For the Audiophiles and DJs

[930clubber]

Bach's Brandenburg Concertos
 
 FLAC has been touted as lossless encoding but I can't hear the difference between that and the MP3 recordings on my Sennheiser HD 595s at the computer.

[sweetcell]

what bitrate are the mp3s encoded at?  the difference between flac and mp3 should be most noticeable in the high end.
 
 what kind of a soundcard do you have in your system?  that might be adding noise and distorsion, and potentially hidding the mp3 vs flac difference.
 
 when it comes to hearing damage, ability to perceive high end is the first thing to go.  if you've been to a lot of concerts without protection, you might not be able to hear a lot of the difference bewteen the two formats.

[azaghal1981]

^^Exactly; pay close attention to the cymbals, for instance.
 
 
 I personally can't hear much of a difference but don't think my soundcard is all that great.

[930clubber]

you make good points.  i don't question the merits of FLAC but the breadth of the audience that can benefit from it.  just curious if anyone here with whatever setup or life's experience with loud music can hear the difference.  fyi, the mp3s are encoded at 192kb/s. the audio is built into the motherboard of this workstation and i went to one uber loud concert as a teenager that probably blew the high end for the rest of my life right then.  
 
 

Originally posted by sweetcell:
  what bitrate are the mp3s encoded at?  the difference between flac and mp3 should be most noticeable in the high end.
 
 what kind of a soundcard do you have in your system?  that might be adding noise and distorsion, and potentially hidding the mp3 vs flac difference.
 
 when it comes to hearing damage, ability to perceive high end is the first thing to go.  if you've been to a lot of concerts without protection, you might not be able to hear a lot of the difference bewteen the two formats.

[beetsnotbeats]

Originally posted by azaghal1981:
  ^^Exactly; pay close attention to the cymbals, for instance.

Don't listen for cymbals in the Brandenburgs or you'll think you've gone deaf  

[sweetcell]

Originally posted by 930clubber:
 just curious if anyone here with whatever setup or life's experience with loud music can hear the difference.

using my laptop's internal soundcard and my cheap sony mdr-w08 headphones, i can't hear a difference.  one thing i will say is that these mp3s are high-quality encodings.  probably used professional-grade hardware, these did come from a commercial radio station after all.  i'm willing to bet that if you were to encode the flacs with some freeware software encoder, they wouldn't come out as nice.  i'm also too lazy to do this myself to confirm  
 
 

Originally posted by 930clubber:
 the audio is built into the motherboard of this workstation

highly questionable, then.  noise floor will be high, as will distorsion (relatively speaking).  it's practically impossible to get audiophile-level performance from a soundcard that's inside the same box as all the other parts of a computer - too much interference.  professional soundcards used for recording are always external (i have  this SC at home, love it).
 
 

Originally posted by 930clubber:
 i went to one uber loud concert as a teenager that probably blew the high end for the rest of my life right then.    

must have been REALLY loud if you think it caused that much damage.  was it worth it, at least?  

[930clubber]

I bought a USB DAC for input too, because the PC with _chassis plugin_ sound card was too noisy for recording.  The latest generations of onboard audio seem to isolate sound quite well. I haven't tested recording yet, only listening.  My cheap USB DAC can only monitor the audio input not anything from the PC itself.
 
 ...
 
 Was the concert worth it?  NO!  Nothing is worth a lifetime of upper frequency truncation!  And no, it was not Jimi Hendrix.
 
 

Originally posted by sweetcell:
   

Originally posted by 930clubber:
 just curious if anyone here with whatever setup or life's experience with loud music can hear the difference.

using my laptop's internal soundcard and my cheap sony mdr-w08 headphones, i can't hear a difference.  one thing i will say is that these mp3s are high-quality encodings.  probably used professional-grade hardware, these did come from a commercial radio station after all.  i'm willing to bet that if you were to encode the flacs with some freeware software encoder, they wouldn't come out as nice.  i'm also too lazy to do this myself to confirm    
 
   

Originally posted by 930clubber:
 the audio is built into the motherboard of this workstation

highly questionable, then.  noise floor will be high, as will distorsion (relatively speaking).  it's practically impossible to get audiophile-level performance from a soundcard that's inside the same box as all the other parts of a computer - too much interference.  professional soundcards used for recording are always external (i have  this SC at home, love it).
 
   

Originally posted by 930clubber:
 i went to one uber loud concert as a teenager that probably blew the high end for the rest of my life right then.      

must have been REALLY loud if you think it caused that much damage.  was it worth it, at least?    [/b]