I got a pair of B & W MM-1 PC speakers today - suggestions needed

[bodger99]

I got a pair of B & W MM-1 PC speakers today. These are an upgrade from a decent'ish set of 2:1 speakers I had for years. During that time, I've put together a collection of about 8500 mp3's, most of which are 128 kbps.

Now that I've got a high-end set of speakers, I'd naturally like to listen to a better quality of audio output. I'm not an audio 'holic' yet, but plan on converting all my mp3's into FLAC'S.

Can I achieve any better quality for my mp3's than FLAC? Have any of you got any suggestions as to what music format I should download from now on?

Many thanks.

 

[zhimbo]

Any lossless format will be equally good. FLAC are non-proprietary, while some other lossless formats tend to be specific to either Microsoft or Apple applications. However, they tend to be widely supported within MS or Apple formats, while FLAC, at this time, isn't always supported by one's application of choice (or requires a third-party add-on, etc.) Also, high bitrate MP3s are pretty darn good, and will be indistinguishable from lossless in most cases (but yeah, 128kbps is pretty bad. Definitely upgrade from that), so if you don't have a lossless option for something, it's not the end of the world.

 

[Ponzio]

I'm not an audio 'holic' yet, but plan on converting all my mp3's into FLAC'S

Converting your mp3's to FLAC files will not improve the sound quality one bit (no pun intended); it's all about the source material. Moving forward you want to start with a standard CD (WAV format) and then convert the tracks in to FLAC files at the highest bit rate possible. Personally I use dBpoweramp to convert my CD tracks into FLAC files and I'm very happy with the results.

 

[bodger99]

Thanks for the advice guys

 

[its phillip]

Converting mp3s is completely pointless. You can't recover the information lost from lossy compression. You have to rip from the cds again.