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> I cannot tell the difference, even on quality studio headphones, between a v0 MP3, an iTunes 256kbps AAC, and a FLAC file What type of music are you listening to? Certain instruments are handled very poorly by LAME. A v0 MP3 is going to be pretty bad on cymbals, woodwind instruments, and harpsichords, for example. AAC is far better about this, and I've never been able to blind ABX a 320kbps AAC against a FLAC successfully, even using a headphone setup worth over 2k. I can blind ABX 320kbps mp3s vs flac 100% of the time on those underperforming instruments, and a good portion of the time on music in general - assuming I have listened to the FLAC version of the song extensively. That being said even on expensive mobile setups I have a hard time even on the 'bad' mp3s. Granted, my mobile setup is a fiio x5 and midrange CIEMs, so it's not nearly as nice as what I have at home. But on the go is where I'm space constrained - I see no reason to keep FLAC files on a portable player. An MP3 or AAC file should be all you need on the go. But, there is a MAJOR problem with MP3s, particularly in today's mastering climate - converting from WAC/FLAC to MP3 usually adds .5DB to the audio. With the 'Loudness War', there is a significant amount of audio that is mastered to -0.1, and this conversion will push the audio to 0.0, resulting in clipping. As for vinyl, the difference in sound very well might be the loudness war. A portion of vinyl releases use the same mastering as the CDs, but a lot get a special "vinyl master" where they haven't squashed the dynamic range. Part of this is due to physical limitations of the format - you can compress all of the audio to have the same dynamic range like they do in the loudness war, but this compression is a casualty on CDs - they just want it to be louder. On vinyl, because of the way it works, if you want all of the DR crushed, the average loudness has to actually go down, which defeats the purpose. If you're comparing against a vinyl master with non-compressed dynamic range vs something that came from a cd loudness war casualty, you're getting a very different audio experience. I'd say it's better, and as such have spent a significant amount of money on vinyl, despite it being an inferior format on a purely technical level. All that being said, with storage space being so cheap, I choose to keep FLACs of all of the CDs I rip, because it isn't expensive for me to do so, and I don't have to worry about losing information whenever some new compressed format comes out. I keep AACs and MP3s on my DAP, and this way I won't have to re-rip everything when some new format comes out. It's inexpensive to keep archival quality audio around, so why not do it? |