iTunes lossless compression - worth it over 128?

[Psychobert]

Is it significantly better than 128kbs? What about file sizes? Just wondering if its worth redigitising the CDs I've already done at 128 for best quality through my stereo.. Tempted by a set of Sennheiser IE8s having heard some last night - significant step up on my CX earbuds..

[Blue Meanie]

I have most of my stuff at 256, or 320. There is a difference even on the laptop.

[FlossyThePig]

What do your ears tell you? Rip some tracks at different compresion rates and listen to them. Don't play the my bitrate is bigger than yours game if you can't hear the difference.

[Psychobert]

FlossyThePig said:

What do your ears tell you? Rip some tracks at different compresion rates and listen to them. Don't play the my bitrate is bigger than yours game if you can't hear the difference.

Good point..

Ears tell me that if I'm at home and want to listen to music, I warm up the Arcam CD player. If I've staggered home from the pub, I'll use itunes..

I doubt the earbuds are good enough to make a difference, but I could tell the difference with lossless and IE8s on a friend's setup..

So.. I guess the question is whether to redo the music and not bother with CDs - if the lossless is as good as CDs (128 sure isn't..), or sick to CDs to listen to and itunes for background music.

[Zod]

Apple Lossless sounds much better thanthe standard 128 kbps, whether on ipod, in hte car or on a squeezebox into a good stereo system.

I still accidentally have the odd album on my ipod twice in both formats and I cna tell straight away if I put the wrong one on in the car.

[FlossyThePig]

Psychobert said:

FlossyThePig said:

What do your ears tell you? Rip some tracks at different compresion rates and listen to them. Don't play the my bitrate is bigger than yours game if you can't hear the difference.

Good point..

Ears tell me that if I'm at home and want to listen to music, I warm up the Arcam CD player. If I've staggered home from the pub, I'll use itunes..

I doubt the earbuds are good enough to make a difference, but I could tell the difference with lossless and IE8s on a friend's setup..

So.. I guess the question is whether to redo the music and not bother with CDs - if the lossless is as good as CDs (128 sure isn't..), or sick to CDs to listen to and itunes for background music.

What are IE8s?

I've bought some music from Passionato and they use either 320kbps DRM-free MP3 or lossless FLAC. As they only sell classical recordings I would suggest that a greater proportion of their customer base will be more critical than iTunes customers. Most people can't tell the difference between 320kbps and lossless but your ears may be more discerning.

[JustinP1]

Psychobert said:

[
So.. I guess the question is whether to redo the music and not bother with CDs - if the lossless is as good as CDs (128 sure isn't..), or sick to CDs to listen to and itunes for background music.

If you are listening at home, why re-encode them at all?

Storage is so cheap now, my whole collection can fit on a drive with the totally original WAV file data which costs around £40.

[Psychobert]

FlossyThePig said:

What are IE8s?

http://www.sennheiser.co.uk/uk/home_en.nsf/root/private_headphones_portable_500772

These with lossless compression on an ipod touch were very impressive.. Not cheap and huge amounts of fakes available all over the place. Tottenham Ct Road shops were selling them for £80 over list a while ago as they were guaranteeing them to be genuine..

[Psychobert]

JustinP1 said:

If you are listening at home, why re-encode them at all?

Storage is so cheap now, my whole collection can fit on a drive with the totally original WAV file data which costs around £40.

That's just it.. Currently if I listen at home I tend to use the CD player, whereas if its background music I tend to use the files encoded at 128 as invariably I'm cooking, talking over it etc etc.. If I redo the files as lossless I can get the same quality as CD with the ease of access of an ipod..

As you said, storage is so cheap its really not an issue at all to redo the files onto a larger disk. I'm going to need a bigger ipod though as even at 128 I've probably only got half my CDs on the current 16gb nano..

[wiffmaster]

I just switched my entire collection from ~V0 MP3 to lossless Flac. The difference through a set of earbuds is (to my ear) inperceptible. The difference through a good set of closed-ear headphones is noticeable and the difference through a reasonable set of speakers is very noticeable.

Do a blind test using the files found here and see if you think it'll be worth it.

If you do go the lossless route, then you will find more systems/software are compatible with Flac than are compatible with Apple Lossless (ALAC). Also, the hardware in an ipod can't really convey the differences between MP3/Lossless and you're probably not going to have sufficient space on the ipod for all your music in a lossless format.

I solve this by having two libraries - one in Flac for the main system and one in V0 MP3 for the ipod. Whenever I obtain a new Flac, I simply click a button and a V0 MP3 is created in the other library. Put the MP3s on the ipod and use the Flac for everything else.

Edited by wiffmaster on Monday 29th March 18:42

[Psychobert]

wiffmaster said:

I solve this by having two libraries

Thats just the conclusion I'd come to then rapidly decided that was a bad idea.. I can see all sorts of confusion with that.. (Although would save me having to upgrade the nano..)

[wiffmaster]

Psychobert said:

wiffmaster said:

I solve this by having two libraries

Thats just the conclusion I'd come to then rapidly decided that was a bad idea.. I can see all sorts of confusion with that.. (Although would save me having to upgrade the nano..)

I use Foobar as my main media player. I've set it up so that all my lossless Flac music is in Foobar. I then click a button and Foobar will scan the lossless library, identify which files do not yet have an MP3 equivalent and then create an MP3 version of these files. It basically creates a separate MP3 library in a separate directory and keeps it up to date. The folder structure and all filenames/metadata is carried across from the lossless library to the new MP3 library. Just run the command once a week and it ensures the MP3 library is kept completely up to date. I then use itunes to manage the MP3 library and transfer it to the ipod.

If you were doing it manually I could see it becoming confusing. But using the 'convert' feature in Foobar means you can keep a Lossless and MP3 library synchronised very easily. I think dual libraries are the way to go, especially when you consider my lossless 4313 song library currently takes up 123GB!