What's the best Audio Format? #AudioWar

[RayDaHero]

Music is a big part of mine, and probably your life, so its normal that you'd want the best possible quality audio right? Well that's the issue... i mean i've been listening to mp3 all my life, but recently ive heard that FLAC is the best. Any thoughts?

[Jade]

FLAC. There's no losses in the original recorded audio.

/thread

 

Copypasta from a site that shall stay unnamed.

 

Audio Formats

An audio format is a type of computer file that stores music. Music formats are either uncompressed lossless, compressed lossless, or lossy.

BITRATES

A bitrate is the number of bits conveyed or transferred in a unit of time. When talking about music formats, bitrate is used in kilobits per second (kbps). When comparing files with different bitrates (of the same song), the file with the higher bitrate has the higher quality.

For example, an MP3 320kbps (CBR) file transfers 320 kilobits per second.

UNCOMPRESSED LOSSLESS

Uncompressed lossless formats store all of the original recorded data. Since silence is given the same number of bits per second as sound is, uncompressed lossless files are huge. The main uncompressed lossless format is pulse-code modulation (PCM).

Examples

• WAV (PCM) (used on Windows)
• AIFF (PCM) (used on Mac OS)

COMPRESSED LOSSLESS

Compressed lossless formats store all of the original recorded data in less space than uncompressed lossless formats by compressing the data. By giving silence almost no bits per second and compressing sound, a compressed lossless file is usually half as big as the same song stored in an uncompressed lossless file.

Since both uncompressed lossless formats and compressed lossless formats retain all the data from the original recording, they can be transcoded between each other without a loss in quality.

Examples

• Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
• Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC)
• Monkey’s Audio (APE)

LOSSY

Lossy formats are always compressed. Lossy formats have smaller file sizes than both uncompressed lossless formats and compressed lossless formats because they remove some of the original data. Usually the removed data is in the higher frequencies that humans can’t hear, however, there can be obvious audible differences between lossy formats and lossless formats.

Because lossy formats remove data during compression (and thus lose quality), lossy formatsCANNOT be transcoded to lossless formats or other lossy formats without losing more quality.

Examples

• MPEG Layer 3 Audio (MP3)
• Advanced Audio Encoding (AAC)
• Windows Media Audio (WMA)
• Dolby Digital Audio Codec 3 (AC3)
• DTS Coherent Acoustics Codec (DTS)

FILE SIZE

Here’s an example of how the file size of the same song varies depending on whether the song’s format is uncompressed lossless, compressed lossless, or lossy. Let’s take the classic pop song, Sk8er Boi by Avril Lavigne. For reference, the song is 3 minutes, 24 seconds long.

Uncompressed Lossless — WAV (PCM): 34.3 MB

Compressed Lossless — FLAC: 25.75 MB (25% compressed)

Lossy — MP3 320 (CBR): 7.78 MB (78% compressed)

TRANSPARENCY

Transparency is a term used to describe the audible quality of a lossy music file. A lossy file is considered transparent if the average human cannot tell the difference between the lossy file and a lossless file of the same song by just listening to both without knowing which file is which.

For most people, MP3 192kbps (CBR) is considered transparent.

ALLOWED FORMATS

While there are several types of lossless and lossy music formats, only a few are allowed to be uploaded to ----.--.

Allowed Lossless Formatss

• FLAC

Because lossless formats can be transcoded between each other without a loss in quality, the only allowed lossless format on ----.-- is FLAC. However, you can download the FLAC and convert to ALAC (for iTunes) or whatever lossless or lossy format you prefer.

Allowed Lossy Formats

• MP3 (the minimum bitrate for MP3 is 192kbps (CBR))
• AAC (can be trumped by any MP3 torrent unless it was bought from the iTunes store and includes iTunes Exclusive tracks)
• AC3 (usually found in DVDs)
• DTS (usually found in DVDs)

MP3 is the most popular lossy format on ----.--. We allow AAC files bought from the iTunes store because there are often iTunes-specific bonus tracks, and since AAC is lossy it cannot be converted to other formats without a loss in quality. Similarly, AC3 and DTS are music formats often found on DVDs and since they are lossy, they cannot be converted to other formats without a loss in quality.

[iamdarkyoshi]

OGG VORBIS

 

 

The name is friggin hilarious, so it must be good.

[RayDaHero]

FLAC. There's no losses in the original recorded audio.

/thread

So there is nothing better?

[ChasingPluto]

If you have the hardware FLAC all the way but with my stuff I find it hard to differentiate between high bit rate MP3 and FLAC. My friend who is studying to be audio engineer though, with his gear, noticeable difference between the stuff you get from Apple or Google when compared to true HD FLACs. Amazing stuff.

[RayDaHero]

OGG VORBIS

 

 

The name is friggin hilarious, so it must be good.

You never know

[Jade]

So there is nothing better?

See my edit, it explains it.

[RayDaHero]

If you have the hardware FLAC all the way but with my stuff I find it hard to differentiate between high bit rate MP3 and FLAC. My friend who is studying to be audio engineer though, with his gear, noticeable difference between the stuff you get from Apple or Google when compared to true HD FLACs. Amazing stuff.

I now have access to flac audio haha Might as well move on from mp3

[PlayStation 2]

If you have the hardware FLAC all the way but with my stuff I find it hard to differentiate between high bit rate MP3 and FLAC. My friend who is studying to be audio engineer though, with his gear, noticeable difference between the stuff you get from Apple or Google when compared to true HD FLACs. Amazing stuff.

I can tell the difference in certain songs from MP3 to FLAC.

[RayDaHero]

See my edit, it explains it.

Haha thanks, that clears it up quite a bit. However there is no reason to have huge WAV files if FLAC is just as good right

[Jade]

Haha thanks, that clears it up quite a bit. However there is no reason to have huge WAV files if FLAC is just as good right

Pretty much. Both formats are pretty large, though.

[RayDaHero]

Pretty much. Both formats are pretty large, though.

Yeah i just converted a 3min song to FLAC and its 50mb

[ChasingPluto]

I can tell the difference in certain songs from MP3 to FLAC.

I just can't seem to. But when I was with my friend he was kind enough to show me the difference between Apple's MP3s and HD FLACs both in their waveforms and the actual song. It took me a bit to hear it but I did. Couldn't seem to get the same results with my headphones so it's probably me.

[PlayStation 2]

I just can't seem to. But when I was with my friend he was kind enough to show me the difference between Apple's MP3s and HD FLACs both in their waveforms and the actual song. It took me a bit to hear it but I did. Couldn't seem to get the same results with my headphones so it's probably me.

Hell, I can tell the difference between Apple's M4As and a regular FLAC file.

[ChasingPluto]

Hell, I can tell the difference between Apple's M4As and a regular FLAC file.

Yeah yeah yeah, keep tooting your horn

[AlwaysFSX]

FLAC is worthless when you're listening to music, you have no perceived difference between FLAC and MP3 320. Anyone that says otherwise is lying through their teeth and believing the kool-aid.

 

/thread

[PlayStation 2]

Yeah yeah yeah, keep tooting your horn

:^)

[Ringtail Jax]

FLAC is worthless when you're listening to music, you have no perceived difference between FLAC and MP3 320. Anyone that says otherwise is lying through their teeth and believing the kool-aid.

 

/thread

Unfortunately I have to agree, not only have people been deceived by the notion that FLAC is superior because mathematically FLAC has little to no compression and because compression is generally associated with degradation (such as youtube's compression methods) they think that the sound quality can be directly associated in loss. The fact is even linus could not tell the difference, even with a pair of $500+ headphones and ODAC combo. And many others would not even have anywhere near the level of hardware to even compare the difference.

[SSL]

Good, another thread on a subject that totally hasn't been beaten into the ground.

[KaminKevCrew]

Good, another thread on a subject that totally hasn't been beaten into the ground.

I... Yeah... That's why I won't really be adding my input here... Too much work, and it's just pointless at this point... 

 

Does this count as shitposting yet? It's a pointless question that has been answered so many times... 

[Ringtail Jax]

I... Yeah... That's why I won't really be adding my input here... Too much work, and it's just pointless at this point... 

 

Does this count as shitposting yet? It's a pointless question that has been answered so many times... 

Technically...Technically....(begins to eat doughnut) it is... Technically

[SSL]

I... Yeah... That's why I won't really be adding my input here... Too much work, and it's just pointless at this point... 

 

Does this count as shitposting yet? It's a pointless question that has been answered so many times... 

 

I'd say so.

[Hammer]

I use both OSX and windows, and since FLAC support on OSX is really bad i use ALAC for everything. But tbh it doesn't matter what lossless format you use, as long as it is lossless. (Yes WAW requires more space, but wht, a 2TB HDD is difficult to fill up anyways). For playback on windows i use a highly customised  (personalised?) version foobar2000, and for OSX i stick to iTunes since it works the best. (Clementine is backup if I have any unconverted FLAC files, but XLD easily converts it to ALAC). 

Another reason that i use ALAC is that the iPhone supports it (aka. I don't have to have two copies of each song, because the iPhone clearly doesn't benefit from lossless files...)

[BrightCandle]

Flac is identical to the source but its using lossless compression, so its definitely the best quality output format you can get. The problem of course is it only about halves the size of the files so its still 400MB or so for a complete CD which is about 30MB for 3 minutes of music.

 

Of the compressed formats the last I saw was that Org vorbis produced a better quality output for a given size of file than MP3 but there isn't a lot in it. For around 3-4MB for 3 minutes or so of music you can get a decent result. You need to spend about 10MB before you get something that becomes hard to distinguish from lossless compression on high end equipment but quite a few blind trials show how hard it is to distinguish this ~320kbps MP3 compressed music from the FLAC uncompressed (the original CD quality 44.1Khz 16 bit format).

 

So FLAC for quality when you have the equipment and the ears and listen to types of music where it matters (like classical music). Otherwise Org Vorbis is the better format but MP3's at ~320kbps produce excellent results for about 1/3 the space of the flac.

[TheMastr13]

Idk. I use Apple lossless, because it was my best option when ripping into iTunes