FLAC is a waste of space

[RodneyYouPlonker]

Anything that is compressed at a higher level will most likely sound better.  My friend won't to listen to MP3 and he refuses as he uses high end equipment and he says that he can tell the difference.  I have listened to music on a player which is of high standard and listened to both the same track on MP3 and in FLAC and the FLAC does sound that little bit better.  Of course though listening on headphones so you can't hear any other sound then you can probably hear it or listen on a very high end audio system like something spent into the thousands.

[Athlonite]

Oh I just love how he mangles bit rate and bit depth and Hz as meaning the same damn thing news flash they don't

A 128Kbps (data rate) 16bit (16 bits per sample) 44.1KHz ( Frequency range) mp3
A 128Kbps (data Rate) 24bit (24 bits per sample) 44.1KHz (Frequency range) mp3

will sound quite different to each other played on the same hardware and at the same volume level



so saying that if you have a track that's a .wav file ie: Uncompressed digital audio and you want to make it smaller in size (less MB's)

to Archive it use
FLAC
to play on devices that don't support FLAC
then use 320Kbps MP3 and you won't notice a jot of difference

[Moe]

A 128Kbps (data rate) 16bit (16 bits per sample) 44.1KHz ( Frequency range) mp3
A 128Kbps (data Rate) 24bit (24 bits per sample) 44.1KHz (Frequency range) mp3

will sound quite different to each other played on the same hardware and at the same volume level

No, they wouldn't. If they were derived from the same source, they would sound identical.

Bit depth is where volume resolution is stored. More bits mean smaller steps and greater potential dynamic range. Consider it like two buildings of the same height next to each other. They have the same number of floors, and all the floors are at the same height for both with stairs between them. Floors represent volume levels. The 24 bit building has more steps between each floor than the 16 bit building. The 24 bit building can store the background noise of the recording a little bit deeper in the basement than the 16 bit building.

Orchestral pieces might be able to make use of the lower noise floor, but otherwise, 16 bits is plenty sufficient to capture the dynamic range of just about anything without getting lost in the noise floor.

[Headbanger]

With my mangled ears there's no sense in going above 256kbps XD

[Edsoup55]

Really if you want my opinion as I've been doing this for years now, if you think that really it's a waste of space then it probably is really.  Technically FLAC is not a product as such and it's not like playing records or compact disc.  You don't just walk into a store or order online FLAC.  If you were planning on building an expensive Hifi system so you could get the best sound you could afford the idea isn't to play FLAC on it as it's not really a proper front end format.  All these modern day high end audio formats are becoming more popular now.  You wouldn't exactly just hook your laptop up to an expensive Hifi and start playing FLAC from it.  Really the problem is the DAC (Digital to Analogue Converter) wouldn't be very good usually unless you went out of your way to purchase something that was very high standard so you could achieve a much better result than Mr. Average.

The idea behind FLAC is that if you're a pirate like all the people that are on TPB then you really should be downloading FLAC if you plan on converting to WAV (Microsoft WAVE) format and then making an image of that audio and burning to a recordable CD.  It's the best way you're going to get like an original CD experience without having to buy the thing from a shop or order online.  MP3 is more for playing on devices like MP3 players, I don't mind MP3 but if I really wanted to burn music to a recordable disc then I would most likely burn the FLAC instead of trying to burn it any other way.  I don't believe that burning MP3 is right at all, if people do that then that's their fault they don't know what they're doing.  You're better to burn the FLAC quality instead and my point is that really you are using FLAC for archiving purposes.  To convert, image, burn to disc and then delete.

You can believe me in saying I have done this hundreds of times now.  I'm a little bit picky where I tend to get my audio from these days, most likely I go straight to rutracker.org and get from there as those guys on that site seem to know what they are doing and they also tag very well too and they use EAC to rip their discs.  I tend to avoid the web rips, if an album comes out and it's new I will wait until a proper retail copy has been uploaded.  I know what.cd was a good site, I never managed to get in there but rutracker.org a lot of the rips ended up going there from what.cd.  what.cd was shut down some time ago now.  There's a lot of people in the pirate game that don't know what they're doing and if you're not careful you'll end up downloading from one.  Downloading something that has been ripped wrong is not a good idea and you're better if they have the EAC logs included in the torrent so you can open it up and view the extraction quality.  A lot of people's FLAC are probably very much a waste of space because they don't know what they're doing.

Ripping audio and uploading in FLAC, you really do need to know what it's all about, it's not really that straight forward.  I just think that you're best to use it to burn to disc and then once you're done with it just remove it.  I do have an MP3/FLAC player.  It does work well I think that if you compare whilst listening on headphones you can hear the most difference when listening to drums and cymbals and things, sounds more like authentic in FLAC.  MP3 does have that very slight wishy-washy sound to it and you notice in percussion and drum noises the most.  Vocals and Guitar, Keyboards, Bass etc.. you can't really tell much difference IMO.

A lot of rips are crap..If you like the music just buy the cd

[RobertX]

When I listen to music, rips in particular, I don't go for quality, I go for whether or not the pieces of music are good on its own.

Maybe I'm deaf, I don't know, but that's just me.

[RodneyYouPlonker]

Really if you want my opinion as I've been doing this for years now, if you think that really it's a waste of space then it probably is really.  Technically FLAC is not a product as such and it's not like playing records or compact disc.  You don't just walk into a store or order online FLAC.  If you were planning on building an expensive Hifi system so you could get the best sound you could afford the idea isn't to play FLAC on it as it's not really a proper front end format.  All these modern day high end audio formats are becoming more popular now.  You wouldn't exactly just hook your laptop up to an expensive Hifi and start playing FLAC from it.  Really the problem is the DAC (Digital to Analogue Converter) wouldn't be very good usually unless you went out of your way to purchase something that was very high standard so you could achieve a much better result than Mr. Average.

The idea behind FLAC is that if you're a pirate like all the people that are on TPB then you really should be downloading FLAC if you plan on converting to WAV (Microsoft WAVE) format and then making an image of that audio and burning to a recordable CD.  It's the best way you're going to get like an original CD experience without having to buy the thing from a shop or order online.  MP3 is more for playing on devices like MP3 players, I don't mind MP3 but if I really wanted to burn music to a recordable disc then I would most likely burn the FLAC instead of trying to burn it any other way.  I don't believe that burning MP3 is right at all, if people do that then that's their fault they don't know what they're doing.  You're better to burn the FLAC quality instead and my point is that really you are using FLAC for archiving purposes.  To convert, image, burn to disc and then delete.

You can believe me in saying I have done this hundreds of times now.  I'm a little bit picky where I tend to get my audio from these days, most likely I go straight to rutracker.org and get from there as those guys on that site seem to know what they are doing and they also tag very well too and they use EAC to rip their discs.  I tend to avoid the web rips, if an album comes out and it's new I will wait until a proper retail copy has been uploaded.  I know what.cd was a good site, I never managed to get in there but rutracker.org a lot of the rips ended up going there from what.cd.  what.cd was shut down some time ago now.  There's a lot of people in the pirate game that don't know what they're doing and if you're not careful you'll end up downloading from one.  Downloading something that has been ripped wrong is not a good idea and you're better if they have the EAC logs included in the torrent so you can open it up and view the extraction quality.  A lot of people's FLAC are probably very much a waste of space because they don't know what they're doing.

Ripping audio and uploading in FLAC, you really do need to know what it's all about, it's not really that straight forward.  I just think that you're best to use it to burn to disc and then once you're done with it just remove it.  I do have an MP3/FLAC player.  It does work well I think that if you compare whilst listening on headphones you can hear the most difference when listening to drums and cymbals and things, sounds more like authentic in FLAC.  MP3 does have that very slight wishy-washy sound to it and you notice in percussion and drum noises the most.  Vocals and Guitar, Keyboards, Bass etc.. you can't really tell much difference IMO.

A lot of rips are crap..If you like the music just buy the cd

That's what I tend to do a lot these days.  Depends on what comes out, also it can be down to money.  Sometimes you can afford something and sometimes you can't.  That's just life really it's nice to give something to the record label I like to do that.  I'm all for buying media cos it's the best way you're gonna make a digital version anyway if you do a rip yourself.  You don't have to share it you can copy it and just keep it on a USB stick.

[Q91]

I might not care much if it's flac or highest version possible of mp3 or aac, but flac is good for making backups, and in data-form, you can store more tracks per CD that way, instead of being limited to 74/80 minutes