Audio proccessor for flac files

[woox]

I would like to buy a new souncard for my pc and would like to listen to flac audio files. Is there some sort of minimum for the audio proccessing unit to be able to play flac files?

Thanks a lot!

[Darkman]

Just saying this now, you can't tell the difference between a well compressed .mp3 and a .flac.

[ZetZet]

Buy a DAC, not a soundcard. 

[Sors]

Have you tried to play flac files with your integrated sound?   They should work fine.

[Darkman]

Buy a DAC, not a soundcard. 

And I also +1 this.

[xBlizzDevious]

Just saying this now, you can't tell the difference between a well compressed .mp3 and a .flac.

 

Not entirely true. I have two friends that I've witnessed do blind tests (with Foobar2000 and the AVX comparison plugin thing) and get it right almost every single time (like, 19/20 times or so)

I personally, however, cannot tell the difference between a 5Mb/s FLAC and a VBR 128Kbps MP3.

[EmoRarity]

This is beyond my general "oh dear"

I needa SSL hug...

[Pomfinator]

More like your CPU decodes anything just fine...we're not in 1990.

 

Just saying this now, you can't tell the difference between a well compressed .mp3 and a .flac.

If by "well-compressed" you mean things that fare better with lossy compression, sure.  But there are songs where I can ABX the difference up to about LAMEV0.  

 

This is my 9/10 on a song that isn't even up to any sort of audiophile standard, just a standard loudness-war affected anime opening.  A slight sloppiness in the drum-line just gave it away. This was with a 128k Vorbis, but I did do it with V0 later and got 8/10.

foo_abx 1.3.4 report

foobar2000 v1.3.5

2014/12/03 21:58:55

 

File A: D:\Music Archive\[ASL] LiSA - Sword Art Online OP - crossing field [FLAC] [w Scans]\01 crossing field.flac

File B: C:\Users\Justin\Desktop\01 crossing field.ogg

 

21:58:55 : Test started.

22:00:33 : 01/01  50.0%

22:01:00 : 02/02  25.0%

22:01:25 : 03/03  12.5%

22:01:57 : 04/04  6.3%

22:02:27 : 05/05  3.1%

22:03:16 : 05/06  10.9%

22:03:41 : 06/07  6.3%

22:04:02 : 07/08  3.5%

22:04:17 : 08/09  2.0%

22:05:21 : 09/10  1.1%

22:06:21 : Test finished.

 

 ---------- 

Total: 9/10 (1.1%)

 

Whether or not you actually notice the difference in normal listening is another matter, and obviously no way I'm listening to lossless on a mobile device. And you can even tell I made a mistake halfway in when I wasn't paying enough attention.

[Guest]

This is beyond my general "oh dear"

I needa SSL hug...

 

Fine, then.

 

[EmoRarity]

Fine, then.