Lossless audio format vs lossy audio format

[raytyej]

Hey guys! i'm new so i've got a few questions. I know that lossless audio format is obviously better than lossy audio format. But does it make A LOT of difference? cause recently i have been looking for a good set of speakers like the A5 and was wondering is it will really affect the quality of the sound if i continue using mp3. format

Thanks and merry christmas!

 

[oppman99]

Your question has many possible answers. There are lots of factors. In general I would say there is a big difference between mp3 and lossless. Now if you are using tiny home theater in a box speakers, you may not notice much of a difference. The bitrate of the mp3 has an effect as well. As you increase the bitrate, the quality gets closer to lossless, but still falls short in most cases. That being said, I have heard some mp3 files (320) that I probably couldn't tell were compressed. I find this to be the exception rather than the rule. Quite a bit depends on the original file quality too. With the relatively low cost of hard drive space it makes sense to go lossless (at least to me).

 

[its phillip]

Hard drive space is plentiful and cheap, and flac is only 3~4x the size of a v0 mp3. No point in sticking with lossy.

 

[rnatalli]

Hard drive space is plentiful and cheap, and flac is only 3~4x the size of a v0 mp3. No point in sticking with lossy.

I agree, but wish more systems were capable of playing FLAC files.

 

[raytyej]

lossless format vs lossy format

Hey guys! thanks a lot for your inputs! anyway i've heard that your audio quality can get as good as your source. In this case most of my source is mp3. format. Is there no way at all to improve to a lossless format? if so, which format would be the 2nd best alternative?

Thanks and merry christmas!

 

[JerryLove]

Lossless has a clear advantage for archiving as the sound will not degrade to generational loss as the formats change over time.

 

[oppman99]

Hey guys! thanks a lot for your inputs! anyway i've heard that your audio quality can get as good as your source. In this case most of my source is mp3. format. Is there no way at all to improve to a lossless format? if so, which format would be the 2nd best alternative?

Thanks and merry christmas!

Once the information has been removed to compress a song, it's gone and as far as I know, there is no way to recover it. If you want to save storage space without sacrificing quality, FLAC is the way to go.

A Dac (digital to analog converter) may help a little, but really isn't the answer.

 

[its phillip]

Hey guys! thanks a lot for your inputs! anyway i've heard that your audio quality can get as good as your source. In this case most of my source is mp3. format. Is there no way at all to improve to a lossless format? if so, which format would be the 2nd best alternative?

Thanks and merry christmas!

You're stuck with those mp3s. As others have said, you can't convert that to lossless, and transcoding to another lossy format will only result in additional loss.

Basically, you'll just have to rerip your cds (if that's where they came from), or redownload in lossless.