FLAC is better?

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bencorn

Limp Gawd
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Not a troll post despite the title. I have a pair of polk LSi9's running biamped off a pioneer elite receiver. The sound is coming from my HTPC via optical cable. And after hearing people rave on how FLAC is "night and day" better than 128kbps mp3, I decided I better try it out. So I figured I'd try Evanescence and Dave Matthews because I thought it would be easy to pick out improvements because of their vocal and musical styles. Aside from an increase in volume from the mp3 to the flac, I didn't hear any other difference. I didn't feel like I was gaining anything with a file that was 6 times larger.

Why am I not getting this huge difference people are talking about? Is it my computer settings, not enough power for my speakers, bad source material, or do I just have broken ears and can't hear the differences? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
 
Volumes should be identical so there's something else going on. Did you convert the FLAC to MP3 to test it? Tried an ABX test?
 
bencorn said:
do I just have broken ears and can't hear the differences?
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sounds about right. Alot of people believe they hear better audio with higher end setups but its mostly a placebo effect
 
Try some jazz or classical music. For clear differences in quality, I'd suggest listening to some keith jarrett studio recorded solo music.

@86 5.0L - absolute rubbish. It's true that most music simply doesn't benefit from flac because the higher frequency ranges where flac maintains information, only comes into play in certain styles or genres. Listening to a classical solo for example, flac wins hands down in the performance nuances you can hear, particular on keyboard or string instruments.
 
86 5.0L said:
sounds about right. Alot of people believe they hear better audio with higher end setups but its mostly a placebo effect
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It's not about believing. Its about doing an ABX and knowing you can hear the difference.

128k MP3 vs FLAC is a huge difference and I can easily score 100% on an ABX. Once you go past 256k for MP3 or so it gets harder to score well but its still possible to tell on some recordings reliably.
 
im not saying FLAC isn't better then 128kbps mp3s. Im saying a lot of peoples hearing isn't as good to perfectly hear the differences
 
Snowknight26 said:
Volumes should be identical so there's something else going on. Did you convert the FLAC to MP3 to test it? Tried an ABX test?
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Yea I took the flac, converted a copy to 128kbps, and then AB'd (not ABX yet) the two on my surround sound using XBMC (same volume no difference I could notice) and VLC (flac was 10db louder, but still no sound difference). Possibly a setting issue? Or is it just that newer source material has piss poor production quality? I'm also not ruling out that I screwed up my ears when I was younger with high wattage car audio systems played at blaring levels, and now I just can't hear the subtleties of the improved source quality.
 
Very strange that the FLAC would be louder. What did you use to do the conversion, and can you post a screenshot of the settings?

I'm thinking a ReplayGain issue here.
 
Using MediaMonkey to convert it.

Settings:
Compatible: CBR 128 kbps - Average Quality Preset

That's all it tells me in settings.
 
I had a similar problem and found that Windows 7 sound settings were all screwed up, assuming small speaker size, etc. Take a look in Control Panel/Sounds. Also you may just have a crappy DAC or other weak link in the chain. The source material may not be the weak link with your set-up, especially if the set-up is designed primarily for movies and 7.1 and you are using it for stereo hi-fi.
 
bencorn said:
Using MediaMonkey to convert it.

Settings:
Compatible: CBR 128 kbps - Average Quality Preset

That's all it tells me in settings.
Click to expand...
I might suggest that MM is automatically adding ReplayGain data (or MP3Gain) and your player is configured to use the RG data, yielding a major output level difference. Other than that, I can't imagine what could be going on.
 
phide said:
I might suggest that MM is automatically adding ReplayGain data (or MP3Gain) and your player is configured to use the RG data, yielding a major output level difference. Other than that, I can't imagine what could be going on.
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Any other recommendations to try? Another software with different settings or something? I have no problem ripping to FLAC if it makes a difference, but from what I've heard so far there is no audible difference to warrant 4-6 times the file size. I feel like I have good equipment that should be letting me hear it though.
 
idk man, ~300MB for an album in flac is definitely quaint compared to the size of a single movie.

at the very least, it wouldn't hurt to use a better lossy codec, like aac-lc or vorbis.
 
Well, it's like some people with DVD and Blu-ray. In that case, if someone honestly can't see the difference on their TV, then they shouldn't worry too much about it.

If you can't tell the difference, just play whatever sounds good to you. Trying to get the best quality can drive you nuts sometimes, once you start getting hyper-critical about it and notice every little artifact and glitch. Then you have to learn to tune out the imperfections to get back to enjoying it.

Personally, 128Kbps is the bottom of the barrel for me. It's barely tolerable in a lo-fi, analog car radio kind of way. I can hear the difference between it and a higher bitrate. I'm not a flac purist though and my sound system isn't great, so I can live with higher bitrates from 192-320. The suggestion to try AAC is a good idea too.

If you really want to train your ears to hear the imperfections in mp3, try encoding at lower and lower bitrates until it sounds bad to you. Then you can really get a sense of the lower sound quality, so you'll know what to listen for. When you crank the bitrate back up, you should be able to detect similar, but less noticeable effects.

If you still can't hear anything wrong after that, don't worry about it. It's probably a mistake to try to hard. Just use the bitrate that sounds good to you and ignore the experts telling you otherwise.
 
berzerker said:
Personally, 128Kbps is the bottom of the barrel for me. It's barely tolerable in a lo-fi, analog car radio kind of way. I can hear the difference between it and a higher bitrate. I'm not a flac purist though and my sound system isn't great, so I can live with higher bitrates from 192-320. The suggestion to try AAC is a good idea too.
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Same here. And I totally agree that people should stop hunting an elusive perfect and start dealing with how they enjoy instead.

A tip on what to listen for when comparing, could be to get some good classical or jazz recordings going first off. Why? Because what I find to be one of the most noticable differencies between mp3 and FLAC, is the character and spatiality conveyed. On my ears mp3 seem to cram everything into a tight and loud (and often hissing) wall, leaving out the space around the instruments, which might sound like leaving out a lot of "nothing", but in my perspective, it is depriving the expression from fully existing as intended. It sort of decapitates the music for me, not allowing sounds (voices, instruments etc.) to breath. Of course this requires good recordings, that have this in mind, and unfortunately the trend is "loudness wars", meaning a lot of modern albums are made to sound great on substandard equipment (computer speakers, bad headphones, bad car-fi etc.). Then there is distortion across the board, and to me unbearable trebles, hissing, hot, sibilant punishment to my ears, which is very evident on a high end headphone setup.

Anyway, if 320kbps leaves you with nothing to desire, stick with it and save yourself a ship load of space :D
 
86 5.0L said:
sounds about right. Alot of people believe they hear better audio with higher end setups but its mostly a placebo effect
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True that bud, I definitely agree. I don't use amps or anything. All good sounds here for me with my supposed "junk" headphones :)
 
If you can, try older CDs I'm sure that those two you chose are probably a couple of years old but they both were probably made well into the "Loudness Wars" that has gone on since the late 80s. Typically I can hear the differences in pop music made pre 1998. After that it gets harder and harder unless I go in and modify the gain to limit clipping.
 
I've never looked at the large file-size in FLAC to be a problem any time recently.

A 1TB drive is $50 and on 1TB you can store ~40,000 songs. Even if you wanted a backup, that would cost only $100 to store your ~40,000 FLAC files twice. $100 doesn't seem like much to me to store more music than you are ever going to listen to.
 
ScratchDrive said:
True that bud, I definitely agree. I don't use amps or anything. All good sounds here for me with my supposed "junk" headphones :)
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There is placebo (like $500 per feet cables) and then there is good hearing combined with decent hi fi parts. A lot of "performance" price equipment ($300-$1000 IMHO) will propel most peoples auditory pleasure upward. But its easy to adapt to substandard audio, especially if this is what we gave been conditioned to, and never had the chance to listen to say a pair of good headphones. Some people enjoy a crappy TV, or even a slow computer, as long as we enjoy it right :D

PS: I really think you do use amps, or at least I hope so lol ;)

SirMaster said:
I've never looked at the large file-size in FLAC to be a problem any time recently.

A 1TB drive is $50 and on 1TB you can store ~40,000 songs. Even if you wanted a backup, that would cost only $100 to store your ~40,000 FLAC files twice. $100 doesn't seem like much to me to store more music than you are ever going to listen to.
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Me neither, but maybe it would be a concern for others. Anyway the real figures are not even close to 40.000 files for a one terabyte drive (932.000MB / 35MB = 26629 songs), still a lot of songs, but no need to almost double the amount :)
 
nakedhand said:
Me neither, but maybe it would be a concern for others. Anyway the real figures are not even close to 40.000 files for a one terabyte drive (932.000MB / 35MB = 26629 songs), still a lot of songs, but no need to almost double the amount :)
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Hmm, I was just going off real-world usage. I have 4028 44.1kHz 16-bit FLAC files in my music collection right now and it's 102.28GB. I also have music from every era and several genres so I would say it's a pretty good sample.
 
Your listening experience is going to be based off of several interrelated factors. The quality of the recording, the quality of the audio equipment, and the quality of your hearing. I personally can't tell the difference on most music at 128kb mp3 or FLAC. If you can't tell the difference then keep your files in whatever format is most convenient for you.

There are other advantages to FLAC besides just the listening factor however. FLAC gives you an archival copy of the music that allows you to re-produce an exact copy of the original. This may or may not be of any value to you, but I like to rip FLAC copies of my CDs so that if anything happened to the original I could create a copy.
 
phide said:
I might suggest that MM is automatically adding ReplayGain data (or MP3Gain) and your player is configured to use the RG data, yielding a major output level difference. Other than that, I can't imagine what could be going on.
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Found out that Media Player Classic must have been adding replay gain as you said. Tried it in VLC which had replay gain off and the volumes were exactly the same. Tried comparing some more music and still can't really hear the difference. Maybe my equipment just isn't very revealing. Although I want to build a set of Dynamic 4t towers in a year or so and I've been told they are very detailed and revealing so maybe then I'll be able to hear the difference. So I'll probably start ripping my collection into flac as a "just in case" kind of backup and to future proof my equipment upgrades. It'll also give me an excuse to clean out the crap music from my collection that I won't listen to again.

Thanks for all the comments and help guys.
 
SirMaster said:
Hmm, I was just going off real-world usage. I have 4028 44.1kHz 16-bit FLAC files in my music collection right now and it's 102.28GB. I also have music from every era and several genres so I would say it's a pretty good sample.
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Indeed, it does depend on what they were ripped from and quality. Heck i have quite a few 26/96 Vinyl rips e.g. Dark Side of the Moon that's 852Mb in size, for just one album.
Hard drive space is dirt cheap these days, so in my mind the whole size aspect of it is worth worrying about :)
 
bencorn said:
Not a troll post despite the title. I have a pair of polk LSi9's running biamped off a pioneer elite receiver. The sound is coming from my HTPC via optical cable. And after hearing people rave on how FLAC is "night and day" better than 128kbps mp3, I decided I better try it out. So I figured I'd try Evanescence and Dave Matthews because I thought it would be easy to pick out improvements because of their vocal and musical styles. Aside from an increase in volume from the mp3 to the flac, I didn't hear any other difference. I didn't feel like I was gaining anything with a file that was 6 times larger.

Why am I not getting this huge difference people are talking about? Is it my computer settings, not enough power for my speakers, bad source material, or do I just have broken ears and can't hear the differences? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
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One thing that is important to consider is not everyone's hearing is the same. A long time ago, when the only way I knew how to copy my CDs to my computer was through Windows Media Player, I thought the resulting audio files sounded great. Until I started using FLAC. It really was a night and day difference for me, however my girlfriend (and a few other friends of mine) seriously cannot tell a difference.

At high volumes I think the differences in quality are more pronounced. I can hear more details in the sounds themselves, not necessarily different details. Sometimes more details, although an EQ setting can easily hurt a file's detail level as well, as heavy bass will cut out high tone details (in my experience), etc.

Just thought I'd chime in! I would personally never go back from FLAC, I only hate how huge the files are, lol. At least storage is only getting cheaper.
 
I'd suggest hooking up a regular cd player to your receiver and seeing if you can hear a difference between the cd and the 128kbps mp3 on your PC. If you can, then obviously there is some setting somewhere on your pc that is screwing it up.

If you can't hear a difference then your ears are probably screwed up. In which case save yourself the space and effort of ripping to FLAC.
 
I dont know about all of this non-sense about FLAC file size. I have over 5k worth of FLAC files on my 1TB HDD and I have more than 50% space left.
 
Nice set up...

I used to have those speakers, and let me tell you, they're awesome!!!

First of all, sound card...what kind are you using? This is important for a setup like yours.

Second. There's a huge difference between FLAC and 128kbps audio. If I play back to back files between 128 and 320 mp3 on my iPod I can hear a huge difference, and that's on an iPod!!! The sound at 128 is thin and tinny, it's missing "life".

Now if you were to ask me if there's a huge difference between 320 and FLAC, I'd say no. Is there a difference, yes, but is it worth it, NO. Not on my system and with my ears.

If you can't hear the difference between FLAC and 128, there's something wrong with your setup. It's not subtle at all.
 
I have a really cheap pci-e soundcard. I didn't think it mattered when running optical because the card wasn't doing any processing of it's own, just passing the signal along to the receiver.
 
I've been told that the reason is because I'm not giving the speakers enough power, because LSi's love a lot of power. I don't really know. I was thinking about getting an amp to try to open the speakers up a bit more, but I'm also thinking about just ditching the LSi's and getting something different. They were a huge step up from what I used to have but there just seems like there is something missing.
 
VolvoR said:
Second. There's a huge difference between FLAC and 128kbps audio. If I play back to back files between 128 and 320 mp3 on my iPod I can hear a huge difference, and that's on an iPod!!! The sound at 128 is thin and tinny, it's missing "life".
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That is the difference isn't it. The more compressed the sound gets... You can hear all the instruments, they're all there but somehow the music is listless and uninspired.

The higher the quality, the more "intense" the music sounds.
 
Ryokurin said:
If you can, try older CDs I'm sure that those two you chose are probably a couple of years old but they both were probably made well into the "Loudness Wars" that has gone on since the late 80s. Typically I can hear the differences in pop music made pre 1998. After that it gets harder and harder unless I go in and modify the gain to limit clipping.
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Older, but not too old. It took them a few years to figure out CD mastering.
 
ThumperSD said:
I dont know about all of this non-sense about FLAC file size. I have over 5k worth of FLAC files on my 1TB HDD and I have more than 50% space left.
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Much larger than MP3 files, but definitely reasonable size. My 1TB is pretty much full of FLAC though.
 
DO NOT SELL YOUR LSi's!!!
I used to have B&W 805's, and the LSi's are just as good (maybe better!!).

Yes, they like power, but I used to run mine off a $1000 Onkyo receiver, so you shouldn't have any problem. If they don't sound right, there's another issue.

Have you checked phase?
Try listening to a CD and then the same track on MP3, is there a difference? When listening to the CD, make sure it's hooked up with optical, just like the HTPC is. Play the same song and just switch back and forth.

How far apart are the speakers in relation to you? If the speakers are 12' apart, you should be sitting 12' back. The equilateral triangle is important. As your speakers are front ported, you don't really have to worry about how close to the back wall they are, but they should be at least a foot away to help reduce standing waves.

Are you running a sub? I was. And let me tell you, that helped. A LOT!! (Velodyne Micro Vee). It really helped fill in the bottom end that small speakers can't do well.
 
I agree that the LSi's are really good but like I said it feels like something just isn't quite right. Why did you get rid of your LSi's and what did you go to?

I ran autocalibration if that's what you mean by phase checking.

Due to the way the room is laid out, the speakers are closer together than they should be, so I'm sitting a little bit further back than the triangle. Although I changed the toe-in angles to try to reduce that. I'll try a CD in the Xbox360 today and see if that shows a difference. I don't have a standalone bluray, dvd, or cd player so the xbox is my only way of testing.

No sub currently, and I won't be getting one for a while because of my apartment, but I will get one as soon as I move.
 
Is your Elite receiver one equipped with ICE modules? If not, you're probably under-powering those speakers as they dip to 2.5ohms.

As for comparing the CD in a CDP to your PC, then you would also be comparing the different DAC between the two units, bad comparison.

Are you using ASIO drivers?

How is your room, is there a lot of echo? How are the speakers set up? Do you have a large TV/Monitor and equipment directly between them?
 
I dunno, it was a difference for me. I've just got a simple uDAC2-->ATH-M50s setup.

Just to note.... I never know how much better my ATH-M50 were, until I used them for several months and tried on a Creative Fatality mk2 or whatever it's called. And previously, I used the bundled headphones from my iPod 4th Gen...
 
Theres the recording itself (amount of detail lost in compression may or may not be a lot), there the Codecs and decoding hardware (to convert to analog) and then theres the reproduction of sound, speakers headphones etc. And maybe an amplifier as well. Then there is also the listeners ears.

If anyone one of these has a weak point, then you may not get the full benefit of FLAC.

If your not clipping the music signal in the audiable spectrum then the compression does not matter, if your codec etc is not processing the FLAC correctly then you jsut lost your benefit. High end speakers should be able to better reproduce sound, but they may not excel is reproducing whatever was lost during compression. Then your ears might not be able to pickup the majority of material being clipped by all of the previous.

Most music I prefer 190 or above. If it's particularly details 320 and above. If it's my favorite Band I'll go FLAC, but one disadvantage (other than space) is that most devices still do not support FLAC. So you have to make an MP3 copy anyways...It's easy to say a 1TB hard drive is cheap but I don't have 1TB available on my phone or car or laptop etc.
 
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