320 kbps MP3 LAME vs. Lossless FLAC Music

[Afternoon Tea]

What is your opinion on 320 kbps MP3 LAME vs. Lossless FLAC on your setup?

Everyone has different setups as well as different ears, so opinions will differ. I'm interested in what people with relatively high-end DACs and related equipment have to say about this. What is your perceived difference between 320 kbps MP3s versus lossless FLAC files? Is the difference large and crucial on your setup, or is the difference not important? Some people say OGG, FLAC is just to space hungry, instead of having a song file 5MB they have it 30MB.

I my self use high powered headphones, but I only use them in my house. I use Apple earphones when I'm out. For me the difference is very small compared to the 320 kbps when using high powered headphones. With Apple I can barely hear a difference if any. 'I think I am, therefore I am' sort of deal. For the amount of space Lossless takes compared too MP3. I don't think its worth it if your NOT using high powered headphones, and also when your on a mobile mp3 player using standard headphones.

[blaze0041]

I personally don't have a lot of hard drive space to work with, so I'm willing to take the VBR option most of the time...
I mainly listen to music on my home computer, 2.1 speakers. On the go: using an iPod or iPhone (on the iPhone, songs are re-encoded to 128kbps on-the-fly to save space) with Sony earphones (The lack of bass in the newer Apple headphones is something I don't like).
I can't really tell the difference between 320kbps MP3 and FLAC...
I don't have much else to say other than this.

[Hiroi Sekai]

If you've got high quality headphones, you can feel the difference with the volume turned up, I think. For a majority of the populous who are fine with regular headphones, there really isn't a point taking up more space on your hard drive with lossless audio.

[Xyrius Cherubim]

flac has much higher bitrate, so it eats up more space in your disk. so, the difference is the bitrate (though I don't find any difference in the sound quality)

[konart]

As it was stated by the op - depends on ears and setup.
After 7 years of violin I can clearly hear the difference between 320 and 1000 kbps with my "not so awesome" Sennheizer HD380 Pro
It's depends on music too - I hardly can imagine any difference between 320 and 1000 kbps when we are talking about electronic music. Strings, voice, woodwinds, on the other hand, deserve to be listened in highest quality.

PS: and I think 320 is more than enogh for outdoor activities too.

[zrdb]

I've sat through many flac vs. mp3 arguments-so I'll quote myself here-"Well-I CAN tell the difference between a 320 kbps mp3 and a flac version of the same song in a blind listening test-and belive me I don't have dog ears. It's just a matter of training yourself to be a critical listener. One thing that you have to remember is that mp3 and aac, ogg vorbis and others are LOSSY codecs-flac & ape are LOSSLESS codecs. If you encode a cd with flac or ape you have a bit for bit exact copy of the originial, with mp3 you're throwing as much as 75% of the originial audio data away to achieve a much smaller file size."

[cyberbeing]

If disk space is a concern, you don't like the poor compression of MP3 + LAME psy optimisations and low-passing, and/or you'd like something closer to lossless than Vorbis -q 10, then LossyFLAC (LossyWAV + FLAC -b 512) may be of interest.

[chikorita157]

I have most of my stuff in Apple Lossless (comparable to FLAC) and there isn't much of a difference to 320 kbps/v0 MP3 since I don't have a very high end headphones to notice... It depends on the setup and music, especially if it's a live performance or classical music. Nevertheless I still use lossless on the main playlist (with at least 250 songs) with my 32 GB iPhone 3GS and the other stuff that aren't listened frequently in high quality MP3 format.

[soccerghoul]

I just use high quality mp3. Full lossless just seems like overkill to me and the difference isn't really discernible to the human ear on the vast majority of sound equipment anyways. That and lossless is a serious hog of disk space.

[calorie]

Well I convert all my music to Apple Lossless format because I tend to listen to it only using my Ipod - when coupled with a decent pair of headphones there is a definite improvement compared to .mp3 format. In BGM tracks in particular, the "crackling" of long tones is virtually not existent - whereas in MP3, take Shoujo no Ori for example, you can hear it on high volume, and frankly I for one find it annoying. There are better examples than this too.

Suppose the only way for you to know is to try it, but IMHO it's totally worth it unless you plan on like listening to all of your music through laptop speakers on medium volume or something. Even I can't really tell the difference until I copy the music to the iPod.

[Lenne]

there is a reason I have 5tb of disk space and collect high end audio equipment!

[Urzu 7]

I go with mp4a. I have a bunch of iTunes music that is either 128 kbps AAC (that is mp4a) or 256 kbps AAC. Songs I ripped from CDs to my hard drive are mostly 128 kbps AAC. For one of my favorite artists (one of two of my very favorite artists) I ripped the stuff I have of theirs from CDs onto my HDD in a lossless format.

Btw, 128 kbps AAC is close to CD quality, and 256 kbps AAC is even closer to CD quality, but makes for bigger file sizes. I think 256 kbps AAC files are still smaller than 320 kbps MP3.

[Haikea]

To be honest, I probably can't hear the differences between proper 320kbps MP3 and FLAC in almost every case or at least I'm not aware what to look for.

But knowing there might be something I could miss without lossless format, I just strictly prefer lossless when it is possible. Hard drives are quite cheap here at least, so I accept extra financial expenses my preferences (obsession) create in this case.

[christinemarie]

The difference can only be noticed after listening to a certain music a lot of times using 320kbps and FLAC. The music is crisp and pleasant with the headphones without its the same with 320kbps.

320kbps - Decent with headphones. (Mostly songs that I barely listen to is in this format, and some old songs even below 250kbps to save space.)
FLAC - Excellent with headphones, make sure you have converted all your favorite songs into FLAC to satisfy your ears. As for any other, its the same with 320kbps.

[germanturkey]

it depends as much on the recording quality as it does the bit rate. you can have a horribly recorded flac file and a perfectly recorded 192kbs mp3 file, and the 192kbs will come on top. its also been discussed many times that the vast majority of people can't tell the difference between flac and 320kbs, let alone 192kbs.

also, you don't "convert" songs to flac. you have to rip them flac, otherwise you're technically making it sound worse because you're filling in space that wasn't there originally.

and i don't think headphones suffer as much from a lower quality recording as high end IEMs or custom IEMs. since the former generally gives an overarching picture of the music, and the latter is generally more detail oriented. there are of course exceptions, like the k701 or hd800 (or orthos?).

[houkoholic]

Originally Posted by germanturkey

and i don't think headphones suffer as much from a lower quality recording as high end IEMs or custom IEMs. since the former generally gives an overarching picture of the music, and the latter is generally more detail oriented. there are of course exceptions, like the k701 or hd800 (or orthos?).

Not quite true, nearly all high-end audiophile grade headphones will reveal the flaws in the recording just as much as high end IEMs if not more so - since audiophiles loves to hear every detail in the recording it is a prerequisite for high end headphones to be revealing. And of course there are many IEMs that aren't detail oriented at all - the UE TripleFi10 and Sennheiser IE8 comes to mind which are both designed to be more "fun" than revealing compared to say, the Westone UM3x which I own, which in turn is nowhere NEAR as revealing as my Beyerdynamic T1s of bad recording (the T1 also puts the K701, which I also happen to own, to shame in detail) and it's one of the biggest dilemma I have since a lot of the anime and seiyuu songs have absolutely dismal recording qualities but that's what I listen to mainly. Out of the 3 high end headphone which I own the one that is forgiving is the W1000x, but it still rivals the UM3x in details.

Then there's also electrostatic headphones which are supposed to be some of the most sensitive headphone designs you can get due to their physics....

[OceanBlue]

It might be because I'm not using really expensive headphones, but I honestly can't tell the difference between FLAC and 320kbps MP3s. I just get FLAC in case I ever make the investment.

I will honestly say, though, that I oftentimes don't notice really big issues with lower bitrate music until I hear lossless versions.

[germanturkey]

well, high end headphones will reveal flaws, but a dynamic or ortho will never be able to produce the amount of detail you get from BAs. some BAs are not as detailed as others, but as a whole, they're more detail oriented than other types of drivers.

also, i wish one day to own a pair of high end ATH woodies.

[Afterstep]

I have decent headphones, but over time I think my hearing has degraded. Music can make a big difference, and the distortion on high end treble like cymbals used to drive me nuts. The best option is to just test things for yourself and do that.

Personally I just use high bitrate vbr mp3 these days, because it plays on everything. 320 cbr is overkill for me. If I recall correctly 220+ is about my threshold, so I encode in the 250+ range, or whatever the v1 or v2 is in Lame.

[slayer]

it is for me, extremely difficult to discern between 320kbps and flac. I run a relatively modest setup.. dac magic -> burson ha 160 -> hd 650 with stock cables.