FLAC is a waste of space

[neanderthal]

Study after study shows that listeners can't tell the difference between flac and mp3.  Here is a recent one:

A Subjective Evaluation of High Bitrate Coding of Music

Of course there are those that swear they can, but have never been subjected to a real test.  They remind me of the people who spend tons of money on bottled water that turns out to come from some city reservoir.

[Moe]

Technically, the study you linked to was a comparison between AAC and FLAC, not MP3 and FLAC.

While both AAC and MP3 are lossy, AAC is a newer format that will preserve the original better than a MP3 at the same bitrate.

No mention was made of the equipment used to listen to the samples.

[neanderthal]

You're right.  I should have referenced AAC compression instead of MP3.  I assume the equipment used by the audio technicians was of sufficient quality that that would not be a factor.

[Moe]

True enough, but when doing any kind of study you would expect at least a brief mention to help interpret the results.

Consider if the playback equipment consisted of a iPod Shuffle with $20 headphones, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a 64 Kb/s MP3 and an uncompressed WAV.

At the other end of the spectrum, top of the line equipment will reveal the differences between microphone choices used at recording.

I'm not questioning the results. It is true that both 320 Kb/s MP3 or AAC is indistinguishable from the uncompressed original in most scenarios.

[dueda]

I don't have good hardware nor am a sound technician, but FLAC files sound better on my ears; of course a high-quality MP3 320 or 256, properly encoded, will be hard to tell, but then those files will be bigger than the average MP3 128.

Here's a rough baseline for 44.1KHz 24-bit:
75.7 MB WAV (100%)
27.9 MB FLAC (37%)
11.4 MB MP3 320 (15%) about 1/2.5 the FLAC file size, 1/6.5 the WAV file size.
--?-- n/a AAC-HE
Source: https://dsd-guide.com/size-comparison-ch..._s0KWfQbDd
*Unfortunately the authors didn't include a std MP3 128 (nor the AAC) for comparison. No details on the source audio too.

On the good side, MP3 is more widespread and expected to be compatible with many applications, but not all: Neither my TV or my car stereo will play 320, amongst other limitations. They can't play any AAC or FLAC too.

[RodneyYouPlonker]

Really if you want my opinion as I've been doing this for years now, if you think that really it's a waste of space then it probably is really.  Technically FLAC is not a product as such and it's not like playing records or compact disc.  You don't just walk into a store or order online FLAC.  If you were planning on building an expensive Hifi system so you could get the best sound you could afford the idea isn't to play FLAC on it as it's not really a proper front end format.  All these modern day high end audio formats are becoming more popular now.  You wouldn't exactly just hook your laptop up to an expensive Hifi and start playing FLAC from it.  Really the problem is the DAC (Digital to Analogue Converter) wouldn't be very good usually unless you went out of your way to purchase something that was very high standard so you could achieve a much better result than Mr. Average.

The idea behind FLAC is that if you're a pirate like all the people that are on TPB then you really should be downloading FLAC if you plan on converting to WAV (Microsoft WAVE) format and then making an image of that audio and burning to a recordable CD.  It's the best way you're going to get like an original CD experience without having to buy the thing from a shop or order online.  MP3 is more for playing on devices like MP3 players, I don't mind MP3 but if I really wanted to burn music to a recordable disc then I would most likely burn the FLAC instead of trying to burn it any other way.  I don't believe that burning MP3 is right at all, if people do that then that's their fault they don't know what they're doing.  You're better to burn the FLAC quality instead and my point is that really you are using FLAC for archiving purposes.  To convert, image, burn to disc and then delete.

You can believe me in saying I have done this hundreds of times now.  I'm a little bit picky where I tend to get my audio from these days, most likely I go straight to rutracker.org and get from there as those guys on that site seem to know what they are doing and they also tag very well too and they use EAC to rip their discs.  I tend to avoid the web rips, if an album comes out and it's new I will wait until a proper retail copy has been uploaded.  I know what.cd was a good site, I never managed to get in there but rutracker.org a lot of the rips ended up going there from what.cd.  what.cd was shut down some time ago now.  There's a lot of people in the pirate game that don't know what they're doing and if you're not careful you'll end up downloading from one.  Downloading something that has been ripped wrong is not a good idea and you're better if they have the EAC logs included in the torrent so you can open it up and view the extraction quality.  A lot of people's FLAC are probably very much a waste of space because they don't know what they're doing.

Ripping audio and uploading in FLAC, you really do need to know what it's all about, it's not really that straight forward.  I just think that you're best to use it to burn to disc and then once you're done with it just remove it.  I do have an MP3/FLAC player.  It does work well I think that if you compare whilst listening on headphones you can hear the most difference when listening to drums and cymbals and things, sounds more like authentic in FLAC.  MP3 does have that very slight wishy-washy sound to it and you notice in percussion and drum noises the most.  Vocals and Guitar, Keyboards, Bass etc.. you can't really tell much difference IMO.

[Matthew]

When I encode audio streams, I always do so with FLAC.

The amount of space FLAC audio takes up isn't an issue today.

There are some old Flash and WMV videos that I've re-encoded with VP9 and FLAC and released on BitTorrent.

[Resurgence]

In regard to this discussion, I thought the following video was interesting.

The differences between MP3s, WAV and FLAC files are explored and whether someone can tell the difference between the different types.







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In general, the differences may not be all that perceptible for most people, but I do have to say that for me, FLAC files sound better.

The 24-bit FLAC vinyl-rips are especially nice.

I can certainly tell a difference in the fidelity of the audio when adding another factor into the discussion, not just the bitrate, but the source - digital or analog.

For me, the richness and depth of the analog sound on vinyl is better than with digital, especially when the record is originally heard on an old Hi-Fi system.

It takes a lot of time and care to do vinyl-rips properly. I appreciate the efforts of those who produce such torrents.

However, having said that, I will say that I'm not all that demanding in regard to audio bitrate. I'm just grateful for files being available. I sometimes listen to old time radio shows that are 32 kbps or less.

[dueda]

... of a iPod Shuffle with $20 headphones, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a 64 Kb/s MP3 and an uncompressed WAV.

I can tell you that $2 headphones on a cheap ChinhLinh player is enough to tell the difference, even with my poor hearing.
Can't speak about expensive hi-fi, but for most people that wouldn't matter.

[neanderthal]

The idea behind FLAC is that if you're a pirate like all the people that are on TPB then you really should be downloading FLAC if you plan on converting to WAV (Microsoft WAVE) format and then making an image of that audio and burning to a recordable CD.  It's the best way you're going to get like an original CD experience without having to buy the thing from a shop or order online.  

RodneyYouPlonker YouPlonker, why would anyone burn a CD in this day and age?  You want the experience of seeing the CD whirl around in an ancient player?