Amazon flac or wav Downloads?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by robertawillisjr, Oct 30, 2012.

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  1. Joy-of-radio

    Joy-of-radio Forum Resident

    Location:
    Central ME
    Good advice on preview clips and making inquiries via forms such as these before committing to purchases.

    When it comes to MP3s, I prefer 256kbps or higher. I have a fairly large collection of MP3s at lower bit rates, but they are mostly sourced from needle drops of vintage 60s and early 70s 45s, which are not known for high fidelity by any stretch of the imagination. As for well mastered and modern recordings, lossless is the only way to go!
     
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  2. colinu

    colinu I'm not lazy, I'm energy saving!

    With all the music mergers we are closer, although that may not necessarily be a good thing.

    The catalog that I associate with Capitol-EMI is like the spoils of a divorce. Most of the assets went to Universal, but some were picked up by Warner.

    Off-topic, one of the reasons I think that Universal has been a survivor has been its marketing, specifically the 20th Century Masters collection. It was cheap, and gave the average consumer the tracks they liked. It met the LCD (Lowest Common Denominator). The nearest comparable offering is the Sony Legacy "The Essential ..." series. Similar to Universal's Gold series (which were often two-disc expanded versions of the "20th Century Masters" compilations) this served of distillations of an artist's career and where strong enough to compete against the cherry-picking that a decade of itunes has brought. Capitol's attempts at such a series were half-hearted at best: the "Classic Masters" series. Ditto Warner. IMO, both Universal and Sony made greater exploitations of their catalog titles through reissues with expanded track listings.
     
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  3. fuse999

    fuse999 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Texas
    Do you think a 38% compressed Flac file will sound the same as an uncompressed Wav file?
     
  4. Hotdog

    Hotdog Well-Known Member

    Location:
    England, UK
    I'd still say it gives a good indication of the sound quality prior to purchasing.
     
  5. Hotdog

    Hotdog Well-Known Member

    Location:
    England, UK
    Part of the reason I decided to 'go lossless' was because I kept pondering which bitrate for mp3s was best. I did some reading around, and there are varying consensuses on the subject. Most seem to agree 320 is 'good enough'. I had already ripped my collection to 192kbps, which one 'expert' said was enough for 'most' pop songs. Yet why do Amazon et al sell music at higher bitrates? What is 'enough'? If I ask someone else to rip tracks for me, should I request 256 or 320? But then I would be stuck with that, unlike lossless formats which are flexible. With lossless, the quality is all the same, rather than having to ponder about 128/160/192/256/320. It solves the question. A friend told me he was collecting lossless tracks about six weeks ago, and outlined the reasons I pointed out earlier (ie. cheap storage), which is when I began to seriously consider it.

    The argument that you cannot compare film and music formats is a good one. The difference between SD and HD on a screen is indeed far more noticeable to the average consumer, whereas people listening to music on their phones or small PC speakers won't hear much difference between sound formats, if any (it is indeed odd in a way that film quality has gone up with the digital revolution, to HD, but sound quality has gone down, from CD to compressed mp3). However, the obsessives among us (including myself) will wonder what is 'missing' from mp3 tracks. We would want to hear music in the best quality possible - as I believe anyone who truly cares about music or sound should.
     
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  6. shaboo

    shaboo Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bonn, Germany
    FLAC is decoded to WAV before playback. After decoding there's no longer a difference in size, and there's - of course - also no difference in sound.
     
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  7. Joy-of-radio

    Joy-of-radio Forum Resident

    Location:
    Central ME
    I have a question; I have been ripping my CDs to WAV format via ExactAudioCopy (EAC) because my current portable digital audio player does not support FLAC. The playback of WAVs is seamless, which is fantastic! If I convert to FLAC and playback on a device such as a FIIO X3 digital audio player, will the tracks be played seamlessly as well?
     
  8. johnborzatti

    johnborzatti Senior Member

    Entering the digital file world is confusing, but I held off for YEARS because low bit rate Mp3 was not for me, made my head hurt. So when I started I went full rez or nothing. Starting with WAV then FLAC!! FLAC is marvelous at whatever bit rate (44.1 or higher) . I had downloaded some titles that were from HDCD encoded sources (unadvertised as such also) , and when played back or even burned to CD-R, the HDCD decoding LED lit up on my DAC proving that the files were fully restored because as we all know if you change the bit rate on an HDCD encoded file you will lose the bit that is encoded on each word for this process. So that proved to me that I had a bit for bit transfer of the original source. Whatever the FLAC codec compresses to shave down the storage space fully restores on playback.
     
  9. shaboo

    shaboo Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bonn, Germany
    FLAC is gapless playback capable, but ultimately this depends on how the playback of FLAC files is implemented in your device/software. If FLAC is fully supported, then playback will be as gapless as with WAV files; if it doesn't work, it's not the format's fault.
     
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  10. Robert C

    Robert C Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    Amazon has all the lossless files, just like Apple. The record companies do not do the file conversion.
     
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  11. johnborzatti

    johnborzatti Senior Member

    Shaboo speaks the truth:

    "FLAC is gapless playback capable, but ultimately this depends on how the playback of FLAC files is implemented in your device/software. If FLAC is fully supported, then playback will be as gapless as with WAV files; if it doesn't work, it's not the format's fault."

    My first generation Marantz file player only supports gapless on one flavor of streaming, not any of the supported file codecs (mp3, WAV, FLAC). A quick inquiry to Marantz support also revealed that they are not going to fix it or upgrade it in any firmware updates. So if you are going in that direction, check the firmware on the hardware first. I thought this to be ridiculous for a supposedly dedicated unit but this may be only in early models from all manufactures as everyone seems to be offering file player components now. I have to manipulate the file myself to combine any bled together tracks (especially live albums) if I want to hear them gapless.
     
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  12. Joy-of-radio

    Joy-of-radio Forum Resident

    Location:
    Central ME
    Thanks Johmborzatti and Christian. I'm glad you perceived that I meant gapless as opposed to seamless. I'm desirous of the Fiio X3 portable DAP. I'll make sure it supports gapless playback of FLAC before buying.
     
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