hurry up and bring FLAC to car stereo everyone needs to help out

[ahole-ic]

The answer is simple. I dare you to hear a difference between a FLAC file and a 192kbps mp3 while you're doing 75 down the highway.

Unless your car is an anechoic chamber on wheels, chances are you won't be able to tell. I sure as hell can't tell the difference in a brand new CD and my Zune (toting music in 192kbps mp3) that's hooked in through an RCA input.

I can pretty clearly. Of course I run boston acoustics and not phoenix gold... so that's probably why. No seriously, if you say you can't hear the difference then that's your fault. It's all up high and yes you can hear the difference. When you turn it up loud the highs don't sound clear anymore with 192. With 320 it's hard to tell that it's not cd, unless I REALLY crank it to where your ears bleed. Then you need CD or Flac. Just because you have a crappy set of ears doesn't mean everyone does.

[jmanpc]

Well, I'll admit the PG comps aren't top notch and I'm working on getting some new components. However, my last setup was a 4-way active with MB Quart mids and tweets, Tang Band midbasses and MB Quart subs. I know a good quality system. I still maintain that the difference between the two is nearly imperceptible in a real-world situation. You should do an experiment and see if you can hear the difference. I have done it and I sure as hell can't tell.

[Eugenics]

I can pretty clearly. Of course I run boston acoustics and not phoenix gold... so that's probably why. No seriously, if you say you can't hear the difference then that's your fault. It's all up high and yes you can hear the difference. When you turn it up loud the highs don't sound clear anymore with 192. With 320 it's hard to tell that it's not cd, unless I REALLY crank it to where your ears bleed. Then you need CD or Flac. Just because you have a crappy set of ears doesn't mean everyone does.

Could just as easily be the quality of the rip too.

[ahole-ic]

Could just as easily be the quality of the rip too.

It's times like these when everyone is calm, having a good discussion and nobody is butt hurt that i wish we all lived in the same town. Then we could meet up and listen in each other's stereos.

[brynm]

Or if it was downloaded it could have been someone transcoded it from a lower bit rate

[Eugenics]

It's times like these when everyone is calm, having a good discussion and nobody is butt hurt that i wish we all lived in the same town. Then we could meet up and listen in each other's stereos.

Well, you can just find anyone elses 99 tahoe and listen to that. Vehicles have been my last priority, ha. Just now getting **** together to buy a new vehicle and drop too much money/time on a system.

[headless]

192 vs. 320 is certainly audible with the right content on the right stereo. Remember, if you're listening to music without much content in the first place, 192k might be all you need to reproduce it correctly. Listening to music with a large amount of audio information across the entire frequency range, on the other hand, can easily show where 192k is not enough. It is very difficult to tell the difference between a 320k mp3 and a flac file, but at certain points in some tracks, it is apparent if you know what to listen for and have just listened to the mp3 back to back with the flac. I don't think someone would be able to tell the difference in normal conditions where you aren't swapping back/forth between the two, but if the sound is audible when you try to listen for it, i figure your subconscious will enjoy the difference anyway

BTW, the empeg supports flac and you can easily install an optical output in the unit. Optical out from empeg playing flac's to optical input on eclipse cd7k... between the 20 band adjustable Q (with very tight grandularity on the Q constant adjustment) parametric EQ that's built into the empeg and the dual 5 band PEQ's on the cd7k, you're good to go on EQ. The cd7k can then do time alignment and crossovers. Only digital/analog conversion is then done on the cd7k's outputs. The empeg can house 2 laptop hard drives, so really, unless you are a really crazy *** hoarder of music and you actually have over 1TB of music, you're not going to run out.

Only down side is that the empeg doesn't do crossovers and it's only got front/rear outputs....so using it in a real setup requires some external processing either by running the outputs of the empeg through your HU or by using other external x-overs/time alignment.

[Kyle!]

I am still for the most part a beginner in the audio scene, so take this for what its worth. I felt like I could hear a difference between the 320kbps mp3's on my Ipod and the actual CD. I knew nothing about lossless at all, but started looking for a way to have my whole collection in CD-quality format on a small device (Ipod). So without knowing there was anything better, I felt the desire to find something better because what I had was lacking quality. That for me is enough to think that Flac and lossless are worth the extra size and hassle

[raverx3m]

hmm

[raverx3m]

i dont think ipod encodes at 320kbps
isnt default setting 128 or 192 or something
well theres
music keg from kenwood
theres rio
theres ural concert
all support flac

and all are impossible to find almost

[Eugenics]

i used 320k on my zune with no issues.

[Eugenics]

Just to put an end to this...

Just download MP3s at 256k or better and you'll be fine. I demoed my car the other day for a guy who explained his home system to me. He has what must be a $250k system. This stuff was so expensive and esoteric that I'd never heard of any of it--a $50k turntable? Anyway, he loved the car, claimed it had the highest resolution he'd ever heard in a car and that the dynamics were as good or better than what he has at home. Then he insisted that he could hear the difference between ANY compressed format and CD on any system. After 15 minutes of him railing against digital equalization and fake-sounding processing, we listened.

I think I upset him when I told him that the tracks he had chosen were all iTunes downloads at 128k and that for those tracks, there was nothing going on above 15k, and that all the amplification in the car besides what drives the subwoofers are 20-watt ICs. When I broke out the PC and showed him how much EQ and processing he was listening to, he said, "This causes me to rethink my hobby."

Mission accomplished.

Oh, back to the original topic: I've never heard anything that claimed to restore the sound of low bit-rate MP3s that worked as well as boosting the high frequencies that are left by a dB or two. If it's the lack of high frequencies that has you down, try that. If you download at 256k, then even that isn't necessary.

DIYMA.com - View Single Post - MP3 "sound reconstruction" tech- discuss

His word is more than good enough for me.

[raverx3m]

lol the guy got owned.
what music did you play btw. becaue if you play some hip hop or typical POP music i cant really tell the quality of recording.
or something i never heard before

because its hard to tell what it should sound like when you have nothign to compare it to.

so to the people that keep telling me you cant hear ****.
i never said i can tell 100% all i said that i can tell when i have something to compare it to.
if i listen to a very high quality recording on very high quality equipment then i know how it should sound.
but if you just randomly pull up to me and say hey bro cheak out my system and play some Nsync i probably wont say anythigng about your soundquality because i donno how it should sound.


but it matters when you have your favorite recordngs destroyed by cheap equipment you dont really enjoy it.
there were times when i had 4-5 different MP3 players and close to 20 pairs of headphones and in my free time i sat and listened to the difference between them.
and belive it or not there is a difference.
some headphones you wish you never touched
and there are some that once you put them on you get kinda slightly shocked by clarity and detail of sound. and those i buy lol
but not necessarily the most expensive ones.

i was comparing a pair of audio technica 200 dollar headphones and a pair of same line 500 dollar headphones and the 200 dollar pair sounded much better.
later i realized that was because the 500 dollar pair was designed for a high power headphone amp and needed alot more juice.

i have a demo cd that i made when i was in high school from my favorite tracks (bass, acoustic,etc) and have been using it since to play on every imaginable stereo i could get my hands on.
id hang out in car stereo shops id plug it in the cars i ride in and go to home theater and stuff.

and what i also did is compress the songs to different bitrates starting from 96 and all the way up to 320 for mp3
thats why i know that i can make out a difference even slightest but there is

but you will not hear it thru something like this

[Eugenics]

i have a set of shure e4c's and up until recently i had a pair of phonaks (got stolen). i listen to jazz, soul, etc. as well as hiphop, rock.

but as far as 'sq' listening i enjoy sia, zero 7, anthony hamilton, elsaine, etc. etc.

the shures are much less forgiving than the phonaks so a ****** rip is more noticeable. i have done little objective testing but i can tell you how many times i've been listening to a 320k rip and had to switch to the flac... never (i generally try and have both unless its hip hop)

the other issue, is that for me, you get to a point where its just good enough. most of the time i only listen critically for a few seconds at a time, the rest of the time i'm carried away in thought thinking of something else.

[T3mpest]

All a mp3 does is cut off the top end of the music. If your getting 256k bitrates then your top end will barely be affected. Alot of ppl have poor hearing at 16k even on headphones. a 16k or higher tone in car with the engine running, yeah ****ing right.... In a car 128 and up is fine, you'll never hear it. If the lack apparent top end is noticeable above 80db's of road noise then you really must hate listening to your car at all. Ragged frequency response all over the place due to interior reflections, the entire thing woudl be practically unlistenable to someone with such good hearing, the modes present in car SWAMP what irregularites you get by using an MP3.