On Mon, 2005-09-19 at 19:26 -0700, Dave D wrote: > Before I knew anything about FLAC, I ripped my CDs to MP3 (VBR, 160kbps > min). Since then, I've read on and on how much FLAC is used here and in > other forums. So I thought I would give it an audition before spending > all that time to re-rip everything.
Good idea. > What a letdown. I went back and forth, back and forth, over a bunch of > songs (mainly the beginning of the songs to make it easier to compare > side by side), and could not hear any differences! Well, it depends on a lot of things. Including the quality of the rest of your system. > -- What kinds of music will benefit most from FLAC vs. VBR MP3? Was > this album a poor choice? I'm not familiar with that particular album, but lots of rock was recorded with very low fidelity equipment -- early Beatles and Stones stuff only had to sound good on car AM radios. The classic guitar amps, AC30s, Marshals, etc. were huge distortion machines and had very low frequency bandwidth. This is nothing in the high frequencies or very low frequencies in electric rock guitars. I use acoustic or acoustic and vocal music for testing. A jazz trio, or a jazz vocalist, classical chamber music, natural bluegrass, etc. The key thing is that you have to like the music, and it has to have quality itself. > -- What frequencies benefit the most (low/mid/high)? midrange is there all the action is. There is nothing down low. High frequencies are critical for reverb and spacious realism. > -- Honest now: if I played the two side by side, how hard would it be > for you to pick the FLAC version consistently? This gets into the serious theological issues of blind testing. The reality is that blind testing of good audio systems is very hard. If you can't tell, then there is no difference. But if you can't tell and it is easy, maybe you want to do it so you don't have to rerip all your files later. It is trivial to generate MP3 or OggVorbis from the FLAC files, it is impossible to go the other way. And some day, you might get a better system and will be able to tell. -- Pat http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimserver/slimsoftware.html _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
