Thread: Why go flac?

I used to have 20 gigs full of MP3s in my hard-drive until one day on some forum, I heard some people talking about the wickedly awesome FLAC format that has super-duper quality, but a very large size. I decided to give it a shot, I downloaded an FLAC album off the internet Bullet For My Valentine - Fever, and each song was atleast 20-30 MB as compared to the usual 5-10 mb. I was expecting to be blooowwnn away but guess what? I wasn't. Yes, there was a difference but it was not the difference between a CamRip and BR-Rip. And most of all it's not something that justifies the 3-4x increase in size. Fine if there's a song I reaaly realy like I MIGHT download the 20 mb file in FLAC, but having a whole hard-drive full of FLAC songs? Nah bro I'l just stick to mp3s which IMO sound beautiful as anything and I dont need to have some semi-placebo satisfaction that I'm listening to 'lossless' to enjoy my music. PS: my car mp3 player doesnt play FLAC either.

Can you seriously say you can´t hear the difference?
Well, I guess if you don´t download to actually keep the music long, and mostly use it in a car or on a portable device the difference won´t matter that much. But for me it is also a matter of having my archive in the best possible quality for the future.

Also I really don´t mind the size anymore. 20MB for a file, with todays HDD-prices?
I have 8TB in my home server, and room for more drives as it fills up :)

I'm new to the lossless scene, but I gotta say that I love it. I don't really use FLAC, but rather Apple Lossless so that I can keep my music in iTunes and on my iPhone. I have a Boston Acoustic sound system at my home, and playing these tracks sounds amazing!

A song on FLAC format (In general) means the best audio quality you can get.

I personally like to save space essentially for any other thing that I may want to get. Like Jschro14 said, a FLAC file is an option if you can't get a song with a smaller file size in HQ, like a MP3 with a bitrate of 320 kb/s. For me, there is no need to waste space in something that you still can get in small sizes.
scoobydoo, however, is right about the archival purposes, specially if you are a collectionist.

because I have lots of HDD space and kickass speakers and headphones

why FLAC, now i collect WAV files.. well i cant find much difference between flac and wav.. but there is a lot of difference in quality of mp3s and FLACs. u notice minute details in a FLAC song which u would have never noticed in a mp3 version.

The bottom line is, if you have good equipment you should use FLAC. And I mean REALLY good equipment. I have a pair of etymotic er4s (see head-fi if you want to know how good these are), and I can barely hear the difference. Then I tried to feed the source (ipod video 5g) from a LOD (line out dock) into my mini3 amp and then to my headphones, still barely any difference. FLAC is really a hype unless you are an audiophile. I wouldn't go down from a bitrate of 320 though, then it starts getting messy.

Originally Posted by hooligunz

why FLAC, now i collect WAV files.. well i cant find much difference between flac and wav.. but there is a lot of difference in quality of mp3s and FLACs. u notice minute details in a FLAC song which u would have never noticed in a mp3 version.

Both FLAC and wav are lossless,but FLAC should give a better compression than WAV (pcm? adpcm?)
Here some info about lossless codecs
Lossless comparison - Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase
Radified Guide to lossless audio compression [loss less]

..I was going to say that I like the quality that comes with FLAC files, but for me they are impractical because I am a big iTunes fan and iPhone owner... but I noticed someone mentioned apple lossless format, which I have not considered in a while. How good is apple lossless? Any avid users?