FLAC is a meme for 90% of use cases out there. The difference in sound quality between a .flac and 320 .mp3 is imperceptible to the majority of people and needs thousands of dollars of listening equipment to become apparent. The file size is drastically different, though. Not to mention the fact that almost all music is recorded in .wav files nowadays, and the “lossless” versions are usually just synthetically upscaled for the audiophile crowd.
Not to say that I don’t prefer to download FLAC when possible, but I also don’t avoid non-lossless albums either.
Hearing the difference now isn’t the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is ‘lossy’. What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA - it’s about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don’t want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.
I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrange…well don’t get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren’t stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you’ll be glad you did.
I really hope this is satire. If not, you’re way off the mark. Lossy files do not intrinsically suffer any kind of bit rot. Bits are bits, and your storage interface doesn’t have any clue what those bits mean. I have MP3s from the late 90s that have been stored on the cheapest CD-Rs you can imagine, that still play perfect.
FLAC Not to mention the fact that almost all music is recorded in .wav files nowadays, and the “lossless” versions are usually just synthetically upscaled for the audiophile crowd.
Yeah, this isn’t how that works.
“Lossless” refers to a mathematical property of the type of compression. If the data can be decompressed to exactly the same bits that went into the compressor then it’s lossless.
You can’t “synthetically upscale” to lossless. You can make a fake lossless file (lossy data converted into a lossless file format) but that serves zero purpose and is more of an issue with shady pirate uploaders.
Lossless means it sounds exactly like the CD copy, should it exist. That’s really all. And you want lossless for any situation where you’ll be converting again before playback. Like, for example, Bluetooth transmission.
Lossless means it sounds exactly like the CD copy, should it exist
You’re bang on with everything but this, if you’re getting FLACs from the source, you may be getting higher quality than CD which is 16-bit 44.1khz. I’ve got many 24-bit 96khz FLACs in my collection
Your last point about Bluetooth is such a great one though. Recompression of already compressed audio is a much worse end result than compressing uncompressed audio one time (and before anyone says it, basically no one is listening to lossless Bluetooth audio)
Fair point with the higher bit depths and sampling rates, I just figured there was no point in overcomplicating it when it seemed there was already some form of misunderstanding.
In my case I use FLAC because when Plex transcodes, FLAC > Opus sounds better than MP3 > Opus. Almost all my media was ripped by me direct from CD, with some coming from Bandcamp.
FLAC is a meme for 90% of use cases out there. The difference in sound quality between a .flac and 320 .mp3 is imperceptible to the majority of people and needs thousands of dollars of listening equipment to become apparent. The file size is drastically different, though. Not to mention the fact that almost all music is recorded in .wav files nowadays, and the “lossless” versions are usually just synthetically upscaled for the audiophile crowd.
Not to say that I don’t prefer to download FLAC when possible, but I also don’t avoid non-lossless albums either.
Hearing the difference now isn’t the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is ‘lossy’. What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA - it’s about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don’t want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.
I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrange…well don’t get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren’t stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you’ll be glad you did.
Just to be certain: are you really suggesting that mp3 files, if left unmodified, will degrade in sound quality over time?
I really hope this is satire. If not, you’re way off the mark. Lossy files do not intrinsically suffer any kind of bit rot. Bits are bits, and your storage interface doesn’t have any clue what those bits mean. I have MP3s from the late 90s that have been stored on the cheapest CD-Rs you can imagine, that still play perfect.
I’m a programmer, I know this. It’s a cooypasta you dork.
Yeah, this isn’t how that works.
“Lossless” refers to a mathematical property of the type of compression. If the data can be decompressed to exactly the same bits that went into the compressor then it’s lossless.
You can’t “synthetically upscale” to lossless. You can make a fake lossless file (lossy data converted into a lossless file format) but that serves zero purpose and is more of an issue with shady pirate uploaders.
Lossless means it sounds exactly like the CD copy, should it exist. That’s really all. And you want lossless for any situation where you’ll be converting again before playback. Like, for example, Bluetooth transmission.
You’re bang on with everything but this, if you’re getting FLACs from the source, you may be getting higher quality than CD which is 16-bit 44.1khz. I’ve got many 24-bit 96khz FLACs in my collection
Your last point about Bluetooth is such a great one though. Recompression of already compressed audio is a much worse end result than compressing uncompressed audio one time (and before anyone says it, basically no one is listening to lossless Bluetooth audio)
Fair point with the higher bit depths and sampling rates, I just figured there was no point in overcomplicating it when it seemed there was already some form of misunderstanding.
In my case I use FLAC because when Plex transcodes, FLAC > Opus sounds better than MP3 > Opus. Almost all my media was ripped by me direct from CD, with some coming from Bandcamp.
See the problem there is that Plex is transcoding instead of just supporting popular audio formats directly.