FLAC is the literally the dumbest thing ever

try this one: http://www.kikeg.arrakis.es/winabx/

I found a different Mac ABX comparison program (MacABX, found here: http://www.cs.brown.edu/~tl/software.shtml) and used it to test. The test was done on the track "Some Other Time" from The Alan Parsons Project's album from 1976 entitled,"I Robot".

One file is lossless and the other is a 128kbps MP3 encoded with the LAME UI client Max, which is the most audiophile-accepted MP3 encoding solution on the Mac and is updated very regularly. LAME options were set to highest quality and constant bitrate (NOT VBR) of 128kbs.

The testing was done through a pair of Sennheiser HD280 Pro's, which are extremely accurate, sharp, and unbiased. They're actually one of the three top headphone choices among professional audio monitors.

This single screenshot sums up my findings. One the file to the left IS indeed lossless, but I was required to change its extension to .mp3 in order for it to be accepted in the "Choose File" dialog.


Out of 72 tests between the two, I only got it wrong twice. Seems that there indeed is a great deal of difference... In fact, it was incredibly easy because the MP3 had a distinctive distortion in the beginning that the lossless file completely lacked.

Again, at a bitrate of 128kbps, it won't be free of all audible distortions, certain sounds are more likely to trigger a distortion, but the overall sound of the track itself wasn't "muddy" or anything, right?

Could you upload a 10 second sample of the lossless file and the encoded file so I can take a look? I am quite interested 5o see if I can pass.

Even when ignoring the distortion, details and such felt a bit "rounded" or "sanded off" (as opposed to sharp) or just "off" somehow. The 128kbps "sound" is something that's distinctive and difficult to describe, but easily recognizable.

Also, how does one cut a section out of a FLAC file? It's not something that I've ever needed to do before.

You can just open it with Audacity and save it as a .wav (file shouldn't be big enough to warrant reencoding)

@kisukesword: you mentioned that it was hard to differentiate 320k and Lossless, right? My earlier post comes into play because with even 320k music files, they significantly take up less space than FLAC files, which is main argument why I don't listen to Lossless because of the massive space consumption. For only that barely discernable difference between 320k and Lossless, it isn't worth that extra 10-50 extra MBs per song.

You're pretty silly, the less compressed (lossless) will always sound better.

You of course have to take into account numerous factors before you can really compare one to the other, but it should be pretty obvious to anyone who doesn't suffer from some form of brain damage to immediately realize that something that has a compression ratio of 50%+ of the original PCM waveform would have a higher quality of sound.

You also have to take into account encoding/decoding...I'm pretty much done here, you're just really annoying, I mean if you made sense at all rather than spouting nonsense and demand we take a test that anyone who has any experience encoding/decoding will instantly know will return farce results, maybe I'd listen more.

Humans don't hear detail in sound as much as we do in say, images. Digital image or video encoders often employ chroma subsampling in order to save space, essentially removing detail in the color of the image while retaining value information. Our eyes don't notice the difference because we don't see the same detail in color as much as we do in value. Can't this same way of thinking be applied to sound, a medium in which we have less perception in than sight?

That and its also hard to find a ipod that can play some FLAC files :( Might as well stick around with good old .mp3 for now.

My 2 gig old model Sansa e200 can play FLACs if you put Rockbox on it. But 2 gigs of FLACs are like maybe 50-80 songs depending on length and I'd rather have 400 songs on it instead. It does have a micro SD slot but I'd rather not buy a card and end up losing it like I know I probably will.

If your player supports it I definitely recommend using it: http://www.rockbox.org/

My 16GB iPhone 3GS can't play FLACs natively, but it CAN play Apple Lossless, which is nearly identical (even the same file size), so I just convert my FLACs.

This thread demonstrates very efficiently what's so terrible about 4chan even only existing: People can't even troll properly any more these days. They think they're being witty, yet they end up being as lame and boring trolls as the OP.

Nonetheless I will dispense knowledge:

1. FLAC makes sense as a format because it's lossless compression, meaning that you have a compressed (conserving storage space), yet clean source from which to transcode into different, other formats. How this makes FLAC the dumbest thing ever (you acknowledged this purpose yourself in your OP) can only be explained through terrible trolling.

2. FLAC makes sense as a format because people with an absolute sense of hearing can easily distinguish between FLAC and 320kbps mp3 and often experience the mp3 format's inherent optimization ("sparkle") as highly unsettling.

3. Finding portable mp3 players that play back FLAC takes about five seconds worth of googling. Mine can!

STOP MISUSING THE TERM IRONY. I feel like I want to punch a small child in the face every time I see it happen; I'M NOT EVEN A VIOLENT MAN!

So I hear h264 is the dumbest thing ever because xvid...

10/10.

I can totally tell the difference between 320kbps vs FLAC, I just can't prove I can.

Audio: MPEG Audio 44100Hz stereo 320Kbps [Audio]

Audio: FLAC 44100Hz stereo 1411Kbps [Output]

D:

FlAC is alright, I personally can't tell the difference between a FLAC version of a song and a mp3 version of a song. I would use FLAC to be safe, but my 40 GB laptop does not allow something like that to be done D:

So you think any removal of audio data, no matter how small, can still be heard?

I'm not sure what you mean by "h264 is stupid because of xvid." Both are distributed in lossy formats, the difference being that AVC is much more advanced in that it can compress much better quality video with a smaller bitrate, similar to Vorbis or AAC is to MP3.

Try using VLC for iPhone. That plays FLACs really well.