Any reason to rip to flac instead of 320kbs MP3s for car listening?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by RickH, Jun 22, 2015.

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  1. In my car, I play AAC files at an estimated variable bit rate of 224 kbps. They sound great in my opinion.
     
  2. Raylinds

    Raylinds Resident Lake Surfer

    I consider myself a picky listener with decent ears. I had a good quality sound system in my Ford Explorer and played FLAC files. However, when I played 320kbs MP3 files from an ipod one day, I could not tell the difference in my vehicle. And this is coming from someone who has always poo-pooed MP3. However, I must also admit that the acoustic environment in my Explorer was not the best. YMMV
     
  3. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    While both would be close sounding in the car, do remember that FLAC support is limited to difficult in the mobile entertainment world. MP3 and WMA are the most common supported formats. Therefore, 320 KPBS MP3 makes sense here.
     
    Grant likes this.
  4. Kyhl

    Kyhl On break

    Location:
    Savage
    Rip them once to lossless and be done with it. Don't be like the rest of us that ripped to MP3 only to start over and rerip to lossless.
    Rip it lossless then convert to MP3 for your portable devices if necessary. I only keep once copy on my computer these days, lossless, plus a backup.
     
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  5. RickH

    RickH Connoisseur of deep album cuts Thread Starter

    Location:
    Raleigh, NC
    Yep...and I've decided for purposes of the car, there should not be any audible difference in sound between FLAC files and MP3s ripped at 320kbps VBR (at least no differences that my 57-year-old ears could detect!)
     
  6. nbakid2000

    nbakid2000 On Indie's Cutting Edge

    Location:
    Springfield, MO
    It's not the mp3s that are the problem, it's your deck. CDs sound better in my car and I have a fairly high end deck in my car. The same thing applies for a friend of mine's deck...the CDs just sound better than the flash drives.
     
    JeffMo likes this.
  7. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    Yup! Just try it, it's not hard. Rip a few selections both ways and listen. 320 still eats a chunk of space and takes a bit longer to copy, so personally I'm happy at 224k VBR and highest quality settings. I do not find this exactly equivalent to lossless, but still enjoyable which is the main thing to me.
    YEMD, though.
    (Your Ears/brain May Differ ha ha)
     
  8. o0OBillO0o

    o0OBillO0o Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    Hi there, thanks for responding and I ran down a few of your comments.
    BTW: iTunes and Roon store images separate folder, so there may be some evidence.
    • What Metadata are you specifically talking about, and how would you use it? Otherwise, it's excess information that doesn't have a purpose.
    • How can you prove or disprove AIFF files drain battery life? Do you have a published study?
    • Lossless playback is Lossless, but file formats are not the same and support is varied across devices.
    You have a good opinion, if you could support it with facts then we could have better understanding.

    okay- be sarcastic, fine. I heard a difference. I encourage anyone to listen to a lossless version of their favorite artists for two weeks, then switch to 256Kbps AAC version (iTunes will can convert this for you). Even in a car, with high ambient noise, the greater bandwidth of lossless music was apparent to me. Bandwidth is the range of audio frequencies and it's a known fact that lossy files reduce bandwidth. If you don't hear a difference that's no big deal- it's preference. Just like Beer, wine, coffee, or soda.
     
  9. o0OBillO0o

    o0OBillO0o Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    Restated, True or false? "I've decided for purposes of the car, there was not any audible difference in sound between FLAC files and MP3s ripped at 320kbps VBR."
     
  10. nbakid2000

    nbakid2000 On Indie's Cutting Edge

    Location:
    Springfield, MO
    Re: lossless sounding better than mp3 or AAC in your experience: I submit this was your imagination or you used a crappy encoder or it's your deck doing things. It's not an mp3 vs lossless issue in a moving car at 65 or 70 mph.
     
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  11. Dudley Canuck

    Dudley Canuck Active Member

    Location:
    Canada
    It depends on how quiet the cabin is.
     
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  12. Dudley Canuck

    Dudley Canuck Active Member

    Location:
    Canada
    I love your Avatar!
     
    Hail Vinyl! likes this.
  13. o0OBillO0o

    o0OBillO0o Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    I did use iTunes to compress and import songs onto an iPhone.

    Even Vidiot heard a difference in bitrate in the car.

     
  14. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    "Even" Vidiot? What am I, deaf? :-/
     
  15. o0OBillO0o

    o0OBillO0o Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    Apologies- the context was related to this post ,Today at 1:36 PM. Sorry if you felt it was a personal attack- I did not intend it to be.
     
  16. Larry Johnson

    Larry Johnson Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago area
    For me, for everyday trips in the car, lossy is fine. For long cross-country trips it's a different story. My main problem with lossy files is that after listening to them for awhile I tend to get a headache or otherwise just want to turn the music down or off. So for me I keep my Sansa and cellphone stocked with flac files.
     
    o0OBillO0o likes this.
  17. o0OBillO0o

    o0OBillO0o Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    I have found similar results. Lossy music on long trips (That include FM and XM) can be more fatiguing than CDs or other raw format music.

    I still do the lossy music. I ripped many CDs to lossy formats and I haven't made the effort to re- rip. So if the iPhone/iPod is on shuffle I may get a mix of formats, but not on Tidal.

    Don't get me wrong this isn't a binary answer or your must do "X" or "die." It depends on what objective we are trying to achieve. It is important to recognize that some may determine a difference (and yes I agree some may not determine a difference). Now difference of a opinion or fact we could go on and on. Perhaps continue on until an AES study is published. (then we can debate about the study ;) )

    Enjoy your mobile music listening experience. :D
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2015
  18. Jay_S

    Jay_S Well-Known Member

    FLAC files are not that much larger than 320kbs mp3s. If you have a choice just use FLAC.
     
  19. toddrhodes

    toddrhodes Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Bend, IN
    So I had an occasion to sort of test this out today. Had 5 hours of driving in front of me and nary a burned CD or digital audio player with music loaded to try so, I figured out, 20 minutes into my car trip, how to stream music from my JRiver library to my phone. So, suddenly I have my entire home library at my fingertips. I tried it first with no transcoding. All of the files in my library are FLAC ranging from Redbook to 24/192. This worked for the most part but on particularly large files it would buffer and frustrate the hell out of me, especially when said buffering just had to occur during Pink Floyd > Pulse > Comfortably Numb guitar solo. So I tried transcoding to 320 and this worked a treat in MOST circumstances. If I was in a very bad reception area, it would still stop or buffer but this was rare.

    I could not tell an audible difference between lossless and 320 in the car. The car in question is a 2010 TL with the Tech package (ELS DVD Audio package). It's actually a pretty fun setup for a stock system. In fact, with the increased fidelity of pedestrian 320 kbps MP3 I was able to dial it in pretty well. Once I was done, I was rocking out for about 4 hours today :)

    The point of my post is - you're not going to judge music while you're driving (hopefully) so it's better to maximize your disc space and/or data usage by using 320 mp3 at best, but try to go higher than 128, the difference between 128 and 320 was immediately apparent. Going higher than 320 proved no gain (to me) for a considerably higher disc space and/or data usage cost. To be clear, I did not try anything between 320 and 128.

    Jay_S - I haven't converted some of my bigger FLAC recordings to 320 MP3 but at 110Mb for some of the largest FLAC files, I have to imagine the MP3 version would be an order of magnitude smaller. I will check later to make sure I'm not just talking out of my you know what and making assumptions :)
     
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  20. o0OBillO0o

    o0OBillO0o Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    Good report! I also enjoy the JRMC stream my library feature. The Elliot Scheiner designed system is excellent! ( http://www.acura.com/ELSSoundSystem.aspx)

    Given your circumstances of space and bandwidth, the point you make is completely understandable.
     
    toddrhodes likes this.
  21. Prophetzong

    Prophetzong Forum Resident

    Location:
    NE WISC
    This thread is a good reason to just play your CDs in your car. And not worry about ripping them to MP3 vs flac.
     
    o0OBillO0o likes this.
  22. toddrhodes

    toddrhodes Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Bend, IN
    I took a page out of my home audio playbook and just turned off all the extra stuff - no more pro-logic, no more speed volume control (SVC) and suddenly, I had palpable midbass. Vent the sunroof and it's game over though :( Either way, a little tweaking to the treble (+1) and balance control (Left +1) and it was actually a bit impressive! I swear I got a reasonable sense of depth on a drum fill during War Pigs if I remember right, which I probably don't. This is my 2nd ELS system and I really do think they did a good job for a car environment. The TL is not whisper quiet either, so you just make do.
     
  23. toddrhodes

    toddrhodes Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Bend, IN
    This is not everyone's use case, unfortunately.
     
  24. Prophetzong

    Prophetzong Forum Resident

    Location:
    NE WISC
    In that case just rip to flac and be done with it.
     
  25. toddrhodes

    toddrhodes Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Bend, IN
    My car doesn't play FLAC and my data usage is capped at 2Gb. What now?
     
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