formats are crap. All consumer grade audio stuff plays FLAC it was actually the high end pioneer Stuff that would bitstream AAC and they no longer even make it. And why are we bringing up Nokia and Android anyone looking for decent audio player is not going to use there cell phone, If you are a single user using headphone mp3/ogg all the way.

There is nothing wrong with AAC and if its with anime video that did not come from a quailty audio source anyways AAC all the way. If its a multi channel Master audio that you will be playing back on a full system or whole house FLAC all the way. Each format has its pros and cons for different applications. I would not run flac for everything just like I would not run AAC for everything. Just because You cant afford or have no need for a full house system does not mean FLAC is no good, just means You have no use for it.

But back to the money part, someone with money that they dont have to spare would more then likely not buy a remastered multi channel audio disc and instead go for the normal cd, We are appealing to two different type of people, People that have money to want to listen to nice audio on nice equipment and people that want to listen to normal stuff on there pc or cell phone,  AAC can play the field on both sides to a degree but FLAC only appeals to one side really,

If someone is spending say 120$ on Pink Floyd: The Dark Side Of The Moon Blu-ray dont you think they would want to keep the quality the same after just putting down 120$ on it, Then going AAC and letting it cut out things your ears may or may not hear.

My AV stuff is in no way high end But in the future when I do have more money to spend it might be, Same with my tv, can I tell the difference between 720p and 1080p on my 50" 5 year old plasma tv not really but in the future when I can afford a nice projector maybe I will be able to tell the difference so rather then re-ripping everything again might as well make it 1080p and plan for the future now.

[jeffmd]

MP3 is easily the worst, even at 320kbit the sounds in the high end of the spectrum get warbled. Of course I never turn mp3 down if its all I can get, it is still very enjoyable. FLAC is usually the only alternative when it comes to getting the highest quality copy of an album, but even then I usually just convert it into something else. Flac, especialy the way most people have it uploaded, is pretty unwieldy for portables. I used to convert it to %90 wma for my zen vision M, but since getting my ipod a couple years ago it goes to high bitrate aac. I don't keep anything in lossless format, I just use lossless formats to make my own high quality compressed copy.

If you can get aac versions of things then great, I personally havn't seen many. Hopefully it isn't someone who did something silly like compress a 320kbit mp3 to aac so that it would be smaller.

[megido-rev.M]

As it stands right now: FLAC (lossless) or V0 MP3 (just for size; device support irrelevant now).

The debate of lossless versus lossy goes way back, but the conclusion is the same. There is a clear difference between lossless and lossy audio, and to argue otherwise implies not having keen hearing or using low-grade hardware.

[kitamesume]

the hardware decides which format is better, any argument can be either just a bunch of opinions or irrelevant.

why?

1] the hardware is what plays the format.
2] the hardware can or cannot support the format.
3] the hardware is crappy enough to not differentiate the two formats in terms of output quality.
4] the hardware isn't free, but the format is free, with an obvious fact of cheap hardware isn't enough to differentiate the two.


in my case, my CP can't play FLAC, so MP3 it is.

[metro.]

Yeah I understand the hardware thing. Fuck these laptop speakers.