BillFitzmaurice.info

I make periodic trips to the used CD store and usually buy one or two things that look intriguing. I usually rip these to MP3s. At some point when disk space was expensive and processors were slower this sacrifice in sound quality made sense to me, but then I just kept doing it out of habit.

So I have a new computer and have been migrating things over and decided to rip any new CDs into FLAC. Wow, I forgot what I was missing! It's so much more a feast for the ears! I spent hours over the weekend just listening to music, and it was so much closer to what the audio engineers intended!

I was so jazzed by this experience that I ordered a portable FLAC player so I can take this experience on the go. This includes playing break music at gigs which I usually just play from my iPhone with tunes from Google Music. I am curious to hear some side-by-side through my BFM PA.

I just started a pair of DR250s, but after that I am going to get going on a BFM HT system.

Better stock up on cheap storage when it comes on sale.

lowsound

Move everything to flac. Most outboard gear like a Pioneer djm mixer5000 or djm media player don't recognize flac (dam bastards) ony .wav @ 41khz and 16 bit. I would've loved to rip and process mixes using at least 48khz @ 24bit.
Look up ethan weiner on youtube, as he describes dithering and or bit rate . Ethan Weiner audio myths workshop. Pretty much 41khz @16bit resolution is all you need. But, just that extra bit of detail and airiness I hear a difference. Through shure brand studio headphones.

Foobar can let you ABX the two files. This will either confirm or dispel your belief.

That's pretty insightful, thanks.

I believe I read a thread on here a while back about bit-rates and CD's vs mp3's and stuff. Basically it was how much more audio info CD's produce vs most formats. FLAC and WAV are the best digital format, but a distant 2nd and 3rd to CD. Or something like that.

.Wav is essentially a perfect copy from a CD. It's fully uncompressed, 44.1 khz, 16 bit audio.

When you burn CD's you burn .wav files to the CD.

If your burning MP3's to an audio CD they are converted by a program to .wav files first, then burned on the CD.

FLAC is lossless compression, which means its the same quality as .WAV just with a slightly smaller file size, but larger file size than MP3 obviously.

mst3k joel wrote:That's pretty insightful, thanks.

Was your "wink" sarcasm? If so, elaborate.

Ryan A wrote:FLAC is lossless compression, which means its the same quality as .WAV just with a slightly smaller file size, but larger file size than MP3 obviously.

IME, FLAC (on the default settings) is 55-60% the size of the corresponding wav file. The compression time is about 1/3 the time to make a mp3@320CBR.

Which PMP did you buy (portable media player) I have had a cowon s9 for 5 years and it never fails me. Great internal DAC and custom EQ. Oh and native FLAC/drag+drop support. Only unfortunate thing is no 24 bit playback, but the DAC isn't good enough to reveal that detail anyways so it would just have been a waste of (limited) space.