Lossless music

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Anyone else target lossless music now. I got a 13mbit connection and it just makes sense to get flac and ape files now over mp3.

Lets put these bigger hard drives to use now eh :)
 
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ok apart from the lack of mainstream music available in lossless formats to download....

There are few mp3 players that will play them
The ones that do play them see a much shorter battery life through playing them
There are few mp3 players available that store more than 60GB and thus you might start running out of space
The difference between a GOOD mp3 (encoded at a high bitrate) and a FLAC file is mostly placebo (I did some blind testing at the weekend on my hifi (NAD C352 amp, NAD C542 CD player, JMLabs Focal Chorus S speakers) and I really struggled to hear a difference.

fini
 
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fini said:
ok apart from the lack of mainstream music available in lossless formats to download....

There are few mp3 players that will play them
The ones that do play them see a much shorter battery life through playing them
There are few mp3 players available that store more than 60GB and thus you might start running out of space
The difference between a GOOD mp3 (encoded at a high bitrate) and a FLAC file is mostly placebo (I did some blind testing at the weekend on my hifi (NAD C352 amp, NAD C542 CD player, JMLabs Focal Chorus S speakers) and I really struggled to hear a difference.

fini

I Suppose it is really hard to hear a difference with a highend mp3. I've not got a decent hifi yet so Im thinking when I do have a better one I can always go back to wav.
 
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I encode 192 to MP3 for convinience, but whenever I listen to music in the house its always from a CD, not because I am an audiophile, I just like using CDs because that's how I buy music. :)


yeh dont concern yourself where I legally get them from, that wasn't the question.

I would like to see more of this approach, its a good one. :)
 
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Just out of interest, why do lossless formats shorten the battery life of the MP3 player? Is it because there's that much more data to read off the memory? I would have thought that it required less decryption of the file...
 
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StixxUK said:
Just out of interest, why do lossless formats shorten the battery life of the MP3 player? Is it because there's that much more data to read off the memory? I would have thought that it required less decryption of the file...

I have an iRiver H140 - had it for a couple of years now.

I get 16-20 hours per charge and listen to it almost constantly whenever I'm out the house.

Anyway - decoding Ogg Vorbis requires more processing power than decoding MP3. It is a more CPU-intensive task. This is why battery life is usually shorter.

*n
 
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Tru said:
All my MP3s are encoded at 200-300kbps VBR and I simply don't believe the poncy audiophiles who claim it sounds worse than lossless formats.


Well thats up to you to believe what you like, I was conducting tests at the weekend on my new Linn kit between Mp3 @ 320kbps & WMA lossless (through toslink) & the difference was comparible between MW & FM radio. Admittedly Linn kit is very good & will show up any source track weakness more than your average high street type ' Hi Fi's ' , But the difference is defintly there to be heard :)
 
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Oo_Scotty_oO said:
Well thats up to you to believe what you like, I was conducting tests at the weekend on my new Linn kit between Mp3 @ 320kbps & WMA lossless (through toslink) & the difference was comparible between MW & FM radio. Admittedly Linn kit is very good & will show up any source track weakness more than your average high street type ' Hi Fi's ' , But the difference is defintly there to be heard :)
did you do a blind test with someone else changing between the two copies of the track, not telling you which was which? I ask because when I did my testing (detailed in post 5 of this thread) I thought I could hear a difference, but then when I got someone to change between the tracks themselves so I didn't know which was which I got very very confused. Saying that, unless you've got pretty old Linn kit or some dog speakers, chances are it outclasses my kit by a fair measure.

fini
 
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I'll back up Scottys thoughts. Even on my old stereo (Meridian DAC, Cyrus amp and Musical Fidelity speakers), I thought there was a noticeable difference between WAV and 320bps MP3. I dread to think how much difference there would be now.
 
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fini said:
did you do a blind test with someone else changing between the two copies of the track, not telling you which was which? I ask because when I did my testing (detailed in post 5 of this thread) I thought I could hear a difference, but then when I got someone to change between the tracks themselves so I didn't know which was which I got very very confused. Saying that, unless you've got pretty old Linn kit or some dog speakers, chances are it outclasses my kit by a fair measure.

fini

I didn't do a blind test ,no ,however the difference was so apparent it I would have known which was which straight away anyhow :) ,hell even my wife made some comment over the difference. To the OP, as you have plenty drive space & internet bandwidth then your defintly doing the right thing by downloading lossless formats, if in the future you decide to buy a decent to good spec Hifi (if you dont already have) then you will get the absolute best out of it by obtaining lossless now.
 
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