Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems MP3: Lossy vs. Lossless

I am curious how many hikers use lossy vs lossless files for their MP3 players.

Perhaps because I am at home with my Meridian system only 5 months per year and rely on my MP3 the other 7 months, I am unusually biased and want the best possible portable sound, so I would not consider lossy files. It seems to me with the continuing rapid fall of the cost of memory, there is no longer a compelling financial reason to compromise with less than the best sound. It means that the Sooloos system with lossy MP3 downloads to a player is not acceptable to me.

If anyone is interested in this thread who knows how to set up a poll, I would find that very interesting.

Dolf

At HH2, I remember you asking about this.

The two solutions...

Sooloos opening up the lossless tracks as a file share for access from another device - they said that they were looking at this - but there may be copyright issues.

Your rip your own files to lossless so you have the 'gold copy' on PC/NAS etc which can then be used on 'MP3' player and copied to Sooloos - not sure the implications of this on the Sooloos and what, if any, functionality or metadata you would loose.

But with due respect. How much better is lossless on your 'MP3' player than a decent MP3 rip, or, another lossless format, say Apple Lossless on iPod? I must admit, about 6/7 years ago I was rather sceptical about MP3 but I then heard a decent rip on a mates MP3 player and actually thought it was rather good, so much so that, when I ripped most of my CD's, back in the days of small and expensive hard discs, I ripped to MP3 and so far, have not felt it necessary to repeat the ripping process for a better format as I have found this format more than adequate for the listening conditions that I have so far - although soon to move to a quieter neighbourhood/better speakers so will be revisiting my music server requirements shortly.

I use FLAC at home, and MP3 on the move. Works for me.

I'm using FLAC lossless at home and 320kbit CBR MP3 in my iPod substitute. The MP3 sounds very good and is more than adequate for non-critical listening.

VK

what rip process do you now use? Is it still the EAC route ala the Wiki?

Now I've discovered PS3mediaplayer, I'm ready to mass rip my collection.

Cheers
Pete

dBpoweramp. IMO, it is better than EAC in many ways.

For example, I was ripping the The Beatles "Help!" from the Mono box set. One CD contains both the mono and original 1965 stereo tracks.

1) No AccurateRip checksums were available: No problem, EAC has secure ripping modes.

2) Rather than just the freedb database, with a $5/year subscription, you get AMG, GD3, Music Brainz and freedb data, and can easily pick what you want. dBpoweramp highlights where there is metadata inconsistency between the providers (which is just as well, because the AMG metadata for "Mono Masters" was totally wrong).

3) No album art (or the wrong album art): No problem, just click on a button and add a jpeg.

4) I wanted to rip "Help!" as two CDs (one mono and one stereo). There is a wonderful track number offset feature so I could selected the stereo only tracks and easily rename them to start at track "1".

5) I've also been able to accurately rip, with ease, CDs that EAC craps out on.

dBpoweramp is just much better all round.

Syncing feels so old fashioned. I use Spotify streaming wherever I am on the iPhone.

I thought I would use the offline sync functions much, but I haven't even bothered, streaming everything live is too convenient. But for my next plane trip I will sync a Spotify playlist at home or at the airport before liftoff.

Will probably not go back to syncing ever I don't feel I have the time for it, always on the move during the days. Streaming will just get better and better quality and someday it will be lossless.

I use Apple lossless in the main system, a Mac Mini into a 568.

I use 320kbps MP3 for iPods, this is on a separate computer (G5 PowerMac). This also holds ripped films and tv shows.

I do this because although 'disk' space is cheap, iPod's (especially the 4G 20GB one I have) still have relatively small drives. I can get more songs on this way.

Another benefit I have found is greater battery life with mp3s vs lossless.
I put this down to less work on the iPod's HD.

Steve.

With the rate of reduction in Memory prices, I fail to see any reason to use anything less than Lossless on ANY occasion.

The typical uses for Ripped Music files in today's world are

...Critical Listening on Meridian systems
...Ambient Listening at home on Meridian and other "family" systems and speakers
...Mobile Player whilst travelling on Planes, Trains, Taxi's etc.
...Listening whilst travelling in our Cars (and rental cars)

I don't see why one would want to maintain TWO sets of Music Files, one for critical listening and one for "Mobile Player" use. Like many here, I assign Track Ratings to my Albums and Tracks, as well as creating various Playlists etc. I certainly would not like to be doing that twice!!!

Take for example the 160Gb Apple iPod at $250 (and there are other cheaper players). Using Lossless files, you will find that each Minute of a Lossless track will occupy 6.3Mb. This means your 160Gb Player will contain the following when using Lossless files

** 414 Hours of Music without any repeats
** 17 Days of Music
** 500 Albums approximately
** 5,000 Tracks approximately

Surely that is enough for almost anyone to carry round at any one time!!! Using the various Music Management Programs out there (dBpoweramp, iTunes etc.) it is extremely easy to "Swap" another e.g. 50Gb of Music to your PC whenever you sync the next time.

If you want to carry more music, then maybe buy a 2nd player. Let's face it, $250 is not a big amount when we compare to typical Meridian prices

The other suggestion I would make is to purchase good quality headphones. These can make a HUGE difference versus the standard earphones that come with the player, and make it much easier to hear differences between Lossy and Lossless files.

You mention use for 7 months of the year. I would strongly recommend the Shure E530 Earphones at about $320 (after shopping around) Not cheap in absolute terms, but compared to Meridian prices.............

Stereophile Review here

Long story short, life is too short to maintain two sets of Music files for different listening situations. Use Lossless for all situations and pay a little extra to exploit that extra resolution with top quality earphones. All IMHO

In about 2 years time (possibly less) there will be 1Tb Mobile Players available and we will wonder why we ever bothered to have anything other than Lossless !!!

Only the 1st is crucial, the 2nd doesn't matter and the 3rd and 4th are noisy environments where it's pointless.

Two sets of files is easy (for me), the mp3s are ripped from the lossless files over a shared network, hit a button and walk away...
Playlists are also transferable.

Battery life was my main concern, smaller files make for more life.

Steve.

IIRC Sooloos also maintains the MP3's for you. So you only maintain one set of files.

IIRC FLAC is more computationally efficient to decode than MP3, so there is actually a small power saving there. In hard drive based players this is dwarfed by having to spin up the hard drive more often to fill the (fixed-length*) buffers, however in flash-based players I'm not so sure...

*32MB in my iRiver portable player. Not sure about iPods but I'm guessing around 16-32MB also.


Incidentally, I went to a talk given by Tony Andrews from Funktion One at PLASA yesterday and whilst his technical knowledge in the digital domain was a little lacking, the message he was trying to get across was clear: there is no place for lossy audio formats in the professional music industry.
I think (sincerely hope!) that we're all in agreement that this also holds true for critical listening situations in the consumer audio environment, and I feel that unless we are listening in a noisy environment where the signal to noise ratio encroaches on the dynamic range of the source material (in-ear-monitors such as the Shure SE530's help significantly to reduce this problem), there is no reason nowadays why we can't enjoy full-fat lossless audio goodness through a high quality set of speakers/headphones wherever we are (driving generally excepted, unless you have a new McLaren ).