Sound quality: CD vs FLV/MP3

Oj0 said:
You're welcome to double blind test me using my audio equipment
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I'd love to test you. I do work in a high end audio studio, and I'd love you to tell me the difference between a high quality MP3 and RAW WAV/ AIF or FLAC as you so confidently claim.
 
genetic said:
I'd love to test you. I do work in a high end audio studio, and I'd love you to tell me the difference between a high quality MP3 and RAW WAV/ AIF or FLAC as you so confidently claim.
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Well I can honestly say that I can quite easily differentiate between MP3's at 128 vs 256.

But between FLAC and MP4 at VBR 256 I fail at blind testing myself every time.

I'm sure MP3's at 320 CBR are pretty decent in quality but the compromise in file size vs quality of MP4 256 VBR makes all the difference.
 
genetic said:
I'd love to test you. I do work in a high end audio studio, and I'd love you to tell me the difference between a high quality MP3 and RAW WAV/ AIF or FLAC as you so confidently claim.
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I did the double blind test in Foobar some time ago. I was able to consistently tell the difference between 320kb Mp3 and Flac. I agree it might be overkill for the car and I was using my Senns but it is possible.
 
genetic said:
I'd love to test you. I do work in a high end audio studio, and I'd love you to tell me the difference between a high quality MP3 and RAW WAV/ AIF or FLAC as you so confidently claim.
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I can tell the difference on both my sound system and my headphones. Did a double blind test with music I've ripped myself in both FLAC and MP3 and had a 95% success rate using certain recordings (Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Fleetwood Mac, etc.). My Success rate dropped to 65% when it came to modern music (tried some Beyonce, Eminem, Deadmau5, etc.). In this second case I put it down to guessing more than actually being able to hear any difference.

Type of music has a huge impact, and a good recording (Such as Iron Hand by Dire Straits) will show the differences more clearly than less ideal recording (such as Metallica's entire Death Magnetic album).
 
TehStranger said:
I can tell the difference on both my sound system and my headphones. Did a double blind test with music I've ripped myself in both FLAC and MP3 and had a 95% success rate using certain recordings (Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Fleetwood Mac, etc.). My Success rate dropped to 65% when it came to modern music (tried some Beyonce, Eminem, Deadmau5, etc.). In this second case I put it down to guessing more than actually being able to hear any difference.

Type of music has a huge impact, and a good recording (Such as Iron Hand by Dire Straits) will show the differences more clearly than less ideal recording (such as Metallica's entire Death Magnetic album).
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Also, your encoder is hugely important. LAME ftw!
 
Electric said:
It's about dynamics though.
Music has more life when it's not squashed into non-existence.
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I'm not disputing that at all. All I'm saying is that 320kbps is not "squashed into non-existence", The difference between 320kbps and 1441kbps uncompressed PCM is hardly discernible in standard audio tests. You'd need more scientific experiments to test the differences between the two at those bitrates.
 
Just rip them off your cd's at the highest bitrate (320kbps) and you will be fine.
 
copacetic said:
He's in a car...
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And that's a fail on my behalf, I read right past that. In a car there's too much ambient noise to bother with FLAC, 320kpbs MP3s should do. My apologies :)

crysis said:
And 6180gb of music. No thanks.
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Storage is cheap, it's not THAT big of a deal :p

Praeses said:
Not everybody inflates their ePeens by splashing R20k+ on a sound system.

OP: As said above, just rip directly from the CD, not from Youtube. Rip it to 320Kbps and it should be fine for your car.
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I didn't spend R20k. Or anywhere near that. I bought some high end equipment which varies from 10 to 30 years old.

Musicmp3 said:
FLAC are overrated and too big. For car use, conversion from cd to mp3 at 320k is fine. Using FLAC you might get 4 albums on a 4gig stck - not worth it!
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People still use 4 GB flash drives? I don't think you can even buy them anymore. A 16 GB flash drive can be had for what, R110? That'll hold around 22 albums, which should be more than enough.

As for ripping from Youtube, don't bother. 240p video has 64kbps audio, up to 480p is 128k, 720p and above is 192k. You can't regain the lost quality by re-encoding at 320k.
 
Oj0 said:
And that's a fail on my behalf, I read right past that. In a car there's too much ambient noise to bother with FLAC, 320kpbs MP3s should do. My apologies :)
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+192
In your quiet home environment, you may hear the difference, bit while in motion on SA roads...
 
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