128 kbps Vs 320 kbps

"Do you hear the difference?"
Yes, I hear the difference :)

Actually here we can't hear the difference, but I recommend electronic music, with especially high range hihats. They're awful @128kbps

Actually, I do feel a difference, especially in electronic/classical music. Most of my music is 256-320kbps, just in case :-)

But FLAC is pointless.

Most of my stuff is in 160kbps, and it's not as crappy as you may think of 128kbps.

Smorfty said:
It's not some snob thing that we feel unclean with lossy encoding or whatever.
.

A lot of the time, it really is. Every time I've run into somebody who listens to flacs, they are pretty clear that they are disgusted with me for being content with my 256 kbps from iTunes. Smorfy, I don't accuse you of this, based on the quote I already know you don't act that way, and I'm completely sure that a lot of people don't. Point is, I'm not the only one who has had these experiences or else this group and many other results on Google wouldn't exist.

That said, I passed the test too, there is a definite difference. I respect the attention audiophiles pay to the details of mp3 vs. flac. I think though, that those who have such a hostile attitude about mp3 listeners, should move on.

Now, discussing the test itself, I'd like to see a test for 128 vs. 256 vs. 320 vs. flac as well, just to test it myself.

When I had $25 Sony headphones, the difference between FLAC and mp3 was noticeable enough to start to download albums in FLAC when possible...but when I got $80 Audio Technicas, the difference is huge. I still think VBR or 320 kbps fine, but lossless provides a better music-listening experience.

For everyone who wants to try a FLAC test there are a couple of options:

1) Foobar + ABX test - basically a double blind test, you get one FLAC file from your library, make a 320 (with LAME) and then you get to hear both files without any indication which is which, it's up to you to decide which is which.

2) This link contains a test between 320 MP3 and WAV (which for all intents and purposes is the same output as a FLAC file).

Just to echo most everyone here, I can easily tell the difference between 128 and 320. The difference between 256 and 320 is harder to hear I think, and only in very exceptional circumstances can I hear the difference between FLAC and 320.

Do I use FLAC? Yes, because contrary to what the anti-FLAC brigade believe, there are more advantages to FLAC than just it's quality...

After stumbling onto this site, and seeing what ignorant people had to say about sound and its quality (Or lack thereof), I decided to sign up and post something for the first time. If you dont have: a good converter program which can make a FLAC compression 8 file, decent mid-high end speakers (Car,home, or computer), quality speaker cable, the proper amplifier, an ear for clean and crisp music ( Imaging, flatness, sharpness, proper EQ's), then you shouldnt post what you don't know or understand. I can hear the difference on 8 and 15 yr old speakers with 18 gauge. It's not wishful thinking or a placebo. The tighter the sound wave the better the quality. For those who dont like that 1 song takes 25MB, suck it up, that's why they sell big hard drives. If im going to go deaf, I would rather it be by quality. I also noticed I can turn the volume louder than before without distorting. To end my rant, I have no problem with mp3, I was just turned on to FLAC.

I have the Audio technicas ATH M50 and don't notice that big of a difference between flac and MP3 CBR 320

Hi guys,
I've just completed my degree in sound with 5 years experience on top of that, for anyone who even cares.

There is 1 scientific paper, written in 2006, which describes a double-blind listening test that included a sample size of 554 audiophiles, studio engineers or serious students of the art of varying ages, genders, experience in the music industry etc... A variety of genres of music were tried including choral, orchestral, jazz, pop and rock. I can find no other published scientific documents that run similar tests.

The main part of the testing was to confirm whether a parallel file through a CD recorder could be identified under a high resolution version of the same file. Basically, the results show that 49.82% of people guessed correctly. No one got 100%.
1 person got 80%, which is still less than the required 95% for certainty.
There would be a 50% chance of
Prior to the test, each test subject had an informal high end hearing exam for the purposes of correlation identification later on.
NO CORRELATIONS WERE FOUND in any of the ways the data was manipulated.

This is published on the AES website and the link is here for those of you who subscribe: http://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20120502/14195.pdf
The title is: Audibility of a CD-Standard A/D/A Loop Inserted
into High-Resolution Audio Playback
By: E Brad Meyer and David R Moran.

Sorry if this is a stupid question/statement, but how does one go about ripping a cd in a high resolution lossless format? CD standard is is 16bit, 44.1kHz...

Lossy files cannot be turned to lossless files (although when attempted the file size does indeed increase) due to the data reduction aspect of a lossy codec which involves removing aspects of a signal that are considered inaudible (as the human hearing range is 20Hz - 20kHz) or less important in terms of human perception. We don't really need to create music for bats or dogs. Lossless algorithms are still considered compression as they do reduce the file size to an extent, however all the data

I have found that the difference between a high res lossless file and a low res lossy file CAN be perceived, it's the medium res lossy files and the lossless file that, from my research confirmed by the above mentioned paper, cannot. Its all very well saying you can definitely hear the difference blah blah blah but what can you hear the difference between?

In terms of playback devices, you need a good sound card and some top of the range REFERENCE headphones. OR an acoustically treated space dead environment in which there are no reflections, a good sound card and some studio REFERENCE monitors. I say "reference" in capitals because this is more important than anything else. Most speakers will not have a good enough frequency range to let you know what you are really listening to, and, unless you buy reference monitors, each brand of speaker will have its own "colouring" on different frequencies, desired to improve your listening experience. A lot of people say that you will be fine on your own system regardless of how much it cost as long as you know it well, but this simply isn't the case if you own something that physically doesn't have the frequency range.

For anyone looking for a recommendation, I own a pair of Yamaha HS80m's (mid price range studio reference monitors) which have excellent reviews.

Furthermore, I have found (through browsing listening test information) that people on the whole prefer the sound of a lossy file over a lossless one due to conditioning pretty much from birth. All we have ever heard is lossy compression, and it adds something to the music which we have grown to like. I know that will upset some people as they believe that their innate response to music should shine through or whatever, but it's true.

FLAC listeners in general are not snobs. But it may be considered stupid to waste so much storage space on FLAC files when the difference between that and high resolution lossy audio cannot be perceived (again, as shown by the AES paper). Then again, Moore's law states that the number of transistors (and therefore storage capacity) that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years, so go ahead and fill up your hard-drives!