Fear of FLAC (vs WAV) for compact disk conversion- decluttering

[statsman]

320 kbps is "high quality" mp3 but not really high quality when compared to lossless audio. However, it's certainly better than the free 160 kbps and definitely good enough for casual listening.

Agreed. 320 kbps works well in our vehicles, but for our home stereo, lossless audio is best.

 

[RetMD21]

OP here. I don't have Apple products. I have a big stack of disks that I have ripped to FLAC. I need mp3 format for the car. Is there a favored 1 click solution to convert while keeping the tags and file structure?

I bought a CD this year. It was older popular music not available on my available streaming platforms. The price on Amazon for the CD was 1$ more than the mp3 download.

 

[NW-Bound]

"Fear of FLAC (vs WAV) for compact disk conversion- decluttering"


Is there a scientific word for the above affliction? Can we call it flaccophobia?

 

[Qs Laptop]

OP here. I don't have Apple products. I have a big stack of disks that I have ripped to FLAC. I need mp3 format for the car. Is there a favored 1 click solution to convert while keeping the tags and file structure?

I'd been interested to know this as well.

Are you certain the FLAC conversions have tags intact?

One thing I've noticed is the album art .jpg file is typically pretty small, maybe 300 X 300 pixels and when I play the song in my truck with 8.4" screen the album art looks like crap.

I use free, open source Audacity to convert FLAC to mp3's. I can adjust recording levels and add a touch of bass emphasis (if desired.) I typically use 320 kpbs bit rate for conversion to mp3's although I've noticed if I run variable bit rate a lot of tracks seem to have better dynamic range.

Then I run the entire album of converted mp3's through the free, open source program mp3 Tagit and inspect and change the tags as I see fit, including adding album art. Then I save to my PC's hard drive. Finally, I copy and paste from my PC to 32GB thumb drives which I use in my vehicle.

I'm fairly OCD about the process, but it's worth it because my truck has voice commands for playing specific tracks by name, or I can ask for a genre, or an album, or an artist's name. If the tagging isn't done properly I lose some functionality.

So, yeah, a one click solution for converting FLAC files to mp3's with all tagging info intact and good album art images would be great!

 

[Qs Laptop]

Spotify is high quality with a paid subscription.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/12/16/spotify-high-quality-sound/

That's 320 kbps bit rate. Considered high quality for mp3's but otherwise, no.

 

[Qs Laptop]

I don't think many will hear(*) a difference in a high-rate mp3 (or even a lower rate mp3) and lossless. That's not really the point IMO. It's about having a 'master', so that if you need to convert later, you are not adding artifacts to artifacts, at that point, it may become more noticeable.

(*) - Even on my fairly high end stereo, the difference in mp3 and lossless is not readily apparent. But we know that something has been removed from the music. I've tested this by doing a subtraction of the compressed and originals in an audio editing program. You can now hear what is missing - little details, transients, tails of the reverb, etc. These little things are not obvious in a short A vs B, the algorithms do a very good job, but...

The deficiencies of mp3 vs. lossless is actually fairly easy to hear if you know what to listen for. The easiest difference to detect is the clarity and length of a strike on the cymbals. For example, listen to the opening stanzas of The Doobie Brothers "Listen to the Music" and focus on the cymbals. There is a cymbal struck at about the 0:09 second mark. Just listen to that on a good stereo system using a CD and then switch to the recording on an mp3. I guarantee you will hear the difference. The mp3 cymbal seems to spatter and sizzle and then dies out quickly while the CD version has a crystal clear ring to it and goes on for several seconds.

Other musical instruments can be revealing. Higher frequency piano notes and harps are not good in mp3 format. Violins don't sound as full and impactful.

 

[Music Lover]

That's 320 kbps bit rate. Considered high quality for mp3's but otherwise, no.

I find 320 kbps good enough for casual listening...on the deck, at the cabin, around the campfire etc. But for a true audio experience it has to be lossless and through good speakers.

 

[ERD50]

I'd been interested to know this as well.

Are you certain the FLAC conversions have tags intact? ...

I use this app, "Soundconverter" to do batch conversion from FLAC to mp3 or ogg, but it appears to be Linux only. Easy/powerful/flexible user interface (the screenshots in the link tell the story, lots of options in the pull-downs). It seems to do fine with whatever tags were included when I ripped the CD. And it's fast, it manages to run all my CPU cores in parallel.

https://soundconverter.org/

I would imagine something similar exists in Windows.

-ERD50

 

[ERD50]

The deficiencies of mp3 vs. lossless is actually fairly easy to hear if you know what to listen for. The easiest difference to detect is the clarity and length of a strike on the cymbals. ...

Yes, cymbals are complex, and can get "swishy" sounding with compression (or just bad audio recording techniques). They are among the most challenging for digital/compression, due to complexity (non-harmonically related structure), dynamics and randomness.

I use FLAC/lossless where ever I can, because in most cases (at least for serious listening), there's just no reason to compromise. Though I am still amazed at how good the compression algorithms work. I might get around to doing more A/B test and focus on cymbals as you point out. I'm surprised they can chop up the music and reconstruct it, and have it as good as it is. But I'll still chose unadulterated if I can.

-ERD50