Please help with questions about FLAC/MP3.

[Cristofori]

OK, I'm an old purist who dislikes the idea of downloading music or having my entire A/V or literary life stuck in cyberspace somewhere, but after much resisting I recently broke down and downloaded some songs I've been itching to hear for awhile. These were mostly "one hit wonders" or stuff not easily found in the right CD incarnations I wanted.

I got these in MP3 format from Amazon.com, and as I suspected they were mostly disappointing. Some of them sounded passable, even good, but others were not. But they all to a lesser or greater extent had something missing in the music that I can't explain (even the 45rpm's I had of these I remember sounding better). The old audio cliches of "cold" "lifeless" "washed out" "hollow sounding" comes to mind when describing some of these MP3's.

Needless to say, I find this unacceptable and was looking for better downloading alternatives. I've heard of FLAC supposedly being better than even CD, but Amazon.com seems to have nothing but MP3's for the music I want.

Please keep in mind that I'm absolutely illiterate when it comes to downloadable streaming formats (until very recently, I haven't ever burned a single CD of downloaded music yet).

So my questions are:

1. Where can I get some of the more common Rock/Pop music in FLAC or some other superior format now (I know there are higher end audiophile and classical labels doing this)?

2. Can I burn FLAC's to a regular CD-RW and play them in a standard audio CD player?

3. Is FLAC or some other superior format going to become more dominant in the future and replace MP3's altogether, or is there going to be another senseless format war with something totally different emerging?

4. Is FLAC always superior to redbook CD SQ, or is it a situation like HD video where the material had to be recorded in that format to be truly noticeable?

5. Is there a relatively easy or cost effective way to make standard MP3's sound better?

Thank you all for the help...

 

[sholling]

So my questions are:

1. Where can I get some of the more common Rock/Pop music in FLAC or some other superior format now (I know there are higher end audiophile and classical labels doing this)?

I'm not aware of anyone selling downloadable FLACs. The advantage of FLAC over MP3 is the FLAC is full uncompromised CD quality. The disadvantage is not every player has support for FLAC. But FLAC support is now pretty much the de facto standard for lossless and more and more players are supporting it.

2. Can I burn FLAC's to a regular CD-RW and play them in a standard audio CD player?

Yes you can and with no loss of quality.

3. Is FLAC or some other superior format going to become more dominant in the future and replace MP3's altogether, or is there going to be another senseless format war with something totally different emerging?

MP3 and Apple's format will continue to dominate portable music for some time to come. FLAC is not likely to ever become a major commercial format however I expect it to remain the most popular lossless format for at least a few years.

4. Is FLAC always superior to redbook CD SQ, or is it a situation like HD video where the material had to be recorded in that format to be truly noticeable?

It's hard to say. I'm told that there are lossless multichannel versions of FLAC but I've never seen them.

5. Is there a relatively easy or cost effective way to make standard MP3's sound better?

No, but processing satisfies some. Personally I only use MP3s in the car or with a portable player.

The advantages of FLAC over CD are 1) your entire music collection is at your fingertips, and 2) you can't scratch a FLAC file the way you can a CD. A very few people use a more basic format called WAV but it has no advantages over FLAC. The file sizes are roughly 20% larger without sounding any better than FLAC and you can tag FLACs with album information that can be read on any FLAC compatible player.

I ripped my entire CD collection to FLACs and stored them on a home server and two external hard drives so that I always have a backup. It's not that hard to do with the right tools, but you want a backup so that you never have to do it twice. dBpoweramp Reference Edition isn't free but pretty much automates the process of ripping, tagging, and filing and includes error checking to make sure your rip is perfect.

I have music players (WDTV Live) connected to the systems in my family room and bedroom and with a click of my remote control I can bring up any album (including album art) in my collection without getting up and hunting for the CD.

Edit: One other advantage of dBpoweramp Reference is it includes a batch conversion tool. Assuming it's still around when a new popular wiz-bang format comes out it should be able to do a batch conversion of all of your FLACs to .wiz-bang.

 

[Cristofori]

I'm not aware of anyone selling downloadable FLACs.

Linn Records is one company that offers downloadable FLAC's, which they call "Studio Master Quality". http://www.linnrecords.com/recording-mozart-symphonies-29--31--paris---32--35--haffner----36--linz-.aspxBut this is mostly a specialized audiophile classical label.

The advantage of FLAC over MP3 is the FLAC is full uncompromised CD quality. The disadvantage is not every player has support for FLAC. But FLAC support is now pretty much the de facto standard for lossless and more and more players are supporting it.

If you mean Ipods and things like that when you said "players", I'm not interested in getting one of those as of yet, but that could change.

Yes you can and with no loss of quality.

Thanks for the info!

MP3 and Apple's format will continue to dominate portable music for some time to come. FLAC is not likely to ever become a major commercial format however I expect it to remain the most popular lossless format for at least a few years.

I can't imagine why... it should be obvious to anyone that MP3 SQ stinks compared to CD (and even some vinyl in my opinion). That isn't progress, it's regress!

It's hard to say. I'm told that there are lossless multichannel versions of FLAC but I've never seen them.

I've heard that audio CD's ripped to FLAC files can sound even better than the master it came from. I don't know if this is just an audio myth or not, but if true, I'd be interested in ripping some of my CD's to FLAC!

No, but processing satisfies some. Personally I only use MP3s in the car or with a portable player.

I heard that Marantz just came out with a new player that has circuitry that can supposedly make MP3's sound better. I don't know if this is just another useless "bells & whistles" gimmick, but I'm in the market for a new disc player and was looking at Marantz anyway, so this model might be up my ally. But personally, I'd rather not use MP3's at all really.

I ripped my entire CD collection to FLACs and stored them on a home server and two external hard drives so that I always have a backup. It's not that hard to do with the right tools, but you want a backup so that you never have to do it twice. dBpoweramp Reference Edition isn't free but pretty much automates the process of ripping, tagging, and filing and includes error checking to make sure your rip is perfect.

When you say "external hard drive", you mean like one of those little USB drives right? Also, what music server do you recommend? Can I use it seamlessly with my Marantz stereo reciever?

Thanks for all the help Sholling.

 

[GranteedEV]

I got these in MP3 format from Amazon.com, and as I suspected they were mostly disappointing. Some of them sounded passable, even good, but others were not. But they all to a lesser or greater extent had something missing in the music that I can't explain (even the 45rpm's I had of these I remember sounding better). The old audio cliches of "cold" "lifeless" "washed out" "hollow sounding" comes to mind when describing some of these MP3's.

Mp3 is a digital format, as such, the digital to analog conversion used can indeed change its sound just like a preamp or a cd player. At amazon's bitrate 256k VBR, they shouldn't be too audibly worse than CDQ, although maybe ever so slightly. It's a lossy format, so i'm sure an A/B comparision could make some audible differences present, but I'm thinking that maybe it's your computer's conversion to analogue that you're finding dissapointing moreso than the SQ of these MP3s. If that's the case, you might want to hook your computer up digitally (by COAX, TOSLINK, or HDMI) to your prepro or receiver and see if it still sounds that way.

Needless to say, I find this unacceptable and was looking for better downloading alternatives. I've heard of FLAC supposedly being better than even CD, but Amazon.com seems to have nothing but MP3's for the music I want.

Flac, like ALAC and APE, is a lossless codec, so yes, if you make a FLAC file with a 24-bit, 192khz studio master, it can be bit-for-bit identical to that studio master. Most flac files are ripped from CDs though, so they're only going to be as good as the CD they came from.

1. Where can I get some of the more common Rock/Pop music in FLAC or some other superior format now (I know there are higher end audiophile and classical labels doing this)?

unfortunately, i think ripping your own CDs or piracy are your only options. I don't know how you feel about piracy, though.

2. Can I burn FLAC's to a regular CD-RW and play them in a standard audio CD player?

Yep, no problem. since FLAC is a lossless form of compression, there exist methods to return it to CD format and burn it and that will be bit-for-bit identical to a CD version

3. Is FLAC or some other superior format going to become more dominant in the future and replace MP3's altogether, or is there going to be another senseless format war with something totally different emerging?

In the computer world, FLAC is considered an elitist or audiophile format, so no. People who prefer it do prefer it for its certainly higher fidelity, but generally people will tell you that in a double blind test, not many could tell the difference between a 256k VBR mp3, a 256k AAC, a 320kbps CBR mp3, a 650kbps FLAC, and a 1.4mbps CD.

4. Is FLAC always superior to redbook CD SQ, or is it a situation like HD video where the material had to be recorded in that format to be truly noticeable?

The latter, kind of. Most FLACs in fact are made from redbook CDs. of course there's also FLACs made from SACDs, DVD-A, HDCD, studio masters, etc. Then there's people out there who will take a lossy file like a 128kbps CBR mp3 (which is unlistenable imo btw) and make a FLAC out of it... in which case garbage in garbage out. In reality, most studio masters are much higher quality than CDs; it's not recorded in CD quality. A CD is a 16-bit, 44khz file, whereas FLACs can go as high as 24-bit, 192khz (whether the difference between those two is audible is debatable, but it certainly is a difference). FLAC is really just a container.

5. Is there a relatively easy or cost effective way to make standard MP3's sound better?

Digital transport to your A/V receiver or prepro is probably the most cost effective way to get the best fidelity out of an MP3.

I've heard that audio CD's ripped to FLAC files can sound even better than the master it came from. I don't know if this is just an audio myth or not, but if true, I'd be interested in ripping some of my CD's to FLAC!

Total myth. a flac can make a 10 into a smaller file that sounds exactly like a 10, but it won't give you information that was never there.

I heard that Marantz just came out with a new player that has circuitry that can supposedly make MP3's sound better. I don't know if this is just another useless "bells & whistles" gimmick, but I'm in the market for a new disc player and was looking at Marantz anyway, so this model might be up my ally. But personally, I'd rather not use MP3's at all really.

It's called M-Dax, and it's not all that new, my SR6003 has this. I like it, although to my ears at least it doesn't really make too big a difference for my Mp3s, (like I said earlier, 256k VBR or 320kbps CBR are reasonable high fidelity, albeit not transparent formats) but it's night and day with LQ mp3s (128kbps, 192kbps, and even some 256kbps CBR) and FM radio. Your results may vary especially if you've got some ultra-high end equipment or you're listening to some extremely content heavy music like a full symphony.

I really can't agree with your assessment of high bitrate MP3s to be honest - while I don't deny they sound ever so slightly worse than CDs, the differences require extremely careful listening. You may have gotten some 128 or 192kbps CBR mp3s though, which indeed I can't listen to and sound bad.

When you say "external hard drive", you mean like one of those little USB drives right? Also, what music server do you recommend? Can I use it seamlessly with my Marantz stereo reciever?

External Hard drives aren't generally little, those are flash drives. An external hard drive looks something like this:

re: music servers - maybe look into one of some of escient's stuff if you can track it down

 

[Cristofori]

Mp3 is a digital format, as such, the digital to analog conversion used can indeed change its sound just like a preamp or a cd player. At amazon's bitrate 256k VBR, they shouldn't be too audibly worse than CDQ, although maybe ever so slightly. It's a lossy format, so i'm sure an A/B comparision could make some audible differences present, but I'm thinking that maybe it's your computer's conversion to analogue that you're finding dissapointing moreso than the SQ of these MP3s. If that's the case, you might want to hook your computer up digitally (by COAX, TOSLINK, or HDMI) to your prepro or receiver and see if it still sounds that way.

Yes, my CPU is rather old by today's standards, and probably has a sub-par sound card, DVD burner, etc. I downloaded those MP3's I mentioned straight from Amazon to Windows Media Player, then burned them to CD from there. I will work on getting a new CPU in the future, and hopefully will start getting some better results.

Having said that, I still seems that some MP3's just sound plain bad, as I've heard them on other peoples systems with better CPU's then mine as well.

Also, I have the Marantz SR4023 stereo receiver. I don't know if I can hook up my CPU to this or not. I've never done anything like that before, and I'm not sure how that will improve the MP3's.

Flac, like ALAC and APE, is a lossless codec, so yes, if you make a FLAC file with a 24-bit, 192khz studio master, it can be bit-for-bit identical to that studio master. Most flac files are ripped from CDs though, so they're only going to be as good as the CD they came from.

unfortunately, i think ripping your own CDs or piracy are your only options. I don't know how you feel about piracy, though.

I was mainly interested in buying and downloading professional (and legitimate) FLAC's online, but it looks like I can only do that with certain audiophile or classical labels out there. If I was going to burn my own CD's, it would be for a music server for my own use.

In the computer world, FLAC is considered an elitist or audiophile format, so no. People who prefer it do prefer it for its certainly higher fidelity, but generally people will tell you that in a double blind test, not many could tell the difference between a 256k VBR mp3, a 256k AAC, a 320kbps CBR mp3, a 650kbps FLAC, and a 1.4mbps CD.

That's a shame, because there shouldn't be anything elitist about wanting at least CD SQ with music downloads. In today's world, with all the attention to all things visual, HD, 3D movies, and their multi-channel sound etc., you would think they would be making audio only formats as good as they could possibly be, and we have the technology to easily do this. There should be no excuse why this isn't being done.

Digital transport to your A/V receiver or prepro is probably the most cost effective way to get the best fidelity out of an MP3.

I'm not sure I understand. How does hooking up my CPU to my receiver improve MP3's? It's still the CPU's burner that is making the discs, right?

Total myth. a flac can make a 10 into a smaller file that sounds exactly like a 10, but it won't give you information that was never there.

I wasn't sure about this. I've heard that the reason why some say FLAC copies sound better is not because they are better than the CD, but because the process involves by-passing some of the processes, error corrections involved in playing a CD. Hence, it's the CD player itself that makes the CD sound worse! It seems to sound good in theory, but probably not noticable in the real world.

It's called M-Dax, and it's not all that new, my SR6003 has this. I like it, although to my ears at least it doesn't really make too big a difference for my Mp3s, (like I said earlier, 256k VBR or 320kbps CBR are reasonable high fidelity, albeit not transparent formats) but it's night and day with LQ mp3s (128kbps, 192kbps, and even some 256kbps CBR) and FM radio.

Sorry, I'm rather old school so it sounds new to me! Anyway, when I get my new disc player, I will probably get that Marantz that has this and try it out!

Your results may vary especially if you've got some ultra-high end equipment or you're listening to some extremely content heavy music like a full symphony.

I listen to a lot of classical, but not on MP3 (I refuse to commit that sacrilege...) so it probably wouldn't matter to me.

I really can't agree with your assessment of high bitrate MP3s to be honest - while I don't deny they sound ever so slightly worse than CDs, the differences require extremely careful listening. You may have gotten some 128 or 192kbps CBR mp3s though, which indeed I can't listen to and sound bad.

That's the problem. I'll never know what kind of MP3's I'm going to get. My friend had over 5000 songs on his music server. Some sounded good while others sounded worse then FM reception. I'm looking for quality and reliability with my music.

It looks like I may have to wait until I get some better equipment and/or more online shops start offering better downloads.

 

[GranteedEV]

Yes, my CPU is rather old by today's standards, and probably has a sub-par sound card, DVD burner, etc. I downloaded those MP3's I mentioned straight from Amazon to Windows Media Player, then burned them to CD from there. I will work on getting a new CPU in the future, and hopefully will start getting some better results.

I didn't know that, I thought maybe you had your PC hooked up to your receiver via analog connection. In my case, my laptop is hooked up to my sr6003 via HDMI, so I can send it any kind of digital audio and bypass any "sound card" coloration. the processor on the marantz is what converts it.

That's a shame, because there shouldn't be anything elitist about wanting at least CD SQ with music downloads. In today's world, with all the attention to all things visual, HD, 3D movies, and their multi-channel sound etc., you would think they would be making audio only formats as good as they could possibly be, and we have the technology to easily do this. There should be no excuse why this isn't being done.

Well, people don't necessarily care about quality as much as they want convenience. Consider youtube videos for example. Not exactly 1080p reference quality if you ask me. The excuse is that people don't want it. FLACs for example, eat more battery life on portable music players, yet sound virtually indecipherable from "lossy" codecs like 256kbps VBR mp3 to most people's ears - yet they have a file size that's like 10 times as large. A quality MP3 may be 4 mb. The same file in FLAC is probably 35. It's the law of diminishing returns. Just like I'm sure all of us would love to own a pair of linkwitz orions and have them 5 feet away from the wall in a dedicated listening room tri-amped by classe monoblocks or something like that, it's probably outside of our budgets. Likewise, people budget their disk space and the slightly superior sound quality just isn't worth it. Now in the case of a bad mp3, these things are being slowly phased out, but it starts at the source, and the source of most of these is mostly lazy CD-to-mp3 ripping using default settings.

I'm not sure I understand. How does hooking up my CPU to my receiver improve MP3's? It's still the CPU's burner that is making the discs, right?

Again, I didn't realize that. However, the advantage of a digital connection would be that you're letting your receiver do the digital to analogue conversion, and bypassing the CD player or any other processing. I don't think your marantz can do this though.

I'll never know what kind of MP3's I'm going to get. My friend had over 5000 songs on his music server. Some sounded good while others sounded worse then FM reception. I'm looking for quality and reliability with my music.

The deal is basically that mp3 is popular because it's a highly compressed format. Keep in mind that this format gained popularity like 10 years ago, when most people barely had 56k modems connecting themselves to the internet. In order to download music, the uncompressed format, PCM wav, was just impractical because a CD has something like 760mb of audio on it. Downloading and storing audio in CD-quality only really became popular when people began to have the hard drive space and internet bandwidth to do so, but people and corporations just never made that move towards lossless. Apple busted out its own lossy and lossless formats, AAC and ALAC, respectively, and plenty of programmers have introduced their own lossless formats such as FLAC and APE. But that's really been pushed to the background because, the truth is, the masses just don't care about fidelity. They mostly listen to music on awful plastic earphones that couldn't resolve the difference between a 90 kbps mp3 and a well-mastered CD, and the reality is that what people want is to fit as "many" mp3s onto their hard drives and portable music players as they can, so 128kbps is common, and a lot of ripping programs default to this quality.

Truth is, mp3's a dated format (much better lossy and lossless formats now exist) but it's become a de-facto "standard" that people gravitate towards and is therefore more readily available.

That doesn't mean it's a bad format - I really do think that a 320kbps constant bit rate file is very close to the real thing. The only genre where it ever falls short to me is mainly classical, and even then, i've got some 120 classical tracks on my Mp3 player and it still sounds rather great. It takes a bit of extra searching to get the HQ mp3s, but don't completely write the format off.

As long as you're getting v0 (256 variable bit rate) or 320kbps constant bit rate files, you'd need a very revealing $4000+ stereo setup to really begin to resolve what's missing in most pop/rock files, which suffer from dynamic compression and sub-par studio work anyways. mp3 isn't a consistent format, but most legit online stores should give you a pretty consistent bit rate for their files as long as you select the highest quality version, and not the "smallest filesize" version.

IMO what you need to do is really determine if it's the mp3 format you hate, or just a select few mp3s you've heard. The key to this is to take a CD you've heard countless times, and rip a song from it. Download an MP3 encoder called LAME and a program called foobar2000.

Rip that song into the following formats

1) MP3(LAME), ~65kbps, v9 (just for reference of how bad it could get LOL)
2) MP3(LAME), ~130kbps, v5 (bad yet most-common)
3) MP3(LAME), ~190kbps, v2 (reasonably decent and very listenable)
4) MP3(LAME), ~245kbps, v0 (High Quality, comparable to what you should be getting on amazon)
5) MP3(LAME), 320kbs CBR (Highest Quality)
6) FLAC, Level 8
7) uncompressed WAV (same as what a CD is)

Then burn all 7 files to a CD-RW and do a comparision of the very same song. See if it's all the mp3 formats which sound cold and hollow to you, or just the lower bitrate ones. I'm rather curious if you just have more discerning ears/equipment than I do, or if you've just come across some LQ mp3s.

 

[sholling]

Everything has its place. The average person listening through $20 earbuds won't hear the difference between a 192bit MP3 and a CD. The same with factory car audio. That's why MP3 and Apple's lossy formats will continue to rule. That and the record labels are too stupid and craven to support releasing popular music in high quality lossless formats for fear of piracy. Look how they managed to sabotage SACD and DVD-A out of piracy paranoia. Anyway I'm a picky listener but I use high bitrate MP3s in an MP3 player even with top quality in-ear-monitors. At the noise levels when out and about or in the car you really can't hear a difference. Now when I get home and can sit an listen with all of my attention I listen to FLACs.

Taking the rest of your questions let's start at the computer and work outward from there. Playback from your computer can be done using any number of free products. WinAmp is one of the most popular PC based players that supports FLAC. You won't need the pay version for playback.

Ripping: There are a few good few products and Exact Audio Copy works well. But for PCs I prefer dBpowerAmp Reference Edition ($39). The reason that I prefer it is that once you set some defaults it will rip, name, tag, and file as fast and the drive can read the CDs. For example let's say that you tell it that you want the files stored by "d:\Music\Artist Name\Album Title" and the files labeled "Artist - Album - Track Number - Song Title". Every time you put in a CD it will read the CD, automatically detect the artist, album title, and track titles and rip, name, file them according to your rules. You can feed it a CD every 6-10 minutes depending on how fast your drive and computer is. Anyway they have a free trial.

Computer hardware: It doesn't take a fancy CPU or CD drive to rip or play FLACs. There are two ways to get good sound from a computer - The cheap built-in sound card's optical output connected to an old receiver and driving good bookshelf speakers. That's the method that I use. The other method is to connect good quality powered speakers to a top quality sound card. Either method works.

For playback to my family room and bedroom systems I have a Western Digital TV Live ($130ea) in both rooms. Attached to those are 1.5TB external hard drives. The WDTV Live connects to my receiver via HTMI cable and I use my TV to view the menus. The WDTV Live outputs to the receiver using either DTS or stereo, it's your choice. My home is networked and it could just as easily play music stored on my server through the WDTV Lives but copying it to other rooms gives me a backup. I have a cheap program that runs a couple of times a week while I'm sleeping and it keeps them all in sync. I buy my music and listen to a song in one room at a time so I figure I'm in compliance with the spirit copyrights.

 

[GranteedEV]

Ripping: There are a few good few products and Exact Audio Copy works well. But for PCs I prefer dBpowerAmp Reference Edition ($39). The reason that I prefer it is that once you set some defaults it will rip, name, tag, and file as fast and the drive can read the CDs. For example let's say that you tell it that you want the files stored by "d:\Music\Artist Name\Album Title" and the files labeled "Artist - Album - Track Number - Song Title". Every time you put in a CD it will read the CD, automatically detect the artist, album title, and track titles and rip, name, file them according to your rules. You can feed it a CD every 6-10 minutes depending on how fast your drive and computer is. Anyway they have a free trial.

foobar2000 does that as well, and it's free...

 

[TLS Guy]

The problem is that mp3 is pop music geared, and is by and large useless for classical music.

Your description of it sounding dull and lifeless are right on. And there are worse anomalies such as twinking and stereo sound stage collapse, that a lot of classical recordings provoke in lossy formats.

If you go on the DTS site you will see an honest technical assessment of loss less formats in their technical white papers. It is very interesting the straight jacket it puts the audio mixing engineer in, to make a recording that won't sound really awful in compressed formats.

For instance, you have to pan center or hard left and right. You just can't do this in a classical recording. Take the last movement of the Beethoven 9th for instance. The four soloists need to be in a realistic arc. This consumes a huge amount of the bits in a lossy rendition of the recording, and makes things really fall apart.

As I have stated before, the lossy format of DVD is quite useless for watching and listening to opera. That is why all opera DVDs have a loss less two channel PCM track also. Thank Heaven for Blue Ray.

Any system that can not easily distinguish a lossy from and not lossy format, is in my view not very good, in fact it is a poor low resolution system not worth the time of day.

 

[bandphan]

I'm not aware of anyone selling downloadable FLACs. The advantage of FLAC over MP3 is the FLAC is full uncompromised CD quality. The disadvantage is not every player has support for FLAC. But FLAC support is now pretty much the de facto standard for lossless and more and more players are supporting it.

FWIW bsnds like Govt Mule, Phish, Phil and Friends, Susan Tedeschi, OAR, MOE, Disco Biscuits, Derek Trucks, Allman Bros, DMB, Ben Harper, Dave Grissman and a host of other "jam" , rock fusion bands, and Bluegrass have .flac soundboards of their live shows available for purchase.

 

[serenity737]

Here is a site with a variety of music which you can download in flac format ...

https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=9624albums

The quality of the downloads is first rate!

They also provide a link to a free downloadable flac media organizer and player for your computer.

Best,

Mike

 

[its phillip]

I think emusic offers flac, but I don't know since I'm not a member. I don't know if itunes offers alac tracks either, but I'd imagine they would. Plenty of bands and labels offer flacs on their own webshops, but there are a whole lot more that don't :/

And for making proper rips of cds - EAC secure ripping with the correct offset settings for your drive along with test & copy is the best way to go in my opinion.

 

[XEagleDriver]

FLAC + Sansa Fuze LLs

Have been ripping ~500 CD/SACDs to FLAC and using these files on a Sansa 4 GB Fuze (refurb for ~$30) with an optional 16GB micro SDHC (additional ~$30).
- Using Media Monkey to rip (compression level 4) and organize the FLAC files on a home PC's 1TB internal drive.

I am impressed with both FLAC and the Fuze. The Fuze's sound, size, build, and user interface are all excellent. I primarily use the Fuze through my vehicle's AUX audio input during a 2-hour/day commute.

Therefore, please do not read the lessons learned below as anything more than ideas on how to potentially better integrate FLAC and Fuze.

Lessons learned thus far:

1) Keep your Album Names and Song Titles short.
If you don't, when shown on the Fuze's character limited display it will make many of then look the same.
- If the Album Name is long (like you find in Classical albums) the Fuze will scroll the album name, which in turn prevents scrolling of the Song Title.
- For example, if two files are named "Violin Concerto in D Minor, Adagio" and "Violin Concerto in D Minor, Allegro" respectively, on the Fuze both files will both only show "Violin Concerto in D" if the album name is already scrolling.

2) FLAC playback of jazz has been outstanding. However, FLAC playback of classical music occassionaly distorts.
I do not know the exact cause, but have the following observations:
- It only occurs during the more dynamic/loud classical music passages.
- It does not occur when playing the same FLAC files/passages from the home PC through M-Audio AV40 powered speakers at similar volume.
- It seems to be mitigated when I lower the Fuze's volume to about 0.5 to 0.75 of full loud, and then increase the car's audio volume accordingly to get about the same SPL.
- CD play of same songs at similar volume did not have distortions.

My hypothesis from the above data is: The problem is more likely a limitation of the Fuze with demanding Classical music passages at high volume, and not a FLAC or the car's audio system limitation.

3) Getting Album Art to properly show up on the Fuze has been hit and miss. This is probably some thing I am not doing right and do not realize/know about since it does sometimes work.

Next step will be to folllow in Sholling's footsteps by hooking up a WD TV Live and external hard drive to each of my home's audio systems.

Cheers,
XEagleDriver

 

[Cristofori]

Hello Dr. Carter...

How was your trip back to jolly ole' England? Did you ever connect with the gentleman who found all that rare Hi-Fi gear?

The problem is that mp3 is pop music geared, and is by and large useless for classical music.

I agree with that, although I don't think MP3 is all that great for ANY music myself. I wouldn't conceive of using it for classical, except maybe for some obscure historical/mono recordings or something.

Your description of it sounding dull and lifeless are right on. And there are worse anomalies such as twinking and stereo sound stage collapse, that a lot of classical recordings provoke in lossy formats.

Yes, when listening to some of these I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. The music was there, but it wasn't really there... if you know what I mean. It wasn't just the hearing, but the feeling of the music didn't seem right either.

It is very interesting the straight jacket it puts the audio mixing engineer in, to make a recording that won't sound really awful in compressed formats.

It also puts the listener in a straight jacket as well, as there is little that we can do to improve them.

As I have stated before, the lossy format of DVD is quite useless for watching and listening to opera. That is why all opera DVDs have a loss less two channel PCM track also. Thank Heaven for Blue Ray.

I've never owned a surround set up, but I've been mostly happy with the stereo sound I've gotten out of DVD's. Sometimes it's even more interesting than CD audio.

Any system that can not easily distinguish a lossy from and not lossy format, is in my view not very good, in fact it is a poor low resolution system not worth the time of day.

Well that's good I suppose, for at least it means my modest system isn't so bad, because I can certainly hear the difference.

It looks like MP3 is fine for the portable little players for traveling, or for the "boombox" at work, but I totally agree with Sholling that it's not suitable for any serious listening. Some MP3's sound good, but your rolling the dice every time you download one of these things. You won't know what the end results may be.

 

[pzaur]

Have been ripping ~500 CD/SACDs...
Cheers,
XEagleDriver

Just curious, how have you been ripping a SACD? I didn't think this was possible unless you are ripping the CD side of a hybrid SACD.

-pat

 

[bandphan]

Just curious, how have you been ripping a SACD? I didn't think this was possible unless you are ripping the CD side of a hybrid SACD.

-pat

I guess ISO Ive done DVD-A this way with no issues. Never been able to compress multi ch though

 

[Sheik_Yerbutay]

FWIW bsnds like Govt Mule, Phish, Phil and Friends, Susan Tedeschi, OAR, MOE, Disco Biscuits, Derek Trucks, Allman Bros, DMB, Ben Harper, Dave Grissman and a host of other "jam" , rock fusion bands, and Bluegrass have .flac soundboards of their live shows available for purchase.

Below are a couple links to sites that allow you to LEGALLY download live shows in flac format..

http://www.archive.org/browse.php?collection=etree&field=/metadata/creator

http://www.thetradersden.org/index.php?

 

[XEagleDriver]

You are correct Sir!

Just curious, how have you been ripping a SACD? I didn't think this was possible unless you are ripping the CD side of a hybrid SACD.

-pat

Pat,

You are correct, ripping the RBCD track on hybrid SACDs (th only type I buy).

Although in my experience the CD track has always been co-resident on the same "side" of the disk as the SACD tracks (2.0 and 5.1 channel).

Cheers,
XEagleDriver

 

[fightinkraut]

A few sources have been mentioned, I put together a list of some FLAC files available for download: http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67154

If you're experimenting with FLAC you should find some good files there.

 

[JerryLove]

I got these in MP3 format from Amazon.com, and as I suspected they were mostly disappointing. Some of them sounded passable, even good, but others were not. But they all to a lesser or greater extent had something missing in the music that I can't explain (even the 45rpm's I had of these I remember sounding better).

Is it possible that the problem is the software decoder or DAC / preamp?

Rip a CD that you like the sound of to a lossless format (FLAC, WMA-Lossless, etc) and try over the same player. If it sounded better on the CD, then it's the player not the file.

Needless to say, I find this unacceptable and was looking for better downloading alternatives. I've heard of FLAC supposedly being better than even CD, but Amazon.com seems to have nothing but MP3's for the music I want.

CD is just a physical media. It means nothing.

The standard CD audio format (Red Book?) is an uncompressed Wave sampled 44k per second with a specificity of 16bits (65,535 possible values) and for which they deliberately encode nothing under 20Hz or above 20Khz

Sound exists in waves of infinite granulaity (infinite sample rate, infinite possible values). The choices above are held to exceed the limits of human hearing and so were chosen (they also allowed 72min CDs).

It is possible for a computer to hold a wave in any arbitrary non-infinite resolution the hardware can support.

FLAC is just a compression (like ZIP). A wave which is compressed for storage in FLAC (or any lossless compression) is absolutely identical when uncompressed.

FLAC is not designed to work with any arbitrary resolution. It's maxiumum resolution is 655,350 samples per second at 32-bits of resolution (a number far larger than I'd like to type). It's safe to assume that no one even suspects legitemately that human hearing could recognize differences less that that.

So sound is in waves. When waves are converted to digitial, they are moved from infinite resolution to finite resolution. WAV or FLAC will both store and play back that wave exactly: within the limits of that finite resolution (obviously limited by the quality of the recording and DAC equipment).

This is all directly analogous to a camera. Real-like has infinite resolution (well, down to plank's constant). A digital camera converts that to a finite resolution.

So far we've discussed "uncompressed" and "lossless compression". There's also "lossy compression".

Lossy compression, like MP3, is willing to reproduce our wave imprecisely. It's willing to loose a little information in order to save space. There's as much an art as a science: as the compression attempts to make judgements as to "important" and "unimportant" changes.

In general: a high-bitrate MP3 compressed with good software is a very good source. There is, in my experience, more problems with mastering than compression issues from proper compression.

I think that you are concentrating on only one portion of the big picture and there are several things for you to consider.

- Is the song you downloaded simply mastered in a way you don't like (sadly, no way to confirm).

- Is the MP3 player the problem. If it can play lossless, then you can test this by ripping a CD of known quality and compare the play-back.

- Is the compression the problem (really determined by elimination more than anything else).