Amazed by FLAC

[Larry B.]

So, it's been years since hipsters and other people love FLAC. It's like "dude, you listen to mp3? Such a blasphemy. I have a 160 Gb iPod with only 4 albums. Each one is 40 Gb because they are lossless, but it's totally worth it. I'll just get more iPods."

However, a couple of days ago I started thinking "OK, so Merriweather Post Pavillion is the best album since Sgt. Peppers yet I've only listened to it in mp3. Maybe I should buy it or download it in some lossless format to see if there's any real difference."

Today, I downloaded it in FLAC and compared it closely to my 192 kbps mp3.

I'm deleting the mp3s and keeping the lossless files. The sound is definitely wider and brighter and there are small details that I couldn't hear/feel before. Amazing.

I don't think I'd do this type of thing for any other album, though.

[Pandemonium]

Anything I rip off a CD or LP I do so as a full bitrate WAV file. I've got a pair of 1TB portable Hard Drives that are basically back ups of each other and they contain all my digitized music. I constantly shuffle songs off and on my iPod 160GB Classic which all uncompressed WAV files. It makes a huge difference when I listen through my car stereo or hook up the iPod (or laptop w/HD) to my home theater receiver. I have a bunch of SACDs and DVD Audio discs as well and in most cases, those albums are a pretty decent upgrade over a regular cd or record album, not to mention many of them include optional hi-res audio 5.1 surround sound remixes from the original multi-track tapes. It kills me that I'm listening to the new Killing Joke album as 320kb MP3 files waiting for the official cd/vinyl to street and I know that fucker will sound way better than it does with what I got now.

[nausearockpig]

I think I've fucked my ears so much (from spending too much of my early years rehearsing and playing in bands that did nothing) that I can't tell the difference in high bitrate mp3 and flac.

I guess I should do a comparison..

[Jasper]

The only actual comparison is if a friend (at whom you are not looking) chooses multiple matching clips in both FLAC and 320 kbps mp3, then plays them over and over, randomly, while you check a little box indicating which file type you think is which.

Our brains are too susceptible to suggestion to make any valid observation when we already know the identity of the file type.

[Pandemonium]

On this subject, back around '88 when CDs were still just beginning to make inroads on vinyl sales, someone discovered that if you take a red or black sharpie marker and draw a line around the outer edge of the disc, it improved the sound quality. On a Friday night, a couple friends and I basically trashed a few cds doing a blind A/B comparison listening test between marked and unmarked CDs of the same album and it actually seemed to make a difference, especially as the night wore on and the drunker we got.

[Jasper]

On this subject, back around '88 when CDs were still just beginning to make inroads on vinyl sales, someone discovered that if you take a red or black sharpie marker and draw a line around the outer edge of the disc, it improved the sound quality. On a Friday night, a couple friends and I basically trashed a few cds doing a blind A/B comparison listening test between marked and unmarked CDs of the same album and it actually seemed to make a difference, especially as the night wore on and the drunker we got.

I'm not convinced that these were ideal laboratory conditions.

[Mescal]

Flac is so 2003