Denis Johnson wrote: > On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 6:59 PM, Dale Maggee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> * It's my Hard drive that doesn't support FLAC! If I used flac, my music >> library (I guess "mp3 collection" will soon become a misnomer!) would be >> *enormous*! Yes, I realise it's lossless etc etc, but 320kpbs mp3s are >> close enough for me. >> > > I understand and agree that from a quality pov MP3 @ 320kpbs is > sufficient for most, and the amount of space required for your library > matters, but I was under the impression that FLAC is also a compressed > format. However I must admit I'm not sure how it compares to MP3 @ > 320kpbs > > cheers Denis > FLAC *is* compressed, but it's lossless compression, meaning that there is no change to the sound when you encode it to FLAC, Whereas when you encode to MP3 or ogg, you're losing audio information. Usually it's not noticable, and the higher bitrate you choose the less you lose, but there is a difference. Personally, I can't hear the difference between an audio CD and a 320kbps mp3 on my equipment, but ymmv.
In terms of file size, FLAC is bigger than 320kbps (not sure exactly how much bigger, as I don't have much experience with flac, but It's substantially bigger). If you have unlimited HDD space and really care about audio quality, FLAC is the way to go. If you want some free HDD space and decent sounding stuff, 320kbps mp3s (or, more precisely, since abandoning mp3 is the whole point of the discussion, the ogg equivalent of a 320kbps mp3 - I haven't figured out how ogg's quality scale thing works yet) are a very reasonable compromise, and if you can hear the difference it pretty much means you're a) using expensive equipment and b) a freak of nature. ;) But really it all comes down to personal taste. If you have a nice big HDD, you might even want to encode everything in FLAC and then re-encode it at 256kb for burning CDs for use in your car / mp3 player / clock radio / fridge / whatever... -Dale _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community