Why would u use spotify to sacrifice quality? I would love to start a hifi collection but my lazzyness is killig me

That's me, but flacs are for arCHivAL purposes

Cause it's more convenient and I don't have to transfer all my collection to my audio player. It's inaudible anyway especially in my usecase which is traveling. I just keep my collection just in case I need it (like when I don't have internet to stream). Also, I don't have 4tb of storage in my phone.

And I am just too lazy to convert my lossless collection to lossy.

But do you listen to all your 4tb? How many tracks do you have? I would just put all my favorite tracks on my player

3k in my phone. The 4tb is divided into different Bluray, DVD-A, and SACDs. One Bluray is about 10GB. The biggest is around 42GB IIRC (John Lennon).

I unironically started with lossless that way. You used to have devices only support some formats so you had to convert and having lossless to start from meant you had the best conversion. After a while, having a ton on FLAC meant I didn't want anything new to not be FLAC, it wouldn't match the rest!

[deleted]

Stop calling me out.

Finally i can relate to this sub

I mean, it makes perfect sense.

Always keep the highest quality copies available for archiving and transcoding into future more efficient formats.

we got pampered

To be honest nothing beats CD audio in my opinion

Like how years ago I ripped and converted my DVDs and now I want to rip them all again and keep them in their bit-exact MPEG-2 format for archival reasons

I stick with lossless in case by some miracle I get cans or ears that can tell the difference.

Honestly, hard drives are cheap enough nowadays that even lossless files don’t cost much to store. So why not.

As someone who's getting back into high-res audio after a long time, where are you guys buying/downloading your high-res flac files from?

I'm in this picture. I like it.

https://i.imgur.com/zktwLG0.mp4

me on the left. flac takes space for less compatibility

yea i've got plenty of HDDs and just convert stuff to ogg for phone usage

I'd like to know more, can I DM you?

/u/brendendas after posting this comment. https://imgur.com/a/thOevmr

what its flac not compatible with?

Flair does have a lot of Bluetooth for this sub.

So hard to pick my favorites though.

Haha I do most of my listening on a Focal 5.1. Didn't add it to my flair as it doesn't come under headphones.

[deleted]

https://media.tenor.com/x9LOF4HF7_AAAAAC/ive-made-a-huge-mistake-mistake.gif

Mp3s directly converted from a lossless format are completely fine. Converting lossy to lossy formats is what kills quality.

If I'm being real honest? I can't tell the difference between a 320mp3 and a CD. Though to be fair I haven't listened to a CD in over a decade. That was my impression last time I did though

personally it's for music discoverability. i find 95% of my new music through spotify.

I'm happy that people are becoming more aware of audiophile bs now

For buying music I get a lot of stuff off Bandcamp, you can download the music in multiple different formats including lossless formats. And i know that Qobuz also sells music in high-res lossless formats with the ability to download the music files.

On top of that, Spotify uses ogg vorbis.

But yes. Convenience beats everything when the trade-off is minuscule.

I convert to Opus VBR 256 kbps. There isn't a single sample in the universe that gives me audible difference this way.

At my 42 years I don't think I will ever use streaming services, I went from cassettes to CDs to Napster to Kazaa to edonkey to the pirate bay, and I plan to keep it that way

I'd probably do the same but my dumb brain goes, "500 = bigger so it better"

Pretty close!! The only difference is flac is an audio format and I don't know if you're aware but mpeg-2 is a video format, so it's slightly different. Try not to downvote!

Sorry 'try not downvote' is a game I like to play sometime, kinda like those try not to sing along playlists. Everyone thinks they can just not but then when the moment comes it just takes one little click to show me how much I'm getting on your nerves and should just shut up.

Edit: haha I'm winning so much

Yeah, it makes sense unless you learn more about lossy formats, then it becomes too hard to make a decision and you try to simplify things lol.

I went to Opus VBR 256 kbps after a lot of ABX tests, gaining information and analyzing it. Wasn't an easy decision though. Would be easier if I was like "screw it, I'm OK with 450-500 kbps bitrate", then I would just go with lossyWAV + FLAC))

I have a policy to transfer full albums on mobile devices so my songs don't get lonely and start missing their friends.

I'm happy to lose your game.

There is definitely hardware out there that doesn't support it..but it isn't very good hardware.

I thank your left side for validating my whole experience with audio. As far as *I* can tell, headphones make a huge difference, amps/DACs make almost no difference once you have a modestly decent one, and for the life of me I can't tell the difference between almost any of the codecs. I don't doubt that others here have much finer ears than me, though.

I used to think I could tell the difference... until I did an actual blind test and was like, awesome I can save a ton of money now. Or put it all into headphones. Or whisky.

once i have flac, it becomes impossible to want to delete them

[removed]

^(read the megathread)

Damn you got a EX1000? Brand new?

If you can't hear the difference between an MP3 and a FLAC, you are either hard of hearing or hard of money

iPods without Rockbox.

wanna share some sources? asking for a friend

I have one sides.

Sacrifice what quality? Not even discernable if you don't placebo yourself

Basically nobody can in blind tests assuming the MP3 is of high quality itself

Audiophiles using DSD when Reddit wannabe Audiophile sheeps still arguing MP3 vs FLAC.

Even if I can't hear the difference, disc space isn't that costly anymore... It's like paying for a streaming service which offers FLAC and mp3 streaming, when not concerned by the amount of data, why would I go for the technical less quality one? When the expanse is literally the same, this question is just rhetorical...

The good thing about flac (and other lossless codecs) is that you can convert it to any fancy new codec in the best possible quality. But if you convert from a lossy codec to another one, the losses will add up (and at some point will become audible)

I have 10TB of flacs and actively listen to like 50gb of music..

What Spotify might "lack" in quality (highly debatable) it sure fills in with amazing recommendations so even using it for a month can open up your whole world of music.

I can relate. But for good reasons. 😋

Step one: Save your whole collection in FLAC for no real reason

Step two: Realise your car can't play FLAC files

Step three: Cry while converting your whole collection to MP3

Tidal gui 🙃

Right click > open with Audacity > export as > FLAC (24 bit)

How hard could it be? /s

Apple music lossless is good enough to not to bother with quality of mp3 which i still cannot hear the difference bethween flac. Or storing flac files where i could use that storage for literally anything else. It literally is flac with a instead of f.

The difference is definitely minor for casual listemers but for audiophiles or anyone who focuses on the details, the difference is quite big.

Was very bummed when the car stereo didn't support ALAC even though the website said it did.

Spent an hr after that converting all of them to mp3.

I didnt even play it in the first place

When I'm actually buying them, Bandcamp.

I use qobuz just so I can use Roon. I like the app better than either the spotify or qobuz native apps.

If I can get the highest quality possible, I will. Same with video files, always choose the best bitrate, even if it means 100gigs per movie xD

I'm in the middle

[removed]

the difference is def minimal but when i've spent 4500 on my current chain chasing diminishing returns i might as well get the free return.

Same. I downloaded my entire collection on FLAC (and I don't use it), most of them are on CD that i use something but i everyday Spotify. Classic.

Give yourself to the Dark Side, Luke

Are you guys seriously using spotify ? I switched to Tidal and it's a lot better if you have good headphones.

What is lossless? Is it audio without any kind of compression? If so, where can I get some?

yeah, just compare MP3's efficiency to Opus, which i think for most tracks is transparent at about 128kbps.

Your mistake is listening to music, and not using music to listen to your headphones :4head:

Qobuz and Bandcamp are the way. Some artists I listen to sell FLAC directly like Postmodern Jukebox and some you have to scour the internet for. I have a few tracks not available in my country so I had to use a VPN to buy them.

[deleted]

It makes perfect sense for sampling

It's audio that's compressed without losing any information. It's compressed to take up less storage and bandwidth but doesn't lose any quality in order to achieve that.

You can buy and download FLACs from places like Bandcamp, Qobuz download store or HDTracks, as examples.

[deleted]

Thx, also, one more question, do these work on a phone?

This was me. Just with DSD and FLAC. Years ago, finally realized I don't need DSD. I just kept 5 of my favorite albums that was were already in DSD and deleted the rest (after converting them to FLAC). Now, I just get new stuff in FLAC.

Edit: typo

Yes. Poweramp, vlc, etc all work with flac, wav and alac (all lossless formats).

[deleted]

Wait, you have an sd card or something in your head unit?

Man, it's so cool that you can listen to YouTube and it sounds almost transparent because of Opus. This codec rocks hard.

Idk, Spotify is fine. I'm convinced people only hate on it because it's popular. My only real problem with it is that dealing with the queue can be a bit annoying, but for the convenience of not having to download music and having playlists sync across devices I won't complain. Tidal's UI is basically the same and people love that because of its placebo "audio quality"

The thing is alot of songs i listen to is not available in lossless :(

Here you go: samples of four different tracks recorded directly from Spotify and Tidal, volume matched and synched.

Good luck telling which is which.

I can't be sure you will tell me the truth if the samples comes from the right sources so I wont be convinced today. I already did this test with spotify and tidal before switching. You also chose songs that are basically not that technical and I use hd560s.

But I'll try it anyway.

Tidal

archangel 1

Bonus sample 1

Beethnoven sample 2

Enter sandman 2

The only difference I notice between FLAC and 320kpbs AACL/MP3 is that MP3 files sound thin compared to FLAC.

Alright, let's bump up the technicality and samples size.

Give me your decision on the three additional tracks and I'll shoot you a PM with the answers.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/a073avgs9ydi2kw/AB-south-of-heaven-tidal-vs-spotify.zip/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/367klddxnjrvi7g/AB-fidgety-feet-tidal-vs-spotify.zip/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/rknbmanhbffpa1k/AB-mahler-10-tidal-vs-spotify.zip/file

[removed]

Only if you tell me how I did with the four tracks. You can PM me if you want.

[removed]

But Spotify isn’t MP3. It’s Vorbis which is definitely higher quality than MP3 per bit.

Mp3 starts doing something weird to cymbals, especially at lower bit rates.

Deezer, my man. Cheaper, more songs and HiFi.

I was the same, but just didn't have the time to discover new music or manage my collection.

Good to know! I'll listen for that next time.

is that sarcasm? i assume not.

Tho i'm p sure youtube uses some kinda volume normalization or something going on. it always sounds worse to my ears than spotify.

I really like hdtracks. Good quality and vetted.

FLAC is for preservation of CDs, all my favorite bands only have remastered tracks that sound horrible available in streaming platforms. Seriously, nothing ruins Metallica's drums like quantization.

For modern computer made music, 320kbps is more than enough.

Why delete them? storage is cheap af

A/B'ing between Spotify,Tidal, and Deezer, and wow Spotify sucks ass.

It's not sarcasm.

For 90-95% of tracks, 128kbps Opus 1.3.1 us psychoacoustically transparent.

oh ok. sorry, thought it was sarcasm lol. But yeah, it's def a good bitrate for most tracks. Sometimes i got for 160 if i'm using lossy codecs just in case, but 128kbps OPUS is really good.

👌

Youtube does volume normalization through the web player and through their mobile apps. It is not applied to music during encoding.

Cause i don't want to spend more, i have 20 tb but all my drives are red and im running out of things i want to delete.

20 tb is enough space for a million lossless tracks, you don't listen to that much music, you're just hoarding shit.

I use 256 kbps with Opus for robustness against all possible artifacts (heard some at 192kbps and even 224kbps). But if you ask me, 128kbps is the best bitrate for Opus in terms of efficiency. ALMOST transparent, yet files are super small.

[removed]

I'm only at around 1TB, but yeah.

http://abx.digitalfeed.net/spotify-hq.html

It really isn’t. Test it out yourself.

I mean, I've been listening to FLACs for more than 5 years. I surely don't need anyone else to tell me how big is the difference. Also, everyone has different ears. So you may not perceive what I do and I may not perceive what you do.

[removed]

[deleted]

My comment was not a personal attack of any sort. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, of course. But it was very informative for me and many others - we really couldn’t hear a difference consistently.

I didn't take your comment as a personal attack. I may have sounded too harsh but I just told you that I feel the difference. Maybe you don't. We are different.

That’s fair. Cheers!

[deleted]

I can hear the difference between FLAC and Lossless compression, but, the difference is so slight that it's barely noticeable. And that difference is more noticeable with MP3/4 format than OGG VORBIS, I don't know what black magic is in OGG VORBIS, but there are some songs that sound better than the CD.

[deleted]

100% agree. This is the quickest way for me to identify lossy.

If you listen very closely, you can even differentiate 320kbps from lossless with this method.

Once you start to hear it though, there's no going back...

[deleted]

[deleted]

[deleted]

[deleted]

[deleted]

I can hear the difference.

[deleted]

fair enough.

kinda makes me wish podcasts and audiobooks were encoded with OPUS instead of MP3. Usually they're mp3 and somewhere between 64 and 128kbps. Might sound weird but the artifacting bothers me even for vocal content. You could probably get both better quality and small file sizes if they used opus at say 64kbps. but i guess it doesn't make sense for compatibility reasons.

idk if youtube does some other fucky stuff to audio besides opus, but there is no way youtube is even close to transparent. I immediately notice the difference when listening on youtube and i dont think im a particularly discerning person

Waiting for biomods to allow me to hear the differences

I'm sorry but the difference between FLAC and MP3 is very apparent to me. At least when using my DAC/Amp combo with my HD800s or listening on my hifi speakers. I've sat and compared specific sections of songs for clarity and lack of added noise etc. When I was testing out streaming services. The results were very clear, 320kbps has less detail in the specific tonal qualities of instruments and has an added noise floor, meanwhile FLAC has the cleanest noise floor, retains the most details in the instruments and has a much better bass response (this even takes effect on my car stereo which is not the greatest). I also confirmed there is a difference between "True Lossless" and "Compressed Lossless" Tidal MQA was better than mp3, but the noise floor presented its own artifacts that when compared to true lossless flac from Qobuz. Lastly there's a difference between 16-bit and 24-bit if you can't hear the differences you're either being limited by your equipment(unlikely, as mentioned shitty car stereo picked up these differences too), limited by your hearing, or you just don't know what you're listening for when it comes to comparing format quality. Since discovering the beauty of FLAC I've loved going back to old albums I loved and hearing all kinds of new details I never picked up before. It honestly transforms some songs completely, especially older music from the 90s and earlier.

But all that technical nitpicking aside, honestly I'd rather listen to 128kbps than have no music at all.

TL;DR FLAC is honestly much better for a lot of reasons, I spent hours testing with high-end and low end gear to make sure I was getting the best value.

I tried with the same volume, yes. I got 3 out of 4.

I was sent three more and I'm waiting for the results. There is one out of three where I found the production to be lacking and could not notice any difference at all between the two.

It's pretty tough. I'm not good on the technical side so I can't double check his technique. But if he does things properly, then I gotta to admit the difference is almost impossible to notice.

[removed]

For me, listening to HIFI tracks on Tidal compared to 256 AAC on YouTube, it's louder which I appreciate, I don't have to crank my volume. I wouldn't listen to anything lower than AAC though, MP3 sounds a bit.. grainy I guess.

[deleted]

Know what? Just pirate music like everyone else has been for the past few decades.

> Once you start to hear it

"Honey, where's your car?"

"Sold it, taking the bus now. Hon, you gotta hear the senny's on this new tube amp..."

I mean just saying 90% of tracks, it means nothing. To one's personal ears it means nothing. What you are saying is that YOU and a designated group of people cannot tell the difference. That's all it means. You guys are convincing yourselves that 128 Opus is transparent, when it isn't. You shouldn't use that word. Because it means nothing without the user and gear in question.

My curated collection is like 4TB, also minus all my physical I don't have in digital yet, which is a lot, and I can't even imagine 20 lmao. I have so much classical even. I could only see 10TB MAX for me without crazy blurays or some shit getting into the mix.

Your claim here is a fallacy though. You should realize that.

You'll get downvoted by angry tweens who only have their entire collection in 128 or some shit. Opus is transparent guys. I've never heard audio except on my airpods and shit, but I read some studies, and they 100% definitive. Your ears can't hear the difference.

LMAO. If you pinpoint a lot of specific tracks and areas in tracks in particular, you can easily hear differences. It's really not that hard. Double Blind studies don't give one enough time with a track. When given the time, you start spotting the differences in back to backs. That alone is enough for me to stick with FLAC. It might not really be huge all the time, but it's a difference.

Even on some of the tougher tests, you can still hear differences with 320 vs lossless MP3. Opus at 320 is pretty damn good, but there are tracks where you can still hear something.

Now your typical zoomer isn't going to give a shit. They don't care about anything. But if you don't care about space, then who gives a fuck? I'm not putting my collection on 128 OPUS lmao. A bunch of fools convince themselves that their shitty equipment or some random ass study with random ass people and samples couldn't 100% the differences so fuck it gotta go OPUS for my 1000000000 zoomer rap and fake alt punk singles. Gotta fit them all.

That doesn't say much though. The differences are there, and people with great hearing and a sense of musical knowledge know what to look for. It might not appear on every single track, but it's there, and some people care.

I mean these people can't even type out a coherently written meme. Don't trust these fucks with your audio needs.

It is QUITE audible. I am a bit of a audiophile myself

You get me man. I did the tests myself because I wanted to see where I should spend my money, the answer was very clear.

It's worth it going with lossless even just for the gapless playback.

I mean don't get me wrong Opus is great, but I am not converting my entire collection to Opus. I just don't even fucking care. Who needs that space? Why? Any phone with 128GB of storage and that is literally all I need for work and way more. Hell, I am getting by with 70GB of music in FLAC on my phone. I rarely have too many issues with albums. I could save some space going Opus, but I really just don't care.

The whole debate is pointless right now. I don't even understand the obsession with lossy at this point in time. I guess if you are dirt poor with only 2GB of space on your phone it could help.

Opus is optimized for speech, isn't it?

Flac for LIFE!

i do both

I archive lossless and convert down to 320 kbps for my iPod classic. That's right, I still have an iPod 😂 I can't hear a difference so why waste the space on my music player.

You have what we call golden ears 😂 I have HD800s myself and a decent amp and honestly I still can't tell a difference. Both 320 kbps and Lossless sound fantastic to me. I archive lossless on my laptop and harddrives and convert to 320 on music player. If I could hear a major difference I'd probably add lossless to my player, but alas I don't have golden ears.

I can immediately tell between 256kbps (apple music high res lossy) and lossless by the bass, lossy bass sounds muffled in comparison, lossless bass sounds a lot cleaner with my setup.

4tb? So like 10 songs?

Has good open back headphones and subs to apple music for hires/lossless; listens to YT music on BT earbuds most of the time 🙂

Only volume normalization through the player. If you use youtube-dl to download Opus stream, you get completely unprocessed audio.

Now it's up to you to decide if a change in digital volume degrades quality for you or not :)

Haha I'll have to get myself a golden ear trophy for my decorations lol. Seriously though I understand the sentiment of saying "there's no difference", music is music after all, and both do sound fantastic, but after spending $2600 on headphones, dac/amp and $7000 on a hifi Dolby Atmos setup I wanted to make sure I was getting the most out of my equipment. Another reason I spent the time testing was because I was subscribed to 3 different streaming services at the time and wanted to save some money by switching to just one. I literally sat there and compared 5-10 second long segments of songs and listened to specific tonal qualities of the instruments and vocals, how long the resonances lasted, minute background details such as breaths being taken or fingers scraping against strings, keys clacking, noise floor etc. Extreme critical listening stuff your average person isn't checking for when just putting something on to jam to. I think that's the perfect setup honestly lossless at home lossy on the go. Luckily I live in an area with really good 5g coverage so I can just stream 16-bit or 24-bit lossless straight from Qobuz without buffering. Best of both worlds really.

Have you had a chance to listen or compare and 16 to 24 bit music? Surprisingly there's a difference there as well, it's much more subtle but it has a slight loudness boost and way better depth to the low end of tracks. The first 24 bit CD I bought was Post Malone's Beerbongs and Bentleys and I had to adjust my subwoofer from the added bass 😂. Also have you heard any DOLBY Atmos or 360 Audio content? It's not lossless but it adds a whole different feel to music as well having specific instruments sounding as if they're placed throughout the room not coming from the speakers, it's evolutionary stuff, I can't wait till they come up with a lossless spatial audio now that will be something!

I won't divulge the exact results, but it will suffice to say that the outcome was pretty much as expected.

That’s a very good point. You’re making me reconsider a little. Lol. I spent a lot on speakers headphones and amps. I play mostly lossless audio on my speakers for the same reason as you. Why not on my headphones as well?

[deleted]

For me i need sound quality higher than 320kbps

You don't need it, you just like to think you do.

Well…. yes you have a strong point but lossless just makes me happy