New user....2 Basic Questions.

[garycameron]

This is very likely the most basic 2 questions yet posted. I am a music lover and not too smart on the digital front. I have just imported my music to media monkey 5 for windows after becoming just too disgusted with apple to use my itunes any more. My basic questions are....is there a superior file type for audio quality.....and do you recommend any type of portable device to sync with?
Many Thanks..!!

Gary Cameron.

[Lowlander]

Lossless formats are better as they provide the best (original) quality. FLAC is probably the best format as it's widely compatible and has good tagging support (unlike WAV for example).

What portable device is best depends on your needs. I prefer Android devices as they can use MediaMonkey for Android.

[garycameron]

Thank you for taking the time to reply.
I appreciate it. I shall now look into converting my music to FLAC format and have a look at android devices.
Thanks again.

[Rob_S]

In my opinion, taking existing mp3 or other format and converting to flac will not gain you back anything that was lost in the original translation, especially if the original recording or conversion is not very good.

Best to keep as is, and look for original recordings in lossless format. Of course, you can also search for better mp3 or other formats with higher bitrates.

I submit that very few ears can perceive the difference between good recordings in whatever the formats.

Also, I suspect you might perceive much more so the difference in original recording equipment and surroundings, and in output hardware and surroundings while listening.

[drakinite]

Yes - Converting from a lower-quality file format into a higher-quality file format will gain nothing. It's like taking a tiny JPEG and scaling it up 10 times. It'll be in a higher resolution, but you won't gain any quality. The extra information (detail) was essentially destroyed when downscaling the image in the first place.

In my opinion, a high bitrate MP3 is more than enough for a great listening experience; but granted, I'm not an audiophile. Some people do swear by FLAC; it's definitely up to preference.

[Barry4679]

The other thing to mention is that a flac copy of a track is 6 to 10 times larger that the highest quality mp3 copy of the same track. This extra size has storage, backup and streaming cost considerations.

Disclaimer. All my tracks are flac, but in most listening situations the benefit is somewhere between meaningless and marginal, tending towards the former IMO.

As LowLander said, Flac is "lossless" but a lot of science has gone towards ensuring the "losses" are imperceptible, unless you happen to be a bat or a whale or an oscilloscope. And even they would be struggling when the track is played in typical listening situations, or upon ubiquitous music players.

[yarguy]

I can -today - buy a 5 terrabyte external drive for $150 CDN. That FLAC takes more digital space than MP3 is not an issue. (I will admit that asking $244 for a 1T micro sd is a bit much, but a 128GB card is about $40 and will hold a lot of FLAC files.)

The issue of whether one can tell the audible difference between MP3 and FLAC depends on the quality of one's audio equipment. It's probably not going to be noticeable with your android phone and ear buds or your standard computer speakers. Good quality equipment is not cheap, of course, unlike digital storage.

Noticing the difference depends as well on the quality of the original recording and that differs considerably. (The recent release of Coltrane's Seattle live performance of Love Supreme, for example, was not recorded under ideal circumstances and not on ideal equipment, and so hearing an MP3/FLAC difference will be unlikely.)

And so many adults now suffer from some form of hearing impairment that makes hearing the difference less likely.

The original poster was using iTunes so many of their tracks are likely to be M4A. Some of these may be ALAC format which don't need to be reformatted. Thanks to Apple for using the same extension for two different formats.

It is worth noting that CD quality is itself a lossy format and it is possible to purchase digital tracks in higher resolution in FLAC (such 24/96) and DSD formats and, in my experience, these are easily distinguished from MP3. Normally a cd would be ripped to FLAC 16/44.1. 7 Digital and Presto Music often have higher resolution versions for download - at a higher cost naturally.

[Barry4679]

I can -today - buy a 5 terrabyte external drive for $150 CDN. That FLAC takes more digital space than MP3 is not an issue. (I will admit that asking $244 for a 1T micro sd is a bit much, but a 128GB card is about $40 and will hold a lot of FLAC files.)

Well, I have got a lot of flac files.

Agreed, but that is not quite the end of the costs if you also include offsite backup ... and time taken is a cost also.

I am becoming less reliant upon storing and cycling USB drives at friends homes. Am now also backing up to Google Drive, which has the additional advantage of enabling streaming from my collection when away from home. So this decision adds data transfer and storage changes also to be taken into consideration.

[Snofru]

I did some experimentation with mp3 vs FLAC on different equipment and with different versions of the same song. I found these dependencies:

By far the biggest effect has your audio equipment. A high quality headphone gives a much better result than an average headphone (comparing something like 400€ vs. 150€). The same goes for speakers.

A still significant effect comes from the version of the song. A remixed or remastered song can sound a lot better (or worse) than the original version.

MP3 vs. FLAC had nearly no hearable effect for me as long as you use mp3 with a high bit rate. 128 kb/s can sound pretty bad, above 256 kb/s it sounds good to me - but this is only discernable when the equipment is alright.

As an android playing device a smartphone usually should be sufficient, even the old one which you don't use as your daily companion anymore. An alternative could be something like the Sony NW-A105 which is small, has some dedicated buttons and might sound somewhat better (I don't hear the difference to my Samsung Galaxy S9, though).

I have ripped my CDs to FLAC anyway, maybe I once have a device that shows the difference to me, so why take the risk and use a lower quality codec. When I buy songs digitally I have no problem getting them in mp3 320 kb/s.

[Lowlander]

I recommend lossless, as you can't upgrade lossy if you wanted to in the future (ie. you'd have to re-rip your CD's to a lossy format). You'd generally not hear the difference though (I rarely do with my mixed MP3/FLAC library).

FLAC is a compressed (still lossless) format so it does save some space, but lossless does take up considerably more space. I think it's worth the investment for future proofing, but it's a personal decision at the end of the day.

You can, if needed to do so, create a MP3 backup of your FLAC files to save space on the backup.

[drakinite]

Oh yeah? Well I listen to all my music in 8 bit MIDI.