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Audiophile Question - FLAC 24/96 Playback

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That was on a Mac, but yeah its geek wizardry a bit.
ok, I will look it up and see if it is something I can do, or don't care enough to bother with. I never did enjoy programming much, and still hate to try to set up even math In a spreadsheet. LOL!


I've given up on physical media, but I do make sure to always pay the artists. Thank you for doing so as well!
I like to purchase stuff on BandCamp, particularly the Fridays where the artists get (nearly) all the money when I can. Would be cool if BandCamp was an app that would be included on the center mounted iPad thing.

and anyway, looks like my 2T little Samsung will be plenty partitioned. So no worries now about that. First question answered.
 
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This is so NOT true.
Anyone with a pair of ears can hear the difference.
Try this very simple test.
Rip a good quality song that you like, twice. One in 256, and one in Flac. Have them back to back on whatever media player you're using.
Without changing anything in the audio between tracks (volume, bass, treble, the ridiculous Immersive sound settings, etc), simply listen.
You will immediately hear differences. How much different will depend on your source material, of course.
If you try this simple test, and you CAN'T hear a difference, then your one of the lucky few without the discerning ears to notice subtle differences, and should use the lower bit rate.
Most immediately can tell the difference. Many can't EXPLAIN the difference, but they can certainly hear it.

I used to be an IASCCA sound judge, and used to spend a lot of time tuning friends car systems for them. I mean a LOT of time, often keeping their car for a week. I had one friend who complained bitterly about how awful my tuning sounded. I was puzzled, as I thought it was sounding very sweet. I went back to his house, and we popped in some Floyd, and sure enough, it sounded awful. Turns out, he was listening to Pink Floyd downloaded from Apple Music at 256K. Took out MY media player, with FLAC, put on the same song, and the difference was clear and immediate, even to his ears, which are basically tone deaf. The differences are not always night and day, but they are discernable.
There's definitely a difference between 256k and FLAC. The problem is most folks are listening to dynamically compressed music. So whatever difference there may be, gets obscured by the dynamic compression that afflicts much of today's music. This is a great article with a music track that explains and demonstrates the problem: Compression is killing your music

One way to hear the difference between MP3 and FLAC is MP3 will typically not have near as much in the way of "air" i.e. the breath and space around instruments (I'm talking non-electronic instruments such as woodwinds and pianos). Instead of the natural decay of a note, you get silence. 192k Spotify sounds like crap. I can only listen to it on my Subaru with the volume turned down so that it's background music. 320K MP3 off a media stick is much better. But even that doesn't hold a candle to FLAC or DSD.
 
It's so ridiculously easy to tell the difference, I can't believe there are audiophiles who still believe people can't. I suspect the argument has more to do with how they've already ripped their vast music collections, rather than actual fact.
Now, if the argument is that some SYSTEMS cannot reproduce the differences, that's absolutely true. But the differences are readily apparent even in a decent audio set up.
Much misinformation was started by Apple music, who essentially destroyed music for an entire generation, convincing them that 256K sounds "good", and publishing so much garbage about only eliminating "silences". Compression is compression, period. Heck, I can easily tell the differences between Flac and WAV. If our antiquated USB players in the Tesla would support artwork with WAV, my files would be all WAV, as they are in all my other cars. These days, storage is so inexpensive, there's no reason to compress your files.
Even "lossless" formats like Flac and AIFF are compressed, just in a newer, more advanced way.. but still compressed, and discernably so. Tesla USB player, however, does not support any truly compression-less format. Thus the reason I use Flac.
The bottom line is simple. Music is like wine, there's no "right" or "wrong". Whatever sounds good to you, individually, is what you should use. But don't try to tell others what they can and cannot hear, based on your own experience and ears. It's laughable.
 
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It's so ridiculously easy to tell the difference, I can't believe there are audiophiles who still believe people can't. I suspect the argument has more to do with how they've already ripped their vast music collections, rather than actual fact.
Now, if the argument is that some SYSTEMS cannot reproduce the differences, that's absolutely true. But the differences are readily apparent even in a decent audio set up.
Much misinformation was started by Apple music, who essentially destroyed music for an entire generation, convincing them that 256K sounds "good", and publishing so much garbage about only eliminating "silences". Compression is compression, period. Heck, I can easily tell the differences between Flac and WAV. If our antiquated USB players in the Tesla would support artwork with WAV, my files would be all WAV, as they are in all my other cars. These days, storage is so inexpensive, there's no reason to compress your files.
Even "lossless" formats like Flac and AIFF are compressed, just in a newer, more advanced way.. but still compressed, and discernably so. Tesla USB player, however, does not support any truly compression-less format. Thus the reason I use Flac.
The bottom line is simple. Music is like wine, there's no "right" or "wrong". Whatever sounds good to you, individually, is what you should use. But don't try to tell others what they can and cannot hear, based on your own experience and ears. It's laughable.
In my experience, people who say it's ridiculously easy to tell the difference between high bit rate MP3 or AAC and uncompressed audio have convinced themselves without ever doing a double-blind test. They often then give the game away by saying something physically absurd like writing on your CDs with a green marker makes them sound better, or that lossless compression makes the sound worse.

Lossless compression does not change the bit stream at all. I'm sure you think you can hear a difference, but you're just convincing yourself. Heck, probably even a different part of your brain is activated, just like in the MRI tests they did with wine, where the same wine caused different brain areas to light up when people were told it was very expensive.

Lossless formats are in fact lossless. Once it's converted to a data stream, it is literally impossible to tell a difference between that and the original stream. The audio is not compressed. It is identically equal to the original signal. Bit for bit, sample for sample. There is no difference to be heard, because there is no difference.

I will happily bet you $10,000 that in a double-blind (e.g. A/B/X) situation, you can't do better than chance telling whether a signal has been through a FLAC coder/decoder or not. Because there is no difference.
 
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Dynamic compression is actually wonderful for many or even most listening situations, like in a car or not so silent room. The noise floor in an unusually quiet car is about 65db. A typical quiet room will be more like 40db. I don't know exactly how loud a Tesla is at speed, but it ain't quiet! Listening on the radio while you're cooking dinner? Running and heave headphones in? These are all the wonderful situations where you very much want dynamic compression. Otherwise you can't hear a lot of what's going on in the song. On a highly dynamic recording, a lot of sound drops beneath the noise floor.

As for FLAC, MP3, DSD, high bitrate, and such, there are audible differences but they're subtle. If you know what you're listening for, you can maybe train your hearing to tell the difference. I suggest running an ABX test to see if you can actually tell the difference with your gear.

I can definitely hear degradation with 128kbps MP3. Beyond that, it starts to get iffy, but then I tend to listen to FLACs just because I find the concept elegant. A lot of high bitrate files are terribly produced, with massive, massive amounts of ultrasonic noise that garbages up the signal. This is especially true of DSDs converted into high bitrate files. Then there's the whole vinyl into 24 bit FLAC, which is a joke since the SNR of vinyl ranges from pitiful at worst to just mediocre at best, and the frequency response is garbage no matter what.

ABX claims of what you can hear, and publish the results, or be quiet.
 
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I can easily tell the differences between Flac and WAV. If our antiquated USB players in the Tesla would support artwork with WAV, my files would be all WAV, as they are in all my other cars. These days, storage is so inexpensive, there's no reason to compress your files.
Even "lossless" formats like Flac and AIFF are compressed, just in a newer, more advanced way.. but still compressed, and discernably so.
While I'm an avid audiophile, I think you have gone too far here. Lossless formats can regenerate, exactly, the original bits in the uncompressed format. That's not subject to qualification. You can take a WAV file, convert it to FLAC (or ALAC etc) and then convert it back to WAV .. you will have EXACTLY the same WAV file as the original. It's therefore pushing the boundaries of common sense and science to claim that you can hear the differences as a result of the lossless compression. (Or do you believe water molecules can magically "remember" exposure to a chemical after it has gone, a la homeopathy?)

Technically, playing a FLAC file requires different processing on the decoder to regenerate the original uncompressed data. It's just barely plausible that this operation, since it could generate EM and/or power supply noise, could disrupt the DAC sufficiently to be audible, but again that is really pushing things. And in any case this would point to an issue with the DAC quality, and is not an argument about FLAC and WAV files sounding inherently different per se (and, in fact, you would not be able to argue about which one was more "correct", since on what could you base that? For all you know the WAV file, being bigger, might cause more, not less, disruption to tthe DAC).

However, I'm with you on lossy .. on a good system with a good recording lossy compression can play havoc with a recording.
 
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Dynamic compression is actually wonderful for many or even most listening situations, like in a car or not so silent room. The noise floor in an unusually quiet car is about 65db. A typical quiet room will be more like 40db. I don't know exactly how loud a Tesla is at speed, but it ain't quiet! Listening on the radio while you're cooking dinner? Running and heave headphones in? These are all the wonderful situations where you very much want dynamic compression. Otherwise you can't hear a lot of what's going on in the song. On a highly dynamic recording, a lot of sound drops beneath the noise floor.

As for FLAC, MP3, DSD, high bitrate, and such, there are audible differences but they're subtle. If you know what you're listening for, you can maybe train your hearing to tell the difference. I suggest running an ABX test to see if you can actually tell the difference with your gear.

I can definitely hear degradation with 128kbps MP3. Beyond that, it starts to get iffy, but then I tend to listen to FLACs just because I find the concept elegant. A lot of high bitrate files are terribly produced, with massive, massive amounts of ultrasonic noise that garbages up the signal. This is especially true of DSDs converted into high bitrate files. Then there's the whole vinyl into 24 bit FLAC, which is a joke since the SNR of vinyl ranges from pitiful at worst to just mediocre at best, and the frequency response is garbage no matter what.

ABX claims of what you can hear, and publish the results, or be quiet.
Dynamic compression is never good!!! It's certainly not "wonderful". Did you listen to the tracks in the link I provided? You can CLEARLY hear the change in the nature of the drums. The solution to ambient noise is to make it quieter, not ruin the music by compressing it lol. On my Subaru, I went with the stock sound system because it has less weird EQ faults than the upgraded sound system. The stock system sounds more natural. I can easily hear the dynamic compression that afflicts so much of modern music. The Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack is a perfect example of this. In no way does that sound like a classical orchestra performing. It's amplified compressed garbage.

The problem is most folks under a certain age have been trained to accept dynamic compression and low bit rate garbage. The streaming services have a vested interest in lowering their costs by streaming lower bit rate music. MP3 saves hard drive space. It's a convenient form factor, not one that serves the goal of musical reproduction fidelity.
 
Yeah...agree with that. But this is becoming pointless. Everybody just restating their side of it over and over, including myself. I'm not going to convince you, and your not going to convince me. Let's just all agree to disagree, and listen to whatever format YOU want to. To each their own.
 
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Dynamic compression is never good!!! It's certainly not "wonderful". Did you listen to the tracks in the link I provided? You can CLEARLY hear the change in the nature of the drums. The solution to ambient noise is to make it quieter, not ruin the music by compressing it lol. On my Subaru, I went with the stock sound system because it has less weird EQ faults than the upgraded sound system. The stock system sounds more natural. I can easily hear the dynamic compression that afflicts so much of modern music. The Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack is a perfect example of this. In no way does that sound like a classical orchestra performing. It's amplified compressed garbage.

The problem is most folks under a certain age have been trained to accept dynamic compression and low bit rate garbage. The streaming services have a vested interest in lowering their costs by streaming lower bit rate music. MP3 saves hard drive space. It's a convenient form factor, not one that serves the goal of musical reproduction fidelity.

I think I mostly agree with you, but you're missing my point.

Here's one of my favorite songs:

Listen to the start in a quiet room. A lot of build up and then boom! Nice use of dynamics.

Now listen to it with a bunch of background noise or in a car. You then have two choices. It's either barely audible or not audible at all for the first 30 seconds, or you have the music loud enough to hear over the noise floor for the first 30 seconds or so, and then
BOOM!
You're half deaf or and scrambling for the volume control. Talk about a song that should be remastered for most listening situations, with less dynamic range.
In fact, I'd like two copies of all my songs, one for each situation. I'll 99% listen to the more compressed version. Preferably not over-compressed like that famous Metallica track.
 
Much misinformation was started by Apple music, who essentially destroyed music for an entire generation, convincing them that 256K sounds "good", and publishing so much garbage about only eliminating "silences". Compression is compression, period. Heck, I can easily tell the differences between Flac and WAV. If our antiquated USB players in the Tesla would support artwork with WAV, my files would be all WAV, as they are in all my other cars. These days, storage is so inexpensive, there's no reason to compress your files.
Did you mix up FLAC and MP3? WAV and FLAC are both lossless. The only realistic way there could be a difference with a converted file is if something went wrong in the conversion or if the player is messed up.
 
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I think I mostly agree with you, but you're missing my point.

Here's one of my favorite songs:

Listen to the start in a quiet room. A lot of build up and then boom! Nice use of dynamics.

Now listen to it with a bunch of background noise or in a car. You then have two choices. It's either barely audible or not audible at all for the first 30 seconds, or you have the music loud enough to hear over the noise floor for the first 30 seconds or so, and then
BOOM!
You're half deaf or and scrambling for the volume control. Talk about a song that should be remastered for most listening situations, with less dynamic range.
In fact, I'd like two copies of all my songs, one for each situation. I'll 99% listen to the more compressed version. Preferably not over-compressed like that famous Metallica track.
Sorry but if I were to look for an example of everything that's wrong with music recording today, that Nine Inch Nails tracks would probably be one of the poster childs. You can barley tell one instrument from the other. Drum kit sounds like a one note piece. It's all so very dynamically compressed together. Going from a quiet room to the "boom" is not really what I'd consider dynamics. The delination and definition of a piccolo when an orchestra is playing quietly vs the location and air of an oboe with a tympani being struck is dynamic.

Listen to this track for an example of something well recorded and very dynamic:
 
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I think I mostly agree with you, but you're missing my point.

Here's one of my favorite songs:

Listen to the start in a quiet room. A lot of build up and then boom! Nice use of dynamics.

Now listen to it with a bunch of background noise or in a car. You then have two choices. It's either barely audible or not audible at all for the first 30 seconds, or you have the music loud enough to hear over the noise floor for the first 30 seconds or so, and then
BOOM!
You're half deaf or and scrambling for the volume control. Talk about a song that should be remastered for most listening situations, with less dynamic range.
In fact, I'd like two copies of all my songs, one for each situation. I'll 99% listen to the more compressed version. Preferably not over-compressed like that famous Metallica track.
Give a listen to this track - on "inferior" resolution vinyl even lol:
 
Vinyl can't hit the bass that digital can. Otherwise the needle would literally pop out of the groove. Vinyl has a high noise floor, wears away with every single playing, and just plain lower resolution overall. That doesn't mean vinyl sounds like crap. It just means that CDs or digital files can sound better. Of course some records are mastered better than their CD equivalents, but that doesn't mean all or even more are. I can rock out on crap headphones playing 128mbps MP3s, and I can rock out on 24/192 on a 2.1 with DIRAC.
 
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Vinyl can't hit the bass that digital can. Otherwise the needle would literally pop out of the groove. Vinyl has a high noise floor, wears away with every single playing, and just plain lower resolution overall. That doesn't mean vinyl sounds like crap. It just means that CDs or digital files can sound better. Of course some records are mastered better than their CD equivalents, but that doesn't mean all or even more are. I can rock out on crap headphones playing 128mbps MP3s, and I can rock out on 24/192 on a 2.1 with DIRAC.
I play vinyl when I want a certain sound that some better vinyl recordings have, and when I want to have the experience of playing the large physical media, looking at the album art and reading the liner notes, etc whilst sitting down to listen, etc.. Now I am not talking 10k tables with 10k cartridges or anything. Just good mid-fi 70's tables with period cartridges or similar. And there is a certain mellow sound that happens too.

But most of the time, I agree with you that digital can sound as good or better, as long as it is a good recording and mastering
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Vinyl can't hit the bass that digital can. Otherwise the needle would literally pop out of the groove. Vinyl has a high noise floor, wears away with every single playing, and just plain lower resolution overall. That doesn't mean vinyl sounds like crap. It just means that CDs or digital files can sound better. Of course some records are mastered better than their CD equivalents, but that doesn't mean all or even more are. I can rock out on crap headphones playing 128mbps MP3s, and I can rock out on 24/192 on a 2.1 with DIRAC.
Vinyl can "hit the bass" every bit as well as digital can. Most folks perceive bass in the 40-80 Hz region. In fact, vinyl can reproduce bass down into the 10 Hz level on a good system. The problem is most folks have only heard vinyl on a low to midfi system with limited resolution. Under those circumstances, digital is probably a better medium. And indeed digital was created really to appeal to the average consumer who's listening to their music through their iphone and via MP3 files. The newer high resolution digital formats are much much better. A great analogue system in a home environment is something that most consumers have no access to. And in a car, that can't happen anyway.

As I posted above, it's dynamic compression that ruins music the most in modern recordings. A clean well recorded performance is a thing to cherish these days due to its rarity in contemporary music.
 
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My analog system at home would’ve been considered the lower range of high end or high range of mid-fi. And has some modern enhancements including a really good DAC, nice modern tube pre-amp and a good streamer. And as said, decently high analog inputs that might be considered vintage now. And secondary systems throughout the house streaming via BlueSound units. Those are mostly mid-fi vintage receivers and speakers. Most of the systems have Dahlquist speakers, (of varying sizes of either the DQM or newer M series) except the little living room system which is just for background tunes as that is a conversation room and my wife will not allow large speakers there. ;)

And it is nice to have that home Tidal and lossless thing move into the car. Getting back to top it, I still need to rip a bunch of CDs again, and also download my regular library I listen to a lot via TIDAL.
 
Vinyl can "hit the bass" every bit as well as digital can. Most folks perceive bass in the 40-80 Hz region. In fact, vinyl can reproduce bass down into the 10 Hz level on a good system. The problem is most folks have only heard vinyl on a low to midfi system with limited resolution. Under those circumstances, digital is probably a better medium. And indeed digital was created really to appeal to the average consumer who's listening to their music through their iphone and via MP3 files. The newer high resolution digital formats are much much better. A great analogue system in a home environment is something that most consumers have no access to. And in a car, that can't happen anyway.

As I posted above, it's dynamic compression that ruins music the most in modern recordings. A clean well recorded performance is a thing to cherish these days due to its rarity in contemporary music.
Vinyl puts 20hz about 40db down from 20khz. Then it drags down the 20khz and drags up the 20hz, which is a fine workaround for old equipment but a mess for actual music playback. Dragging that weakened bass up also means dragging the noise floor up. Plus the mastering has all sorts of limits, like centering the bass below 100hz. Since bass is still directional at 100hz, that's a bad thing. Clubs in the old days used to add circuitry to extend frequency response down, down, down. 40-80hz for perceiving? I know I can't hear much above 15khz, but I can definitely hear below 40. I know this because I played with the sub, cutting off with -24db at various frequencies, and the fun kept going down to 20hz with some deep bass tracks. I'm not saying vinyl is crap. I'm just saying it's inferior. Some people do prefer how music is mastered for vinyl, and that's fine, but that's not necessarily how the music is meant to be produced by the artist.

My analog system at home would’ve been considered the lower range of high end or high range of mid-fi. And has some modern enhancements including a really good DAC, nice modern tube pre-amp and a good streamer. And as said, decently high analog inputs that might be considered vintage now. And secondary systems throughout the house streaming via BlueSound units. Those are mostly mid-fi vintage receivers and speakers. Most of the systems have Dahlquist speakers, (of varying sizes of either the DQM or newer M series) except the little living room system which is just for background tunes as that is a conversation room and my wife will not allow large speakers there. ;)

And it is nice to have that home Tidal and lossless thing move into the car. Getting back to top it, I still need to rip a bunch of CDs again, and also download my regular library I listen to a lot via TIDAL.
A lot of so-called really good DACs are actually crap, sad to say. Tubes just add distortion at the best of times, and a lot of distortion at the worst. Doesn't a good streamer include the DAC?
 
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Vinyl puts 20hz about 40db down from 20khz. Then it drags down the 20khz and drags up the 20hz, which is a fine workaround for old equipment but a mess for actual music playback. Dragging that weakened bass up also means dragging the noise floor up. Plus the mastering has all sorts of limits, like centering the bass below 100hz. Since bass is still directional at 100hz, that's a bad thing. Clubs in the old days used to add circuitry to extend frequency response down, down, down. 40-80hz for perceiving? I know I can't hear much above 15khz, but I can definitely hear below 40. I know this because I played with the sub, cutting off with -24db at various frequencies, and the fun kept going down to 20hz with some deep bass tracks. I'm not saying vinyl is crap. I'm just saying it's inferior. Some people do prefer how music is mastered for vinyl, and that's fine, but that's not necessarily how the music is meant to be produced by the artist.


A lot of so-called really good DACs are actually crap, sad to say. Tubes just add distortion at the best of times, and a lot of distortion at the worst. Doesn't a good streamer include the DAC?
My DAC is a Mytek Brooklyn DAC+. My streamer is a BlueSound Node, and I have a couple different iterations of that around the house. I think the Mytek is clearer to my ears when I hook it to the already fairly decent Nodes. The tubes are in a Schiit Freya+ pre-amp, and add a bit of warmth and fullness at low volume. At other times, I can use the pre-amp in solid state passive or active modes, but I don’t do that too much. I think it sounds nice, which is good enough for me. The pre-amp seems to be well regarded, but that doesn’t really matter to me that much. It sounds good and I enjoy it with the gear I have.
 
My DAC is a Mytek Brooklyn DAC+. My streamer is a BlueSound Node, and I have a couple different iterations of that around the house. I think the Mytek is clearer to my ears when I hook it to the already fairly decent Nodes. The tubes are in a Schiit Freya+ pre-amp, and add a bit of warmth and fullness at low volume. At other times, I can use the pre-amp in solid state passive or active modes, but I don’t do that too much. I think it sounds nice, which is good enough for me. The pre-amp seems to be well regarded, but that doesn’t really matter to me that much. It sounds good and I enjoy it with the gear I have.
Schiit's an interesting company. They listened when measurements of their gear showed minor and major issues, and then they massively upped their engineering game. I do wish they had less of a silly name, though.
 
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