The MP3 is officially dead according to its creators.

MP3 took off because of piracy. MP3 was about to be passed over as a standard and die till pirates discovered the format and made it popular. This was back in the early and mid 90s. Back when 14K and 28K modems were fast. The only way to make music files practical to download was to compress them very small. MP3 made that possible. Read the book "How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy" by Stephen Witt (2016) for more info about the history. The portable players like the Diamond RIO were late to the game and weren't who discovered MP3 and made it popular. It was the pirates that made MP3 popular and what drove the desire for portable players like the RIO.

 

I'm still ripping CDs to FLACs (and sometimes MP3s as well) but I kind of wonder why I do it, since I never listen to any of them anymore

 

It's difficult to get rid of old habits, they are what link us to our past.

I stream my media from the JRiver media center to my car and while the files are all in FLAC format the server convert them to 320 kbps mp3 on the fly. I prefer listening to FLAC at home but I can't say that I'm able to notice the difference while driving.

 

You jostled my memory and I believe that you are right. I forgot the BBS and IRC from the time before the always on connection to the internet.

 

I've been using dBPoweramp for over 10 years now, so I have a good idea how to get around the neighborhood (configuration & settings). I've never used the DSP feature. Defeat's the purpose of the whole idea of ripping I would think.

Like I said, the difference is so minuscule between FLAC (compression level 8, "After Encoding Verify Written Audio" checked) and WAV conversion as to be almost imperceptible. The WAV file is ever so slightly noticeable on the higher frequencies at higher volume levels. Having said that I rip all my cd's to FLAC because the difference is almost non-existent and uses less storage space on my data storage device(s).

 

Exactly right.
If everything is right with your equipment/decoders, WAV and FLAC sound EXACTLY the same. There are a couple of different ways to prove it.
There was a thread about this several years ago. I posted a way you can visually confirm that they do sound the same.
I'll just post a quick link to the post, instead of typing it all over again.

 

How about Tidal? Not sure what kind of file they use.

 

I didn't realize Spotify used OGG. They have a good reason for doing so and it's still incredibly annoying.

 

MP3 dead huh? Well those Beatles files I played in the car this morning certainly sounded alive...

 

Tidal uses AAC and FLAC, but I still think the app would do the decoding and your DAC would just see a PCM bitstream.

 

A room with loudspeakers is perfectly find also, see my comments at the end of this post.

Audiophiles owned cassette's too. I think that higher bitrate MP3's and AAC formats trounce cassette's performance by a long way.

And, you should not.


I have a nice ESS Saber DAC in the Peachtree iNova, to I bring all the digital sources into the Peachtree to convert into analogue.

I have all kinds of amplifier's modern and vintage, SS and tubes. The same goes for speakers, turntables and carts.

I have an Oppo UDP-203, that I use as a transport only. I have CD's DVD's, Blu-ray disks and records.

I still listen to my streaming subscription Pandora channel's every day, including right now. This is despite the obvious given audiophile inherent dislike for "low quality", compressed "lossy" music.

It is not very audiophile like to have several systems playing at the same time. Right now, I'm playing two tube systems and two SS systems. I have new and vintage equipment playing at the same time. Home audio and pro-sound equipment in the same equipment mix.

All systems are pure 2-channel stereo. I use no digital surround sound processing except for decoding HT.

After all, nobody but me has to listen to this terrible, awful sounding system.

If I thought the sound quality of these streaming services were that bad, I would not listen to them. I would just listen to records and CD's, I have Spotify too. And used to have Rhapsody, before they became Napster.

 

Audiophile Rules are made to be broken. Well, some of them. Many of them.

 

I switched to FLAC a couple years ago.

 

If you feel that strongly about it, maybe you should petition for an amendment to the Constitution to bestow upon the Citizenry the right to hear FLAC.

 

I can still remember when the majority of my computer's audio files were in the relatively obscure RealAudio or TwinVQ formats... Now those made a low bitrate MP3 sound positively great, though I'm grateful that lossless alternatives have since mostly taken over!

 

I put up with the lossiness of MP3 just for their universal playback. Sorry. I love the MP3 format. Anything that gives me less headache playing it back is a good thing. I'm on older macs and FLAC is still a no go on them. Plus playback in my car on and on my Ps3 -- pretty much my main source these days.

 

I rip to FLAC for two main reasons: (1) It's lossless so all of the audio data in the original is there (and I prefer to listen to it when my equipment supports it), and (2) as a source for conversion into other formats. With FLAC I only have to rip the file once. Then, I can covert it as needed (not just to a format but to a chosen quality).

As far as MP3 goes, its my format of choice when it comes to lossy formats. Although other formats might sound better at lower bit rates, I don't think that there is as much of an advantage at the higher bit rates. I did a personal test and I couldn't consistently hear a difference between a FLAC and a LAME-encoded MP3 at 320kbps CBR. Another factor in favor of MP3 is that it is documented. As an example, the metadata standard for MP3 (ID3 Tag) is well documented, but when I tried to find out about metadata for an AAC file via an internet search all I could find is that the metadata is stored in atoms...that's it (I checked a while ago so this may no longer be the case).

 

True. I have the choice of wav on some devices, but they most inconveniently don't support tagging.

 

I tried playing one of my mp3s and it did not play so I tried another and not a sound. Darn they must all be dead.

 

I use MP3 Tag Editor on WAV files; works like a charm. And it's free

 

Very few players will read tags in WAV files. You can tag the WAV files, but that's not very helpful if the device you play them on won't read the tags and doesn't even know the tags are there.

 

Luckily for me when I burn a CD-R in WAV format ... oh, never mind. Say goodnight Gracie. Goodnight.

 

Interesting. Wav files will not even load up in mp3 Tag.

 

CD-R does not have a format. You do not store a format on a CD-R unless it's in data form. Your CD player does not read .WAV, .FLAC, .AAC, .AIFF, .mp3, or any other format.

 

There are plenty of CD players that can read mp3 files on data CD-Rs. They are usually portable or in cars though.