/mtv/ - Media and Interests

because its death metal.

To hear any noticeable difference between anything above 320 kbps you have to have good quality headphonos, and they have to be dedicated listening phones, not gaming headsets. Like at least a pair of ~$270 Audio-Technica headphones, or something.

>>145425 (Me)
IMO it's not worth it unless you're an audio engineer or you're a gigasperg with extremely sensitive ears whose hyperfixation is lossless music (average user of audiophile forums)

>>145427
So basically its a fetish for rich autists?

i think you have to have snca 500000 dollar headphones to hear any noticable penis difference

for the average phono mp3 320k sounds good enough and you can only really notice tbe difference on high end headphones

>>145423 (OP)
I have audio engineer headphones and even I can't hear the difference. Probably because I listen at low volumes to preserve my hearing. I only download .flacs because I'm an ocd gigasperg who must have pristine and perfect music files otherwise I stim uncontrollably.

I record music and I can't tell the difference between mp3 and wav even on my own tracks. Doesn't matter if I'm listening on studio headphones or speakers. There was a blind listening test in my audio production class and no one could tell the difference there either. Lossless audio is only good if you want less storage for whatever reason

the point of .flac to me is that you're able to convert them to any lossless format you want without incurring lossy -> lossy artifacts.
but even though im an obscure music autist i still download 320kbps mp3 because theres literally no scientific difference between that and a flac, + it takes up 50% less space
i also dont give a single shit about the .log file or having a "100% rip" even though tracker autists lose their doodoo over it

Over the ear headphones are only for noise cancelling, you need the ear piece that goes in your ear canal to hear flac difference. And u can get those kind of head phones very cheap on Amazon if you do research

audiophile are being scammed this way to waste more space on xeir hard drives

>>145465
>theres literally no scientific difference
thats assuming its a well-converted high bitrate mp3

>>145425
i listened to tracks with a 500 dollar pair of USB DAC sennheisers at 96k and still can't tell the difference between opus and flac without low bitrates involved

>>145430
Pay no heed to the -phile suffix. Its just a compulsive autistic obsession. No different than muh guuuns, and no different than muh traains.

>>145518
This is true, the idea of a perfect sound file, unscathed by the long arm of the lossy compression (o algo) tempted me as well. But alas, if I started downloading massive Flacs I could never be happy with just mp3s and I wouldnt even be able to tell the difference.

>>145519
normalgods have trouble telling the difference between the shitty youtube compression and a good quality mp3, i dont think its possible to tell the difference between 192kbps mp3 and flac unless you're like 6 and can still hear well into the 20khz range

What do you guys think about CDs? I have a few and they obviously sound better than youtube but how do they hold up against high quality mp3s?

>>145737
cds are uncompressed on par with most flacs

>>145738
>most
Marge? Although I do have noise induced hearing damage so I probably wouldn't be able to hear the difference between a CD and a high end flac

>>145739
>>145737
CD's are great as the cheapest and best way to listen to music on a physical format (they sound cleaner in comparison to vinyls for example), but downloading a FLAC album on soulseek or nicotine plus will sound the exact same as a CD.
The quality of music usually depends on what sound system you have, you can make casettes sound great if you have a good casette deck with a solid DAC, but a regular CD/casette portable player is just going to sound average at best.

>>145740
Doctos

>>145762
ohnonono nusoi

>>145756
I recommend having an mp3 player app on your phone, and dowloading music in 320kbps

For home use, CDs are good. Theres no point having high quality music without high quality sound systems THOUGH, so get good headphones and good speakers.

I only do lossless if it's not available to buy in a compressed format.
I prefer to buy music rather than pirate because it incentivizes the continued creation of things I like.

>>145780
>I prefer to buy music rather than pirate because it incentivizes the continued creation of things I like.
Thank God I don't have to care about this because I exclusively listen to dead guys

There's a very slight difference in SOME very well recorded and engineered tracks, but you need well above average gear. As in the usual Sony, Bose, Apple, and Sennheiser (Veilheiser), and similar headphones won't make the difference you would expect for the money spent. And .flack only amounts to the track sounding a tiny bit more "large" or 'open". It's a borderline imperceptible difference and frankly not worth the effort unless you're into the technical fiddling and have the money to spend 4x as much on your setup. And avoid wireless unless your headphones and phone both support LDAC. You're better off buying an actually good, wired pair of headphones, than chasing .flac for regular listening purposes.

I say wired because practically all wireless headphones are not acoustically well designed by default. They're made to look a certain way to appeal to average consumers, which heavily compromises physical acoustics. Then to make up for bad acoustic design they use a horrifying amount of internal Digital Signal Processing to get them to sound alright. I'm not against PEQ (DSP) in general, but wireless headphones try to brute force sound quality with it and it never actually works. Technics very recently showed off the Technics EAH-A1000, which they claim was physically designed acoustically first like a traditional wired headphone, but I haven't heard them so I can't vouch for them. They're also $450 which makes me think you may as well find something else that's also wired.

BTW, any motherboard or device that has an ESS Saber DAC or similar level of performance is more than enough DAC. And you don't need a separate amp unless the one you have is making weird sounds, or if you can't get your audio loud enough. And if loudness is the problem you also have to make sure your headphone/speaker can handle the level of power the amp can output, or they'll break when you or someone else cranks the volume/gain recklessly.

Yeah, audio is full of lies and even the knowledgeable guys in it can be untrustworthy out of extreme personal bias and paid sponsorship. There's a reason audiophiles are still looked down on when a $3,000 setup sounds 90% as good as a $97,000 setup.

>>145782
>Bose
>High-end
Do you get your opinions from paid shills or real measurements?
Bose has been long known as a snake oil salesman in the audio industry.
Just get some IEMs like the Moondrop Chu 2 and you are set.
Sennheiser can still be very good, but its mostly their proffesional stuff like the HD600.

>>145783
Sony's wireless stuff is no good too unless you are looking for noise cancelling performance

>>145784
Nvm I'm retarded

>>145785
I'm not used to reading wordwordswords on the snarky snappy.

>>145783
I specifically said those brands are no good. Sennheiser is also bad because they're literally always veiled.

>>145785
>>145786
Oh. k.

i have audio technica m50s and i got them for less than $90 second-hand and barely-used from one of my super sperg audiophile mates. are they any good because i have nothing else to use as reference

>>145789
Baby's first half decent headphones 2011 edition. All of the M50s have been subpar for like 10 years. To make you feel a bit better, the build quality is supposed to be pretty good on them. You could easily do worse, but you could also do way better. If you're not bothered by them, may as well wait before you get anything else. Headphone prices have gotten retarded over the last decade so saving up AND doing a ton of research is recommended. And try to listen to headphones in real life. You'll probably like headphones that sound somewhere in the ballpark of the Harman curve.

Guitar Centers will probably have the AKG K371 for you to demo and most people really like the way they sound. But you don't hear about that model too much because the build quality is genuinely bad and the headband is uncomfortable. Seriously, they feel like $75 headphones. But that model will probably give you an idea of the sound you like and you can ask more knowledgeable people than me for more help. I'm not really much of a headphone or IEM guy, I massively prefer speakers.

I asked about CDs because I was worried I wasted my money on stuff I could've gotten for free btw.

>>146198
even doe you can get a CD album for 2 pounds at any charity shop

>>146210
I live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere and listen to some somewhat obscure stuff.

>>145733
YouTube Opus 160 is actually good though. Kicks SoundCloud's shit in.

>>145787
Grado nigger retard 4 year old

>>146231
>Grado
Sorry, son. This isn't 2011 Head-fi. Those suck and most people will admit it these days.