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[~OHM~]

I'm trying to compare the sound out put...my files are flac and I have converted a album to mp3. If i just play a flac and then the same song in mp3 is this a true comparison or do I need to change settings?
thanks

[slerch666]

That's a fair enough "by the ear" comparison.

I assume you are trying to tell if you can hear a difference between an MP3 and a FLAC file to decide how to store your library? Or something along those lines?

Foobar has a pretty cool add in you can use to really gauge the differences for yourself, without injecting listening bias.

Since Foobar could maybe be seen as a competitor, I won't link to their stuff directly, but you need the install of Foobar, and then you want to do an Internet search for Foobar ABX Comparator.

It asks for the two files, and then will let you switch between the two dynamically, and randomly, playing back from the same location in each file. No stopping, starting, switching, restarting, switching, and adding the bias of "but it's lossless, it MUST be better" into the mix.

[~OHM~]

Yes you are right about future storage needs as I am almost maxed out on 8tb hdd and hate the thought of dividing between more than 1 hdd. I do have a nas as 1 backup for music and movies. I am so used to having the extra hdd inside what I call the Player pc and all backups look to it for additions and changes.

will take a look at foobar. thanks

[blgentry]

Yes you are right about future storage needs as I am almost maxed out on 8tb hdd and hate the thought of dividing between more than 1 hdd.

You'll never regret having all of your music stored losslessly.  Storage gets cheaper and larger every year; year after year, after year.  Ripping CDs stays roughly the same speed, mostly due to the difficulty of validating metadata and physically feeding CDs into a drive.  I would never, ever store music in a lossy format again without a primary copy that was lossless.

What's the problem with more than one drive?  MC can see as many drives as you have, all seamlessly.  Plus next year drives will be bigger.  You can get 10 TB drives today.

8TB of music seems like a crazy amount.  I'm guessing you have Video on that drive too.  Perhaps separating Music to one drive and Video to another is one approach.

Brian.

[slerch666]

Another thing you can do with multiple USB drives (can use a mix of internal SATA, SCSI, external USB/ESATA as well in one storage space) is set up a Storage Space that lets Windows pretend as many drives as you add to the space are one giant drive. Obviously there are limitations in that if you do this, you are "stuck" with Windows to access the drives, as I don't think you can just disconnect one of the USB drives and plug it into another machine and have it work as you expect. But if you are using a Windows 8+ machine already as the host, it is entirely possible and doable.

Accessing the storage space as a file share works as well for the connecting machine. You just can't unplug one drive and plug it into another system, so you lose data portability.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/storage-spaces-pools


The other REALLY big problem with Storage Spaces is there isn't a way to do it with a drive that already has data on it. This means the 8TB drive you have would need to be formatted. Might be something where you get a new USB drive (or internal), and before formatting it, etc, set that one drive up as a storage space. Copy all the data from your current 8TB drive to the storage space drive, then nuke the 8TB drive and join it to the Storage Space.

[slerch666]

And what I found with the comparison tool in Foobar is, that I have a 60-65% ability to tell the difference between FLAC and high-VBR MP3. That 65% is justification enough for me to keep my library in FLAC.

Everyone's ears and equipment are different.

As with blgentry, I wouldn't do a lossy conversion if I don't have the ability to import back in lossless. And since I don't mind have a bunch of USB drives plugged in, I have video in one drive, audio in another and treat it as one library, as blgentry recommends.

But that's me. Your mileage and desire will vary. Just giving options.

[Matt]

Obviously I'm a big fan of lossless.

But I spent a lot of time on lossy compression before writing Monkey's Audio.

I found a profile I was pretty darn happy with.  Then I got upgraded headphones and suddenly that profile was garbage! 

That's what pushed me over the edge to write Monkey's Audio.  That way any equipment upgrade I'll still have the best quality possible.

[Vocalpoint]

You'll never regret having all of your music stored losslessly. 

+100.

There really is no reason whatsoever to ever commit to any lossy format (as a "master") now or any time in the future.

MP3 has just two uses for me now - my voiceover work - and when I need tunes for the tightest of constraints like maybe a portable player that does not do lossless or one that has just 32GB of space etc etc).

VP

[~OHM~]

All great ideas for me to research thanks. Yes I have no plans on getting rid of flack files, just looking for a way to save them and move on to mp3 daily playback as I can't tell the difference.

[slerch666]

Obviously I'm a big fan of lossless.

Hey Matt... since you're here...

Have you seen the Foobar comparison tool? Is this something we could do w/ JRiver instead? It was the only use I've had for Foobar in years. And it's not something I need or want to do often, but it was cool to have the AB/XY comparison capability.

[Vocalpoint]

Move on to mp3 daily playback as I can't tell the difference.

That's a odd reason to set yourself up for a bunch of work every time you want to listen to something.

Maybe don't overthink it and enjoy the FLAC for what it is.

VP

[Headcool]

Just buy a new HDD. A 8 TB HDD is just about 250$. Reencoding Terabytes of media is not worth the effort. And even if you can't hear the difference between a ~1mbps flac- and a ~320kbps file in a blind comparison, that doesn't mean the flac file won't sound better. The placebo effect will make the flac file sound better, if you are knowing you are listening to a flac file.

[pschelbert]

Obviously I'm a big fan of lossless.

But I spent a lot of time on lossy compression before writing Monkey's Audio.

I found a profile I was pretty darn happy with.  Then I got upgraded headphones and suddenly that profile was garbage! 

That's what pushed me over the edge to write Monkey's Audio.  That way any equipment upgrade I'll still have the best quality possible.

Hi Matt

I use a lot the foobar2000 ABX-comaprator tool to compare CD and highres audio in different formats.
Nice would be just to load ABX-comparator into JRiver, like with VST-plug ins.
I do now also some test on DAC AD-DA  and DA-AD conversion to see what is really audible.

Peter

[DJLegba]

Starting and stopping, switching back and forth, listening to the same few seconds over and over may seem like a good way to compare, but it's stressful and not at all a normal way to listen to music. And it's too easy to focus on the wrong thing - in a 10 second test you might think the speaker that emphasizes the cymbals is more resolving and therefore better, but after an hour it could simply be tiring on your ears. It's simple enough to mix FLAC and mp3 in a playlist and set it to shuffle, although I think longer listening sessions are a better test.

[blgentry]

^ DJLegba you bring up excellent points that aren't usually considered in "A/B testing".  That type of testing isn't natural or comfortable for humans.  Long term testing trumps all.

My personal experience with this (lossy versus lossless) was kind of a big deal for me.  But I won't derail this thread further.

Brian.