Lossless MP3 - any easy way to convert?

Originally Posted by Trompe le Monde

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nevermind the fact that your car and 99.5% of others have equipment that cant accurate produce the frequencies lost/attenuated/distorted through compression....

While I agree that the equipment is not 100% accurate and the lossless doesn't sound perfect - yet the lossless sounds way better than 320. I prefer way better even if it isnt perfect

Originally Posted by AThingForCashmere

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Please excuse the side question, this isn't meant to hijack.. The CD player in my car doesn't play FLAC (or even WAV) files, just MP3. Can someone recommend a free encoder OTHER THAN LAME for best quality 320kbps MP3's? In my experience LAME produces terrible audio at that bitrate (yes I have tried overriding its "joint stereo" default, audio sounds terrible using stereo or joint stereo settings).

Really? New versions of Lame are released all of the time, perhaps you need to upgrade.

Originally Posted by username79

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Are you serious? The difference is night and day with anything vocally intensive.

I used to rip to 320 but as with the OP, with storage being so cheap, have switched to FLAC and AAC. No more craptastic artificial MP3 sound through headphones with my iPhone.

Agreed. Avoid any lossy encoding if at all possible.

For the second or maybe third time ever, I am happy to agree with AF on this. Lossless is the way to go. Re-rip the CDs.

For the record I can tell the difference between lossy and lossless on even my car stereo.

Originally Posted by unjung

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For the second or maybe third time ever, I am happy to agree with AF on this. Lossless is the way to go. Re-rip the CDs.

For the record I can tell the difference between lossy and lossless on even my car stereo.

Assuming that I am going to use ipod and itunes for majority of listening yet want to remain as futureproof as possible - do you all still recommend FLAC?

Originally Posted by deaddog

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Assuming that I am going to use ipod and itunes for majority of listening yet want to remain as futureproof as possible - do you all still recommend FLAC?

FLAC works fine, though iTunes and iPod cannot directly play that back. You may want to encode to ALC (Apple Lossless Codec) instead if you're going to be using Apple products.

Any lossless encoder will futureproof you. As long as there's a way to get it back to WAV, you're set.

--Andre

Originally Posted by username79

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Are you serious? The difference is night and day with anything vocally intensive. I used to rip to 320 but as with the OP, with storage being so cheap, have switched to FLAC and AAC. No more craptastic artificial MP3 sound through headphones with my iPhone.
I'm certainly serious. There's no point in using lossless for portable duty - it has no merits at all, unless you believe you can hear the difference. The sort of people who believe they can usually tend to look down at the rest from their Grados, sometimes hooked up to some BS portable amp, unable to determine an actually accurate audio device but simply in love with the image of it all. I'm running custom-fitted in-ears and even I run 256K MP3's through my setups. They do, however, come from a lossless central library which is transcoded in real-time as and when necessary to sync.

While I prefer my music to be in FLAC, I think that picking 320 kbit mp3 in an ABX test reliably is not at all easy.

Originally Posted by montyharding

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I'm certainly serious. There's no point in using lossless for portable duty - it has no merits at all, unless you believe you can hear the difference. The sort of people who believe they can usually tend to look down at the rest from their Grados, sometimes hooked up to some BS portable amp, unable to determine an actually accurate audio device but simply in love with the image of it all. I'm running custom-fitted in-ears and even I run 256K MP3's through my setups. They do, however, come from a lossless central library which is transcoded in real-time as and when necessary to sync.
On my iPhone with stock headphones, voices sound metallic and harsh when encoded in 320kbps MP3. It is a characteristic sound -- it can be heard when radio stations play MP3s even on car radio. Not sure what kind of foreign matter is regularly shot in your ears (tell your boyfriend to be more careful), but the difference is very apparent.

Originally Posted by username79

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On my iPhone with stock headphones, voices sound metallic and harsh when encoded in 320kbps MP3. It is a characteristic sound -- it can be heard when radio stations play MP3s even on car radio. Not sure what kind of foreign matter is regularly shot in your ears (tell your boyfriend to be more careful), but the difference is very apparent.


People who spend more money on 3ft piece of cable for portable rig than your entire "setup" have a difficult time discerning well-encoded lossy file vs lossless, but if you want to convince yourself you can, thats fine.

Ask your boyfriend to buy you real audio eqiupment for christmas and do a true ABX test for yourself.

Originally Posted by Trompe le Monde

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People who spend more money on 3ft piece of cable for portable rig than your entire "setup" have a difficult time discerning well-encoded lossy file vs lossless, but if you want to convince yourself you can, thats fine. Ask your boyfriend to buy you real audio eqiupment for christmas and do a true ABX test for yourself.
A real pretentious wannabe audiophile doesn't do ABX. If he's by himself he'll do best of 5. After knowing which is which This also goes for fools who spend thousands on cables (I did out of curiosity - but I also spent about the same on actually relevant test gear). Many people will themselves to hear a difference. Often the differences are actually worse technically on pricier stuff, ironically sometimes down to assembly quality issues on less batch-produced items (I've purchased custom >$1,000 headphone cables for example that had technically worse soldered connections than <$30 replacement cables sufficient to introduce a semiconductor effect), but if there is actually a difference between it and what they're using - and equally as often there isn't a technical difference - many people end up believing that different is better, or will themselves to hear positive differences in the more expensive / supposedly better item. I believe the poster was saying that he could distinguish Lossless and Lossy even on the stock buds. It's possible in special circumstances (although I doubt he's actually hearing a real difference in his case but merely willing himself to hear it), but certainly not in an actually portable scenario. Which was my point - even with highly isolating buds which themselves are the equal of a half-decent open headphone in terms of sound quality, I know it's not worth running the extra memory / power overhead of lossless.

If anybody is interested I have a case-in-point MP3 that I can upload.

It is Chris Brown's new song Crawl, encoded at 320kbps with LAME 3.97U.

If you cannot tell the difference between it and the CD version, you really must need to have your hearing checked.

The song has a heavy emphasis on vocal technique and Chris' voice on the MP3 version sounds like it was run through the T-pain iPhone app. I find it hard to believe that everyone could not hear the difference. It is an example of the characteristic metallic and harsh sound that MP3 encoding (at least the ones I have heard) imparts to vocals.

Originally Posted by username79

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If anybody is interested I have a case-in-point MP3 that I can upload.

It is Chris Brown's new song Crawl, encoded at 320kbps with LAME 3.97U.

If you cannot tell the difference between it and the CD version, you really must need to have your hearing checked.

The song has a heavy emphasis on vocal technique and Chris' voice on the MP3 version sounds like it was run through the T-pain iPhone app. I find it hard to believe that everyone could not hear the difference. It is an example of the characteristic metallic and harsh sound that MP3 encoding (at least the ones I have heard) imparts to vocals.

As I mentioned a page ago, LAME sucks donkey dicks. Especially at 320kbps.

So I'll ask again: anyone know of a better sounding alternative for MP3's?

Originally Posted by AThingForCashmere

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As I mentioned a page ago, LAME sucks donkey dicks. Especially at 320kbps.

Maybe there's something wrong with your encoding setup. LAME is pretty much regarded as the highest quality MP3 encoder available. Is it possible that you're reencoding MP3s? That would certainly lead to artifacts that are very obvious.

For username79, I'm curious how these versions of Crawl compares to your MP3:

http://popup.lala.com/popup/504684639485077985

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I don't have the CD, and have only heard the streaming versions on Lala and Youtube. You can definitely hear the Autotune sound in both of them (and it sounds intentional rather than as a byproduct of the MP3 encoding process), but perhaps they're less obvious on the CD?

--Andre

I have the FLAC from CD and 320 kb/s LAME encoded MP3 version.

Chris uses autotune throughout the album and it is definitely used in the track. However, the MP3 and FLAC versions are significantly different. The MP3 version sounds like an autotune of the autotune, if that makes sense.

I have always thought that MP3s had a characteristic sound, much like JPEGs have characteristic compression artifacts which make them easily identifiable. Perhaps this is a symptom of the encoding process used and not the technology.