There are online test you can do to see if you can successfully identify the FLAC from the MP3. I did one and failed miserably.
They say that if you have a very good DAC, amplifier and speaker / headphone system (as well as a good ear for audio), that you can hear it. But I would do the test first to see if it applies to your situation.
I have Sennheiser HD 25 I bought 15 years ago. I play music through my Pixel 5a with a headphone jack and my iMac. I have no idea if this is good enough for the test but I will try it anyway.
I’m happy it helped. I was a musician an audiophile for most of my life so I was equally shocked to fail 😄 I also tested on my iMac too. I’m tempted sometimes to get an external DAC and maybe a nice amp, but I’m not sure I want the clutter.
I’m not an audiophile, but back-in-the-day I bought some analog “sennheiser studio monitors” as opposed to “just headphones”.
I actually returned the first one and exchanged them, because when I listened to a live recorded CD, I kept hearing loud “pops” that I didn’t hear with my “regular headphones”. I assumed they were defective.
The exchanged sennheiser had the same “pop” in this CD. It turns out, most “regular headphones” didn’t have the same depth in sound frequency as studio monitors and the “pops” were accidental artifacts that were mixed into the CD.
For other CD’s, I’d hear telephones ringing and sirens in the background.
Eventually, I got use to it. Then after a few years, I replaced my CD collection with mp3’s… and I could tell a different in songs/albums I was really familiar with. The base wasn’t as deep, the high sounds weren’t as high, I didn’t hear telephones ringing in the background.
I had the same sennheiser, it was just that the nature of mp3’s “flattened” the music.
Now, with Bluetooth and the disappearance of 3.5 mm jacks, there are too many layers of digital conversion happening. I’ve given up… and now just have some cheap ear buds I listen to.
It is better, but it depends on the audio for the difference. Also, it would probably be hard to hear the difference playing over a phones speakers. The weakest link in the chain is always the problem you notice the most. Having a good setup for amp/speakers and you can hear the difference. Using Bluetooth earbuds to mow the lawn, it doesn’t matter. Sitting in my living room on my nice stereo, I notice.
The benefit is not in being able to hear a difference (I know I sure can’t), but knowing that you can re-encode the file as many times as you want, without any quality loss (assuming you’re going from lossless to lossless, of course). Or create an mp3 from the flac file at any time, with the same quality as a ripped CD.
So basically FLAC is great if you produce/edit/re-encode your music files often. If you don’t do any of that (and have no plans to future-proof your music collection), then 320Kbps MP3 is more than adequate for your needs.
My concerns with space mostly deals with my cell phone but you make a lot of great point of being able to convert Flac for any use case. Thank you for your input.
TBF, I was answering your question in its original context (is it worth it for audiophiles). Maybe it’s just my age, but I was assuming that the majority of audiophiles still keep the bulk of their music collection stored on a desktop PC. But IDK, I’m in my late 30s and out of touch.
Flac files contain orders of magnitude more data. As for the listening experience it’s only ever going to be as good as the speakers at the other end. You’ll also need a wired connection to said speakers in order to avoid some compression over Bluetooth. (Unless there’s some newfangled lossless BT protocol that I’m unaware of.)
Our brains shouldn’t have to work harder to listen to lossy music, which is what happens even if you can’t reliably perceive it.
Listening to music on acid (a lot) has really shaped my views of it and how even the most minor things can have a major impact on the final experience.
You get to notice things you didn’t notice before. It’s a lot easier for our brains to ‘zoom in’ and process minute details that we don’t perceive normally. Since lossless and lossy music is not the exact same audio vibrating the air, our brains are not going to interpret them exactly the same. This difference doesn’t matter to most and isn’t always perceivable, but it’s there.
One thing that stood out to me during an acid trip was how moving my phone affected the playback speed of my bluetooth speakers. Moving it further away caused the song to slow down slightly for a moment, moving it closer caused the song to speed up slightly. You can imagine that this is because of some kind of ‘space invaders’ effect, where my phone is sending out signals at a constant rate and adjusting the distance to the receiver causes those signals to be received faster or slower, temporarily.
Yes, I meant in case you have a library of FLACs. In that case it wouldn’t be too problematic cause, well, it’s just a script recursing your library, encoding from FLAC to Opus and if succeeded, removing FLAC files.
IllNess@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
I keep getting advice of Flac > MP3 320 kbs.
I can’t tell the difference to tell you the truth. Is it really worth it for audiophiles considering how much more space Flac files takes up?
FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There are online test you can do to see if you can successfully identify the FLAC from the MP3. I did one and failed miserably.
They say that if you have a very good DAC, amplifier and speaker / headphone system (as well as a good ear for audio), that you can hear it. But I would do the test first to see if it applies to your situation.
IllNess@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
I have Sennheiser HD 25 I bought 15 years ago. I play music through my Pixel 5a with a headphone jack and my iMac. I have no idea if this is good enough for the test but I will try it anyway.
I did the NPR test.
I’m on my iMac and I chose 128 kbps four times… I chose 320 kbps once and Uncompressed WAV once.
I did so horribly. Lol.
This puts either my hearing limits or the limit of my tech. If I don’t get better equipment, I have my answer forever.
This is truly great. Thank you for this suggestion.
FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’m happy it helped. I was a musician an audiophile for most of my life so I was equally shocked to fail 😄 I also tested on my iMac too. I’m tempted sometimes to get an external DAC and maybe a nice amp, but I’m not sure I want the clutter.
LedgeDrop@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
It could be the quality of your headphones.
I’m not an audiophile, but back-in-the-day I bought some analog “sennheiser studio monitors” as opposed to “just headphones”.
I actually returned the first one and exchanged them, because when I listened to a live recorded CD, I kept hearing loud “pops” that I didn’t hear with my “regular headphones”. I assumed they were defective.
The exchanged sennheiser had the same “pop” in this CD. It turns out, most “regular headphones” didn’t have the same depth in sound frequency as studio monitors and the “pops” were accidental artifacts that were mixed into the CD.
For other CD’s, I’d hear telephones ringing and sirens in the background.
Eventually, I got use to it. Then after a few years, I replaced my CD collection with mp3’s… and I could tell a different in songs/albums I was really familiar with. The base wasn’t as deep, the high sounds weren’t as high, I didn’t hear telephones ringing in the background.
I had the same sennheiser, it was just that the nature of mp3’s “flattened” the music.
Now, with Bluetooth and the disappearance of 3.5 mm jacks, there are too many layers of digital conversion happening. I’ve given up… and now just have some cheap ear buds I listen to.
IllNess@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
I have a pair Sennheiser HD 25.
I just took the NPR test suggested by another poster. I did horribly.
Thank you for your input. I will not be updating to Flac.
zueski@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
It is better, but it depends on the audio for the difference. Also, it would probably be hard to hear the difference playing over a phones speakers. The weakest link in the chain is always the problem you notice the most. Having a good setup for amp/speakers and you can hear the difference. Using Bluetooth earbuds to mow the lawn, it doesn’t matter. Sitting in my living room on my nice stereo, I notice.
IllNess@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
I have Sennheiser HD 25 I bought 15 years ago. I play music through my Pixel 5a with a headphone jack and my iMac.
Is this good enough to be able to tell? I have no idea what devices have a good DAC or not.
Psythik@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The space it takes up is negligible.
The benefit is not in being able to hear a difference (I know I sure can’t), but knowing that you can re-encode the file as many times as you want, without any quality loss (assuming you’re going from lossless to lossless, of course). Or create an mp3 from the flac file at any time, with the same quality as a ripped CD.
So basically FLAC is great if you produce/edit/re-encode your music files often. If you don’t do any of that (and have no plans to future-proof your music collection), then 320Kbps MP3 is more than adequate for your needs.
IllNess@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
My concerns with space mostly deals with my cell phone but you make a lot of great point of being able to convert Flac for any use case. Thank you for your input.
Psythik@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
TBF, I was answering your question in its original context (is it worth it for audiophiles). Maybe it’s just my age, but I was assuming that the majority of audiophiles still keep the bulk of their music collection stored on a desktop PC. But IDK, I’m in my late 30s and out of touch.
Anyway I’m happy to help.
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Flac files contain orders of magnitude more data. As for the listening experience it’s only ever going to be as good as the speakers at the other end. You’ll also need a wired connection to said speakers in order to avoid some compression over Bluetooth. (Unless there’s some newfangled lossless BT protocol that I’m unaware of.)
IllNess@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
That makes sense. Thanks.
haloduder@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
I’d say it’s definitely worth it.
Our brains shouldn’t have to work harder to listen to lossy music, which is what happens even if you can’t reliably perceive it.
Listening to music on acid (a lot) has really shaped my views of it and how even the most minor things can have a major impact on the final experience.
swelter_spark@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
I’m curious. How does acid change listening to music?
haloduder@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
You get to notice things you didn’t notice before. It’s a lot easier for our brains to ‘zoom in’ and process minute details that we don’t perceive normally. Since lossless and lossy music is not the exact same audio vibrating the air, our brains are not going to interpret them exactly the same. This difference doesn’t matter to most and isn’t always perceivable, but it’s there.
One thing that stood out to me during an acid trip was how moving my phone affected the playback speed of my bluetooth speakers. Moving it further away caused the song to slow down slightly for a moment, moving it closer caused the song to speed up slightly. You can imagine that this is because of some kind of ‘space invaders’ effect, where my phone is sending out signals at a constant rate and adjusting the distance to the receiver causes those signals to be received faster or slower, temporarily.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
Go to Opus 128 kbps. About the same as MP3 320 or better.
IllNess@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
Thanks for the suggestion but it would drive me nuts either to convert all my music or to have several different files.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
Yes, I meant in case you have a library of FLACs. In that case it wouldn’t be too problematic cause, well, it’s just a script recursing your library, encoding from FLAC to Opus and if succeeded, removing FLAC files.
SidewaysHighways@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
yeh