How to play FLAC audio

Thank you so much for all the hard work it took to put this guide together. Now if someone can answer something for me---I have my movies, and tv shows in HD now whats the music equivelint of that? Is it FLAC or AC3?

AC3 is the same as Dolby Digital which is the standard for DTV/HDTV audio streams.

Ced

Originally posted by AlBundy:

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Thank you so much for all the hard work it took to put this guide together. Now if someone can answer something for me---I have my movies, and tv shows in HD now whats the music equivelint of that? Is it FLAC or AC3?

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How can you write an article like this and not address Winamp?
What The H???

I am still trying to find someone that can give me an intelligent reason why I should play a FLAC file instead of convert to 320 BR mp3. I have asked this question on many threds discussing FLAC files hear and in other audio forums. I have never gotten a reply let alone a good explaination. Granted the Flac stores 4 times the data but if you can't hear the difference why keep something 4 times bigger, just for grins? I know if you wish to edit and save a lossy format of anything resolution is lost. However, I would never edit a tune even if it had a pop in it due to it was a vinyl capture. I capture as a wave but eventually store as a 320 mp3. I believe they faithfully store up to 20,000 htz tones. This is was a child or a jungle person can hear. Anyone exposed to load noises for long can't hear tones that high. I know I can't. I know I can hear the difference between a 128 BR and a CD. I am not so sure I can tell the difference between a 160 BR and a CD. I figure at 320 BR (twice that rate) I certanly can't tell. The sample rate for a CD exceeds what a human can hear. Flac maintain that sample rate. They are about 1,2000 BR.

Originally posted by Mez:

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I am still trying to find someone that can give me an intelligent reason why I should play a FLAC file instead of convert to 320 BR mp3. I have asked this question on many threds discussing FLAC files hear and in other audio forums. I have never gotten a reply let alone a good explaination. Granted the Flac stores 4 times the data but if you can't hear the difference why keep something 4 times bigger, just for grins? I know if you wish to edit and save a lossy format of anything resolution is lost. However, I would never edit a tune even if it had a pop in it due to it was a vinyl capture. I capture as a wave but eventually store as a 320 mp3. I believe they faithfully store up to 20,000 htz tones. This is was a child or a jungle person can hear. Anyone exposed to load noises for long can't hear tones that high. I know I can't. I know I can hear the difference between a 128 BR and a CD. I am not so sure I can tell the difference between a 160 BR and a CD. I figure at 320 BR (twice that rate) I certanly can't tell. The sample rate for a CD exceeds what a human can hear. Flac maintain that sample rate. They are about 1,2000 BR.

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First off, thanks for the reply. I will try not to come off as a smart ass. I am actually trying to learn. It is possible I don’t know all the facts. I have read a good deal on audio but I don’t know everything.

I did state I am not sure I can even tell the difference between 160 and a CD. My question to you is can you hear the difference between a 320 BR and a FLAC.

DVDs are something different. HD DVDs have much more band width than a CD and have more tracks. The DVDs can produce more sound in a hearable range because it plays more tracks. I don’t doubt that someone listening intently can hear the difference if the music is fuller even if their ears are shot like mine. You might be able to hear the difference even if you are not listening intently.

I am trying to be specific to the mp3 320 BRs. Not only do the compresses the data but I believe it lowers the sample rate so that tones beyond 20,000 Hz are not reproduced accurately. Fletcher-Munson loudness phenomenon states we really can’t even hear the extreme ranges of our hearing well. The sounds tend to mute out gradually instead of just cut off. However, these tones were shown to add richness to music. That is the grey area. This is where the experts tend to disagree.

Dogs can hear much higher frequencies than humans if I was making music for them I would have to do things differently. Human ears are created equally but degrade when broken by damaging noises that are produced at a rock concert. Age also degrades what a human ear can hear. A 320 BR is supposed to keep up to about 20 Khz the end of human hearing. Most of the music data is kept to reproduce the high frequencies. Not only does a 22,000 hz have 1,000 times the data than a 22 hz tone but the sample rate of the music has to be much higher. You have all this data to faithfully reproduce tones that you probably can’t hear and even if you can you can barely hear them

Lastly, my playback equipment is plenty good. In fact, it is very extreme. The speakers can faithfully reproduce 4-26,000 hz. While the human ear can only hear 20-20,000 hz. Even though the human ear can not hear tones below 20 hz you can sure feel the sub tones. 4 hz is truly awesome. The power amp is truly a magnificent dinosaur. It can do 440 watts RMS per channel with 1% distortion. Actually, that is what you need to drive the speakers which are ultra-inefficient. No, I would never buy a stereo like that today even if I could afford to.

I don't claim to be an audio expert by any means but in answer to your question Mez, this is my take on it, I dont believe there is any differences between mp3 320kbs and flac audio that any normal human being can hear, but as mp3 encoding does lose some of the original audio data it is not considerd to be archival quality.

So if you want to make a digital master copy that you can be sure is the most perfect digital copy of the original possible, but do not want to store huge .wav files you would use lossless compression like flac.
The flac file can then be used as, and considerd to be, your original unaltered digital master for archival and copying purposes.

For general listening purposes when u want your digital audio to be compatable with lots of different devices and applications, with maximim quality, while keeping the file size reasonable (4x smaller than the flac), you should use the high quality mp3 encoded at 320kbs.

To summarize,
Archive = flac
Listening = mp3 320kbs

Just something I wanted to add to my previous post.
So to finish answering your original question, there really is no intelligent reason why you should play a flac file instead of a mp3 320kbs file.
That is not to say you shouldnt use flac for general listening if you want to, just that the 4x bigger file size using up space on your device would be your loss for no audible gain, and the lack of compatibilty with other audio devices and applications would also be your loss for no audible gain.
It is probably also worth mentioning there are other good reasons for using flac files such as in scientific applications where audio signals way out of the range of human hearing may be recorded and preserved using lossless compression. These types of sounds would probably be destroyed by the mp3 encoding process which is specificlly designed for audio within the range of human hearing.

zonedout, I agree. I have picked up quite a bit in a year. A 320 CBR mp3 completely captures the limits of a perfect human ear and the sub sonic tones as well. By the age of 21 most persons can only hear below 18 KHz and by 25 all humans lose the ability to hear high end tones (mosquito tones). There are mosquito ring tones used by students in school so teachers/professors can’t hear them. They are teenage dispersal devices that drive teenagers from malls but can’t be heard by paying customers.

My research did not find any ear phone, ear bug or any other like devices that plays in the ultrasonic range. Possibly because ultra sonic tones can't be heard but are the most damaging of the sound waves. The manufactures may be avoiding law suits. The only devices that produce ultrasonic sounds are extreme speakers.

Lossless files are useful for archiving digitized analog music. It is a pain to digitize analog music. Just because you can't hear it does not mean it is not there. What lossless fiends do not understand is a wave file of 1 hr of silence is the same size as
1 hr of complex music. A file of all 0s is not very valuable.

Persons that listen to lossless on their mp3 players are fooling themselves when they believe they can hear the ultrasonic tones because their ears can't hear the tones and the ear buds can't reproduce the tones. No, they aren't hurting anyone when they do.
as posted by vurbal.

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Just because your ears can't tell the difference doesn't mean no one's can.

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