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dadrob
Generally, Flac is higher resolution than mp3.
one might need to find a player (like vlc) to hear the FLAC files.
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stonesdan60
Here in the US everything seems to be mp3.
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Munichhilton
If you listen to true 320K...it is going to be the same as lossless to your ears. Only a small dog could hear the discrepancies in my opinion, although I still really only listen FLAC
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StonesTodQuote
Munichhilton
If you listen to true 320K...it is going to be the same as lossless to your ears. Only a small dog could hear the discrepancies in my opinion, although I still really only listen FLAC
only small dogs? i have a large one who swears she can detect the diffs. but she's been known to fib from time to time. told me just yesterday that she hadn't had her daily milkbone yet. yeah, right.
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Naturalust
Let your own ear decide is my best advice. But technically speaking, mp3 files contain ALOT less information in it's attempt to reproduce the original music.
mp3's were created to make an audio file small enough to be attached to an mpeg video and not take a HUGE amount of space and/or bandwidth necessary for storing and downloading.
For some songs it's hard to tell the difference, some songs it is horribly evident that the mp3 is not quite up to par.
A typical 3 minute tune is about 30MB as a CD quality .wav file (44.1Khz , 16 bit) and only 3MB as an .mp3 so obviously they are not giving you the whole aural picture. mp3 encoding looks at the song file and finds frequencies that are not being used in each sample and eliminates them, amoung other tricks.
Neil Young says it best when he tells the story of going to his shrink and the guy used to play vinyl records and Neil used to pour his heart out. The guys switched to CD's one day and Neil just shut down, didn't feel a thing he says. The point being that there are emotional artifacts in high fidelity music that are not adequately reproduced by simple encoding schemes such as .mp3.
Now that large bandwith and huge storage (terrabyte drives) are getting cheaper and more mainstream, this whole mp3 thing was supposed to dissappear. But some kids will tell you they got used to the mp3 sound and prefer it? Go figure. peace.
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Alef
Double blind testing has been done
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Alef
Even CD is not lossless, it's a series of discrete samples of the original analogue sound.
With MP3 a lot depends on the bitrate used.
Double blind testing has been done, with mp3's in different bitrates vs. "uncompressed". At and beyond 256kbit MP3 nobody was able to tell the difference with uncompressed/CD. The only exeption oddly being some people with hearing damage. The 'psycho acoustical' MP3 algorithm wasn't able to fool them...
Possibly some double compressed or badly encoded MP3's are worse, but I expect they are not sold through the offical retailers.
I always choose FLAC though, I like the thought of an 'uncompressed' file.
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StonesTodQuote
Alef
Even CD is not lossless, it's a series of discrete samples of the original analogue sound.
With MP3 a lot depends on the bitrate used.
Double blind testing has been done, with mp3's in different bitrates vs. "uncompressed". At and beyond 256kbit MP3 nobody was able to tell the difference with uncompressed/CD. The only exeption oddly being some people with hearing damage. The 'psycho acoustical' MP3 algorithm wasn't able to fool them...
Possibly some double compressed or badly encoded MP3's are worse, but I expect they are not sold through the offical retailers.
I always choose FLAC though, I like the thought of an 'uncompressed' file.
there are those on this site who swear they can hear the differences, but they have never released the lab results that would offer the proof i seek. i agree with the premise that human ears cannot detect diffs of mp3s beyond 256...certainly not 320....
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Alef
You have a sore tooth Munich?
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AlefQuote
StonesTodQuote
Alef
Even CD is not lossless, it's a series of discrete samples of the original analogue sound.
With MP3 a lot depends on the bitrate used.
Double blind testing has been done, with mp3's in different bitrates vs. "uncompressed". At and beyond 256kbit MP3 nobody was able to tell the difference with uncompressed/CD. The only exeption oddly being some people with hearing damage. The 'psycho acoustical' MP3 algorithm wasn't able to fool them...
Possibly some double compressed or badly encoded MP3's are worse, but I expect they are not sold through the offical retailers.
I always choose FLAC though, I like the thought of an 'uncompressed' file.
there are those on this site who swear they can hear the differences, but they have never released the lab results that would offer the proof i seek. i agree with the premise that human ears cannot detect diffs of mp3s beyond 256...certainly not 320....
There are those who claim to hear differences between cables. And those who claim to hear the dead talking to them. In most cases a little testing is able to factor out the subjectivity of humans.
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Alef
I am not saying these people are liars. Maybe they even hear a difference. But the question is, if there feally *is* a difference. Even the nicest and most trutful persons can be subjective.
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ironbelly
OK. The easiest way to describe the differences between flac and mp3 is to present frequency paterns of the files. I just rip We Had It All from Some Girls Deluxe and play a bit. Below are spectrograms for
wav file
flac file
mp3 320kb/sec
mp3 192kb/sec
As you see there is cut-off frequensy for mp3 files. All information above cut-off is lost. Also you can see distortions in low frequency range. If you'll sample below 192kb/sec the cut-off will move even more.
Now the question is how deaf are you, how good your acoustic system is and if you could hear the differences.
Guess it is very problematic to distinguish flac from mp3 while you are listening music in headphones on a plane or in subway
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ironbelly
StonesTod
Hope after nap your dog will continue to bark in wav or flac, but not in mp3