Compressing CDs - FLAC compression level 0 or MP3 320kbps

Should I encode in FLAC 0 or MP3 320Kbps

  • FLAC compression level 0

    Votes: 4 40.0%

  • Mp3 320 Kbps

    Votes: 6 60.0%
  • Total voters
    10
Mediocrefunkybeat said:
It's really not.

I'm sure there will be something out there for a Debian-based distro. In fact, here's one:

Sonic Visualiser

Sonic Visualiser is a program for viewing and analysing the contents of music audio files.
www.sonicvisualiser.org www.sonicvisualiser.org

Not used it myself but next time I fire up one of the Linux boxes I'll give it a whirl. And yes, you may well see a difference on a waveform analysis. But your ears and (more importantly) brain don't work in the same way.
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I had computer problems tonight and the computer is OK now. I installed Sonic Visualiser but I don't really know how to interpret the various waveform or other visual representation of sound.

I will look at the software tomorrow, thanks for the suggestion..
 
Call me crazy, I decided to encode my 2 latest CD batches @ 225VBR instead of 320CBR. I can't hear the difference and 225VBR is about 1/3 smaller then 320. I think it's a no brainer.

I still need to prove this scientifically with software and blind tests.
 
yammyfan said:
What we found was not what we expected. Our hi-res gear revealed just how good high bitrate mp3 could be, not how poor it was. We, and other listeners, could never, ever tell for certain whether we were listening to mp3 or uncompressed music. The difference was just too small.

These days I am much more relaxed about audio. Once I realized that I was paying more attention to how my equipment was performing rather than how much I was enjoying the music, that was it for me.
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Exactly, in almost every set up (my own included), the bitrate of the audio is rarely the biggest issue!
 
Ok ok ok so it's not a mainstream concern according to the speaker and 90 people out of 100 can't tell the difference between CD Audio and hi-res (I am doing this from memory)

I think I win again Chris with the Mp3s. It's high resolution more then enough.. During the last WE I restructured my data between my computer and HDD and I moved a couple of terabytes, it was real pain, I have zero Flac files in my computer.

Keeping full size CDs in a computer is complete non sense to me, perhaps with a much, much better computer my HDDs are too slow in writing to manage +-575mb per CDs. they heat like a oven stove.. it's not built to move terabytes of data.

I use consumer grade good quality headphones and sound system, my computer motherboard is HD audio. I don't use any streaming services or Bluetooth.
 
Auspicious said:
Ok ok ok so it's not a mainstream concern according to the speaker and 90 people out of 100 can't tell the difference between CD Audio and hi-res (I am doing this from memory)

I think I win again Chris with the Mp3s. It's high resolution more then enough..
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MP3 is not high resolution, neither is CD in the jargon of audiophiles.
What he says is that CD quality (WAV 16bt 44.1khz) is the 'sweet spot'. Delivering great sound quality without huge file sizes or specialist equipment.
I can't hear the difference between CD 16/44 and 24/96, although my experienced audio engineer friend says he can.
Yes, quite rightly the video says most people can't hear the difference. And Spotify (mp3 quality) is perfectly fine for most people.
All I said was that I can hear the difference between mp3 and CD, on headphones in my soundproof studio, which is where I often listen to music. And I objected to being told I was imagining it. As the video says, 90 out of 100 can't tell, which leaves 10% who can. ;)😁
 
Auspicious said:
Call me crazy, I decided to encode my 2 latest CD batches @ 225VBR instead of 320CBR. I can't hear the difference and 225VBR is about 1/3 smaller then 320. I think it's a no brainer.

I still need to prove this scientifically with software and blind tests.
Click to expand...
I used to use 320 VBR or similar when I ripped CDs (it has been years) and the results were superb. I think that VBR is the ticket.
 
I think it's difficult to hear the difference between bitrates one after the other, but over time as I got used to bigger, better mp3s and lossless music, suddenly a 192 or 128k song sounds clearly bad. Headphones or speaker quality can also be limiting factor, if you listen through some cheap earbuds, everything will be the same. Individual people can also have very different hearing sensitivities. The style and composition of music is also a factor, some sounds suffer more from compression than others. I prefer 320k mp3s now, but for archiving I'd only rip CDs to at least lossless so I don't ever have to climb up to the attic again to find the CD drive, e.g. if someone invents a compression that can do higher quality in fraction of size (which is likely to happen the same way as with video).
 
@Chris Whitten your audio engineer friend might be crazy :ROFLMAO: But I have in fact no experience with 24bit 96khz machines and studio quality gear..
@yammyfan it appears so.. i can't encode 320 VBR with asunder, the highest setting is target 245kbps VBR but it looks like a very good deal.
@Doraemon: I think it can depend if the disk was encoded like in 2001 with an early codec.. it could be inferios because of that apparently. What device do you use to store a full quality CDs ?

Seriously 225kbps VBR, it's not suffering too much compared to the original Audio CD.

- I have decent headphones, Sony covering all the ear, not bluetooth earbuds or funny hipster apple stuff, real massive headphones with a lot of RMS watts.
- Good silent environment to enjoy the music.
- Music coming out of the motherboard of a computer with HD audio, with a wire, not blue tooth.

The proof, I can see the difference between Flac/WAV and Mp3.
 
Auspicious said:
[What device do you use to store a full quality CDs ?
Click to expand...
Just external portable hdds, but my listening library has mp3 or sometimes apple lossless in iTunes. I can access most music with Spotify and Apple, so only store stuff they don’t have (live albums of obscure bands, Asian folk music etc.) For me the strange part is back then, 20 years ago I was not aware that my 128k mp3s sounded bad. I was focusing on different things. Your perception can also change greatly imo.
 
Doraemon said:
Just external portable hdds, but my listening library has mp3 or sometimes apple lossless in iTunes. I can access most music with Spotify and Apple, so only store stuff they don’t have (live albums of obscure bands, Asian folk music etc.) For me the strange part is back then, 20 years ago I was not aware that my 128k mp3s sounded bad. I was focusing on different things. Your perception can also change greatly imo.
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I don't know, we shall see in the next years...
 
yammyfan said:
I'm glad to be done with that nonsense. Nowadays I have middle of the road gear that sounds great. My focus is back on the music, where it belongs.
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I guess I am sort of an audiophile if you take it to mean lover of audio and not lover of the gear perse. However, critical listening to the point where it is the gear and not the music is counter-productive if the goal is the enjoyment of the music. My listening environments never really warranted critical analytical listening: dorms, apartment complexes, kids, dogs, traffic &c--too much ambient noise to worry about every minute detail. And there is a good bit of my listening collection that suffers from too good equipment. There is some stuff that just never sounded better than on an AM car radio.
 
Chris Whitten said:
I think you'll find the overwhelming evidence from many sources says otherwise (not just my opinion).
You are welcome to YOUR opinion, but when you start claiming other people's opinions (and experiences!) are in their minds I have to call "woah there". I work with a fantastic audio engineer who can hear the difference between 44.1khz and 96khz. I can't.
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Well said.
A goodish bit is knowing the hallmarks and what to listen for.
 
BrokenStick said:
I guess I am sort of an audiophile if you take it to mean lover of audio and not lover of the gear perse.
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I think the widely held view is that audiophiles are gearheads. There are music lovers who don't care one whit about equipment but the same cannot be said about audiophiles.
 
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