Which audio format is your music library in?

[YO303]

i use flacs. i don't see why space should be any kind of deal nowadays. you can get a 1tb external HD for around 70$. i bought one just mainly for my music library. i have a dresser drawer full of cds and it took several days to rip all of them, and they barely put a dent in that disk in flac. i'm not going to say that i can hear a difference between 320 mp3s and flacs, and i think any difference at that point would be very subtle. so the mp3 would be fine, BUT on the other hand, if i want the absolute best why not just stick with flac? why cut out some of the data or process it in any way if i don't need to? besides that, i remember always having problems trying to get mp3s to play without a gap between them. maybe i'm just a dummy but i remember looking it up and seeing that it was either not possible to have a seamless transition, or that it was a major hassle to do it. that was a while back though. what if i want to listen to a pink floyd album without hearing a stupid gap between the tracks that are supposed to flow right into each other?

 

 

If you have a phone/MP3 player with only 32 gb, FLAC is obviously not a good choice, if you like to have as much music as possible with you at all times.

 

But maybe I should consider having a home listening library and a portable library.

 

I know Itunes gets a lot of hate but its the best program to organize your library (i know im gonna get 400 replies saying how other programs are better than itunes but i don't care Itunes worked for me and my library is probably the most organized library in this forum)

[MisterE]

Works fine here.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/portable-music-mp3/1295891-playing-mp3-mix-albums-no-gaps-between-tracks-possible.html

guy in that thread says mp3 can't do gapless. this is what i found from my research years back when i checked. it blew my mind. this wiki confirms although there are exceptions that require the mp3 was encoded with particular software and played in specific players: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapless_playback

 

some players also fake it by doing a crossfade. but i want an album to sound exactly the way it was meant to, including transitions between tracks.

If you have a phone/MP3 player with only 32 gb, FLAC is obviously not a good choice, if you like to have as much music as possible with you at all times.

 

But maybe I should consider having a home listening library and a portable library.

yeah it wouldn't make sense to put flacs on a portable mp3 player. i have some albums on my ipod in mp3, but i don't have my entire library on there. i usually listen at home. so i guess it comes down to what's practical for you.

[Friendly Foil]

Works fine here.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/portable-music-mp3/1295891-playing-mp3-mix-albums-no-gaps-between-tracks-possible.html

guy in that thread says mp3 can't do gapless. this is what i found from my research years back when i checked. it blew my mind. this wiki confirms although there are exceptions that require the mp3 was encoded with particular software and played in specific players: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapless_playback

 

some players also fake it by doing a crossfade. but i want an album to sound exactly the way it was meant to, including transitions between tracks.

Again, no problems here in windows media player. Just tested it out with a Tim Hecker album. No gaps. That guy is wrong.

[geosmina]

(320 mp3 = FLAC/ALAC/WAV) =/= VBR0,1, 2

 

at least with what I have (speakers), what should I buy to hear the glorious magnificence of the all mighty FLACs?

[RichieBees]

i kee p all my music in 1080p jpegs or TIFF files

[Npoess]

i kee p all my music in 1080p jpegs or TIFF files

 

You're attempt at being the new Sup is really starting to get old.

[MisterE]

removed post

[Ego]

I use FLAC for archival reasons but can't say I can hear a difference between a FLAC and a Lame V2 (which is meant to be a transparent preset) or Ogg Q8 on my speakers or Sennheiser HD650.

[MisterE]

Again, no problems here in windows media player. Just tested it out with a Tim Hecker album. No gaps. That guy is wrong.

actually i was wrong, he didn't say mp3 couldn't do it, just that it was a flaw with mp3 and only a few players do it right. it is a known flaw which you can look up by typing 'gapless' and 'mp3' into google. plenty comes up. it appears that mp3s encoded by itunes handle gapless if played back in itunes. you can even see people asking about gapless with WMP at microsoft forums. i can't see anything more recent than 2010 but everything up to that point indicates that WMP adds gaps, unless, like i said, it is set to crossfade the tracks itself. that's not authentic to the album though, it's media player crossfading the tracks. i'd guess your media player is doing that. from what i see the mp3 format doesn't retain necessary data needed to transition from one to the next, unless using an encoder that adds that info (like LAME with a specific tag, or itunes) and then only players that recognize that data will use it. from what i see, WMP doesn't recognize lame gap info.

[Friendly Foil]

Again, no problems here in windows media player. Just tested it out with a Tim Hecker album. No gaps. That guy is wrong.

actually i was wrong, he didn't say mp3 couldn't do it, just that it was a flaw with mp3 and only a few players do it right. it is a known flaw which you can look up by typing 'gapless' and 'mp3' into google. plenty comes up. it appears that mp3s encoded by itunes handle gapless if played back in itunes. you can even see people asking about gapless with WMP at microsoft forums. i can't see anything more recent than 2010 but everything up to that point indicates that WMP adds gaps, unless, like i said, it is set to crossfade the tracks itself. that's not authentic to the album though, it's media player crossfading the tracks. i'd guess your media player is doing that. from what i see the mp3 format doesn't retain necessary data needed to transition from one to the next, unless using an encoder that adds that info (like LAME with a specific tag, or itunes) and then only players that recognize that data will use it. from what i see, WMP doesn't recognize lame gap info.

My WMP plays these albums exactly as if I was playing them from the CD. It's magic.

[BCM]

You're attempt at being the new Sup is really starting to get old.

*appreciates the irony*

[soundwave]

mostly VBR as this is how buy most of my music these days then I use the enhancement features on my Cowon to bring out the sound a little, doesn't really add much to the dynamic range but does wonders with the frequencies and stereo imaging especially on in ear monitors

[Npoess]

You're attempt at being the new Sup is really starting to get old.

*appreciates the irony*

 

Sup was way better at spelling, than I'll ever be...

[YO303]

What did you end up doing?

 

 

Also stop changing your god damn username, i was denied a change of name and you've changed your username so many times urgh.

[Npoess]

I've decided I'm going to rip everything in 320 kbps MP3 from now on. Seems like the most reasonable choice.

 

And if I want to listen to a album, in the possible quality, I'll just listen to the CD.

 

edit: It's "only" the third time I've switched username

[triachus]

you are no longer een poes :(

[Npoess]

No pussy 4 u

[Guest nene multiple assgasms]

the thing to do is use flac as your archival format, then you can convert them to whatever lossy format you prefer to put on your portable player or to upload to the internets.

[joshuatxuk]

the thing to do is use flac as your archival format, then you can convert them to whatever lossy format you prefer to put on your portable player or to upload to the internets.

 

^this, though in the future I might just use spotify or other streaming services for my portable (as I do at work now). When I do use mp3s it's 320 kps LAME - even 128 LAME sounds better than old mp3s in 256 and 320 ripped with other codecs.

 

My problem is using .WAV and not .FLAC - makes a huge difference in space. I was archiving all my CDs with EACripper and it can do CD-quality which adds up on my HDs. Maybe if HDs get cheaper I'll keep doing it, but right now it's starting to be a concern.

 

Also not sure if I should rip my rare/obscure vinyl and cassettes in 96khz/24-bit or 44.1khz/16-bit CD quality - seems overkill I'm sure...

[modey]

some players also fake it by doing a crossfade. but i want an album to sound exactly the way it was meant to, including transitions between tracks.

 

Itunes seems to get the gapless playback thing right with pretty much everything I've thrown at it, and that extends to the ipod/iphone players. I remember Winamp had a similar feature that could skip any pure digital silence at the beggining and end of a track; that worked pretty well in most cases. No crossfading!

[Guest mrx]

realaudio, everything else is just a joke!

[Beholdapalehorse]

VBR or AAC

[mcbpete]

Itunes seems to get the gapless playback thing right with pretty much everything I've thrown at it, and that extends to the ipod/iphone players.

The iTunes encoding gets gapless playback right for any 'i' device (iPod, iTunes etc.) but it doesn't work for a lot of other playback devices or applications, as it doesn't set the correct values for ENC_DELAY or ENC_PADDING on the mp3 tags. From what I've observed these set a sort of pre-buffer to flag to the player when to start the other track, and without it you get a click when it goes from track to track from the several millisecond gap.

 

Boomkat used to have that problem with their mp3 files as did FSOLDigital until I bullied them with facts and graphs, so I think they ended up switching to another encoder (the latter definitely did as they emailed back with what they should use)

[Nebraska]

I know Itunes gets a lot of hate but its the best program to organize your library (i know im gonna get 400 replies saying how other programs are better than itunes but i don't care Itunes worked for me and my library is probably the most organized library in this forum)

 

lol

 

i use a mac so +1

[sergeantk]

mostly .bmps and shit