The snobby .mp3 haters club!

[OOZMAN]

Goddamn it it's hard to listen to this crap, even at 'high quality' 320kbps.

Rant if you agree!

/rant

[H82LUZ73]

my beef with mp3 (ITUNES) is when you buy an album of them one song is loud and then one is hey wtf why cant i hear it.Mp3 needs a stream standard.

[pantherx12]

Mp3 is fine for an awful lot of people due to how it's designed. (basically doesn't record the tones you normally wouldn't hear after all due to cancellation or simply because they are higher/lower than typical human hearing allows)

if 320kbs bothers you it just means you have more sensitive hearing than the majority of people.

( by the way, I get my music in flac because I'm one of those folk with better hearing than usual XD)

[entropy13]

I don't bother with FLAC because I don't bother getting better speakers.

[OOZMAN]

Originally Posted by pantherx12

Mp3 is fine for an awful lot of people due to how it's designed. (basically doesn't record the tones you normally wouldn't hear after all due to cancellation or simply because they are higher/lower than typical human hearing allows)

if 320kbs bothers you it just means you have more sensitive hearing than the majority of people.

( by the way, I get my music in flac because I'm one of those folk with better hearing than usual XD)

Yeah, I think so. I had to take a hearing test for my job and the nurse was 'amazed' with my hearing abilities, and I always seem to hear my girlfriend's phone when she doesn't even when it's sitting next to her in her bag (when we're driving) for example.

You can be #2! Welcome.

[tigger]

My mp3 player (cowon d2) plays FLAC but the files are too big, so I stick to 320 mp3.

[pantherx12]

Originally Posted by OOZMAN

Yeah, I think so. I had to take a hearing test for my job and the nurse was 'amazed' with my hearing abilities, and I always seem to hear my girlfriend's phone when she doesn't even when it's sitting next to her in her bag (when we're driving) for example.

You can be #2! Welcome.

Well I didn't think my post would get me in, but okay Cheers.


My main problem with over sensitive hearing is if an analogue clock ( even a wrist watch) is in the same room as me (well, a normal sized room) I can't help but hear it , it's enough to keep me awake

Also makes sleeping by tvs/speakers etc in stand by mode difficult because of the electrical hum they still produce.

[DrunkenMafia]

I like good sounding music but unfortunately for me I have moderate industrial deafness and can not hear high tones at all. A telephone, bell or anything high pitched just gets swallowed up before it reaches the actual important bits of my ears.

So MP3 for me is fine. I can though tell the difference between 320 and say 180 kbps. A mate of mine bought one of those dre beatbox Ipod docks the other day and mp3 on that thing is simply amazing. Maybe I should get him to try flac on it.

[OOZMAN]

Originally Posted by tigger

My mp3 player (cowon d2) plays FLAC but the files are too big, so I stick to 320 mp3.

I would've loved a Cowon, but they're only like 160GB or something, so I had to go with this lump of stinking horse manure for flacs:

http://www.archos.com/products/ta/ar...try=au&lang=en

Seriously, don't get this thing, battery barely lasts a work day (8 hours) when playing music, and it'll barely last a whole movie. And it's processor is ridiculously slow, menu navigation is as painful as non anaesthetic eye surgery.

[tigger]

The D2 only has 4gb built in but will take a 32gb sd card, its a very very wonderful sounding player, i just cannot get rid of it, i will keep it till it works no more. The battery on the D2 lasts 52hrs on music, it does play video and has a built in DAB tuner but meh to them, though the dab does sound good when it can get a good enough signal.

[pantherx12]

I'm hoping now mp3nation are doing quite well for themselves they do an S:flo 3

Last one was an attempt at a audiophile on a strict budget type PMP (I.E better than the generall crap but not as good as proper audiophile stuff)

Had separate sound processors for left and right channels, had line out and headphone out jacks ( each with their own dedicated amp).

Only problem was back then they didn't have enough pennies for anything crazy custom, so the software was crap and it was only Wolfson audio chips. Had to rely on swapping out microsd cards as well.
Hoping they do something a bit more beefed up this time, and with Android they could build something pretty decent software wise.

[OOZMAN]

Originally Posted by tigger

The D2 only has 4gb built in but will take a 32gb sd card, its a very very wonderful sounding player, i just cannot get rid of it, i will keep it till it works no more. The battery on the D2 lasts 52hrs on music, it does play video and has a built in DAB tuner but meh to them, though the dab does sound good when it can get a good enough signal.

Yeah I was looking at a 160GB one. 52 hours is ridiculous man... kudos to ya!

[(FIH) The Don]

get flac if you dont like mp3, like panther i only get my shit in flac if its possible

[FordGT90Concept]

I want to see a move to 24-bit or more, 96+ kHz, 2+ channel music as an industry standard. I don't care what file format it is delievered in so long as it is as lossless and unrestricted as CD audio (Red Book).

Unless there is a major move towards industry support, I'm afraid FLAC isn't the answer.

[cdawall]

I have used FLAC when I could and most of the major stuff on my HTPC is in FLAC however most downloads are in MP3 and normally not at 320Kbps. I can hear the difference, but have a major lack of wanting to buy CD's so normally I end up playing with EQ's until I can get something that sounds good enough.

[qubit]

Yup, I 'hate' all lossy compression! I just store all my CD rips as gigantic WAVs, don't even bother with FLAC or similar - we have the HDD capacity for this now.

I have to confess though, that I find it hard to hear the difference between 320K/b MP3 and uncompressed CD audio though, but then my ears are hardly perfect. In an A/B test once, I could tell a very slight loss of clarity and punch on the MP3, but I wouldn't know it otherwise.

[wiak]

i have mostly flacs out of my cds, and i use spotify for the rest, it uses vorbis at 160kbps or 320kbps (premium high quality )

[repman244]

Originally Posted by qubit

I just store all my CD rips as gigantic WAVs, don't even bother with FLAC or similar - we have the HDD capacity for this now.

You do realize that both are exactly the same? FLAC is lossless while it's half the size of WAV.

Count me in, I only use mp3 for my portable stuff because of the lack of space, everything else is FLAC or 24/96 vinyl rip.

[btarunr]

All you MP3/AAC-listening corporate pawns have no dibs on my Ogg-Vorbis collection.

[Mussels]

i use MP3 because of portability, but i find the main offender for bad quality is people ripping in 128Kb, then burning to CD, then re-ripping to 320 later... or just outright upconverting them

[tigger]

I just found a FLAC album to try on my Cowon, it does sound awesome, but 300MB+ omfg. Incidently it does play OGG too, it plays everything muhwahahahaha

[qubit]

Originally Posted by repman244

You do realize that both are exactly the same? FLAC is lossless while it's half the size of WAV.

Count me in, I only use mp3 for my portable stuff because of the lack of space, everything else is FLAC or 24/96 vinyl rip.

Yes, of course in terms of sound quality. However, one always has the hassle/potential hassle of finding a FLAC plugin to make use of them, but I'm far too lazy for that and WAVs are universally compatible.

So you see, I'm such a purist snob, that I won't even compress them losslessly!

[OOZMAN]

Originally Posted by FordGT90Concept

I want to see a move to 24-bit or more, 96+ kHz, 2+ channel music as an industry standard. I don't care what file format it is delievered in so long as it is as lossless and unrestricted as CD audio (Red Book).

Unless there is a major move towards industry support, I'm afraid FLAC isn't the answer.

24-bit audio has no benefits for post-produced music, only in the recording studio, same with 96+ khz. Plus what's wrong with flac? It has a few quality settings but you can switch it to pure lossless when your ripping/mastering.

No offense or anything, but you don't seem to know a whole lot about audio from what I can tell. Haha wow that sounded mean, better put a smiley face

IMO I would love for artists to put out 'bonus' non-compressed albums (all music gets compressed in the mastering stage, to make them 'louder').

[FordGT90Concept]

LIES! High hats actually sound like high hats at 96+ kHz and 24-bit vs 16-bit is like comparing 32-bit to 64-bit--every sample is more descriptive. I know The Crystal Method does all their stuff at 32-bit.

Few software players support FLAC and even fewer have hardware support (especially portable music players).

Compression has nothing to do with "loudness." Loudness is determined through amplifying. Almost all music you buy is based on Red Book (16-bit, 44.1 KHz) and that includes MP3s. Almost everything higher quality than that is sourced from DVD Audio but DVD Audio never got any market acceptance because of its DRM and the fact that a better disc doesn't necessarily mean better audio.

Go buy yourself a DVD Audio disk (Blue Man Group - Audio is really good), get a good set of 5.1 speakers, and you'll hear exactly what I'm talking about. Everything Red Book based is so 20th century by comparison.

MP3 has a maximum of 320 Kbps. DVD-Audio 24-bit, 96 KHz, 6 channels? 13,824 Kbps and I'm not joking. 8 minute long songs uncompressed in RIFF WAVE format are over 800 MiB in size. A single song could not fit on a Red Book CD.

[MN12BIRD]

Honestly I like FLAC but I really don't think it's necessary for me and the hardware I'm using to play my tunes. It's not like I'm running some $300 dedicated DAC or something. I can barley tell a difference if any difference at all between a good 320k rip and FLAC on my home stereo let alone my MP3 player. My MP3 player does play FLAC but even on my Sony V6 headphones I doubt the HW in the MP3 player is good enough to do FLAC justice. I know for a fact my MP3 player doesn't play the really low frequencies perfectly. I bet as good as most MP3 players are they aren't nearly good enough either. So FLAC is great but I don't think most people need it. I find for the extra space it takes up on my MP3 player its not worth it one bit.