Audiophiles, school me...

[TDE30]

Alright, lately I have discovered the world of torrents. They are extremely handy as I can download a complete album in less than 20 minutes with relative ease. The only downside is the occasional shitty sound quality. Many torrents offer MP3 quality or FLAC quality or "lossy" quality or AAC quality and so on and so forth.

Most music gets played via a PS3 which is playing through a Dolby 5.1 setup with a Sherwood Newcastle amp, Klispch speakers, and MK subwoofer.

I have read plenty of articles trying to explain what audio format is best for a certain audio setup, but I continue to get lost in the audiophile jargon. Can anyone give me an idea which format is best for my setup? I have heard plenty of good words about FLAC, but after playing a few FLAC-format albums, it seems like it could be better.

Help is appreciated.

[z31maniac]

SACD or DVD-Audio.

No compressed format will ever match the depth or clarity of the aforementioned. Just like digital loses some of the "air" that analog recordings have.

[Emre]

Your PS3 is the bottleneck in this case. You're never going to get anything even remotely approaching "audiophile quality" if your source is a PS3.

The way I see it, you have two choices. Choice #1 is if you prefer to burn your music onto CD's. In that case, get yourself a decent CD-player. The NAD C541i would be a classic choice.

Choice #2 is if you prefer to keep all your music on a hard disk. In that case, get yourself a decent audio interface (M-Audio makes decent ones) and use your computer for music playback.

[daniel]

Alright, lately I have discovered the world of torrents. They are extremely handy as I can download a complete album in less than 20 minutes with relative ease. The only downside is the occasional shitty sound quality. Many torrents offer MP3 quality or FLAC quality or "lossy" quality or AAC quality and so on and so forth.

Most music gets played via a PS3 which is playing through a Dolby 5.1 setup with a Sherwood Newcastle amp, Klispch speakers, and MK subwoofer.

I have read plenty of articles trying to explain what audio format is best for a certain audio setup, but I continue to get lost in the audiophile jargon. Can anyone give me an idea which format is best for my setup? I have heard plenty of good words about FLAC, but after playing a few FLAC-format albums, it seems like it could be better.

Help is appreciated.

unless you have epicly good speakers, MP3s encoded at 192kbps or above should do just fine. The PS3 doesnt support FLAC, anyway. I have a few FLAC albums just for the hell of it, and aside from the 5x larger file size, there is no discernable difference between FLAC and an MP3 at 256kbps or 320kbps).

one thing to note is that a 5.1 setup is not ideal for music. any "audiophile" will tell you to have a dedicated 2.1 setup for music, and save the 5.1 for movies.

the short answer is, if you are that concerned about sound quality and think you can actually tell a difference between FLAC and other audio formats, then you should buy CDs and play them on a 2.1 setup. Torrents are not the source for music for audiophiles. The PS3 plays SACDs, and SACDs support 5.1...maybe you should buy one of those to experiment? I don't think those can be ripped to your computer though. Oh and btw, the PS3 doesn't play FLAC files.

the shorter answer is, make sure you read the info on the torrent. i've noticed a lot of them are 320kbps now, and that should do just fine for free music.

hope that helps.

[TDE30]

Thanks for the info guys.

unless you have epicly good speakers, MP3s encoded at 192kbps or above should do just fine. The PS3 doesnt support FLAC, anyway. I have a few FLAC albums just for the hell of it, and aside from the 5x larger file size, there is no discernable difference between FLAC and an MP3 at 256kbps or 320kbps).

one thing to note is that a 5.1 setup is not ideal for music. any "audiophile" will tell you to have a dedicated 2.1 setup for music, and save the 5.1 for movies.

the short answer is, if you are that concerned about sound quality and think you can actually tell a difference between FLAC and other audio formats, then you should buy CDs and play them on a 2.1 setup. Torrents are not the source for music for audiophiles. The PS3 plays SACDs, and SACDs support 5.1...maybe you should buy one of those to experiment? I don't think those can be ripped to your computer though. Oh and btw, the PS3 doesn't play FLAC files.

the shorter answer is, make sure you read the info on the torrent. i've noticed a lot of them are 320kbps now, and that should do just fine for free music.

hope that helps.

That's the problem I think, the 5.1 thing, the PS3 only plays through HDMI to the television or through coaxial to the amp (which it will then play via 5.1.) Now if I go to put a disc in the CD player (an older Rotel RCD-9658X, a pretty good piece from what I am told) it does play through 2.1 and the qualty is noticably better.

Agreed about the torrent thing, it's not the prime source for higher quality music (especially when combined with a PS3). I have enjoyed being able to download music/videos in record time, but there are obvious drawbacks.

Does anyone know if a FLAC album (downloaded via torrent) will burn directly to a CD-R?

Edit: Anyone having similar audio format questions should take a look at this link, it's very helpful in explaining it in an easy-to-understand manner.

[e30pwr]

torrents are a fine place to source good music. you just have to have invites to the right sites to get the FLAC stuff. I use the standard mp3 at 256kb or better and i have yet to hear a "nasty" track.

[z31maniac]

Let me tell you something though, as this has ruined my home stereo system.

DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT EVER listen to a good source of music through a set of quality headphones and headphone amp.

I have a set of Grado's with a small battery powered amp that I use to listen to CD's at work with, I can't even listen to music at home now because the sound is so horrible by comparison.

[trent]

Don't fuck around with that MP3 crap. NEVER EVER listen to music in "5.1." A good set of speaker does NOT need a subwoofer (unless they are very $$ and balanced like studio monitors). Two-channel is the only way to go, and records are where it is at for audiophiles.

I have a Jolida 302B tube amp (EL34s) that gets fed by a Numark Turntabe (sucks) into a NAD Phono Pre-amp. The Jolida can be seen at the top of my rack. This setup gets fed into either 3 sets of speakers, JBL L26 (fantastic), JBL L99, or Polk Audio Monitor 10s (epic). If I have to use a CD player, I use a NAD 5325 or my converted Sony Playstation 1, which has a famed D/A converted. I modified it and recased it. This player can be seen also on my rack with an exposed CD.

[e30esque]

Damn, that is a hell of a setup.How hard is it to deal with/how much are tube amps? Always wanted one but I figured they were too much of a hassle.

[daniel]

Does anyone know if a FLAC album (downloaded via torrent) will burn directly to a CD-R?

im sure some burning program out there does it, but i doubt it is a common feature. usually they support mp3, wma, aac, ogg, wav...

[Dozyproductions]

I have a Jolida 302B tube amp (EL34s)

nice tube :D

[kronus]

My "home stereo" is a 240W 4-channel amp bridged 2-channel into two 25-year-old ADS towers... powered by a computer power supply. It sounds very nice, actually. I output directly from my computer's sound card in 24-bit via Foobar with an equalizing and resampling stage.

It's very loud when it needs to be, too. Currently piping Springsteen into the entire dorm I live in.

TDE30 - get a dedicated 2-channel amp, and a nice soundcard for your desktop (if you have a desktop). Your PS3 is the bottleneck here.

[TDE30]

Hell of a setup Trent.

The setup I was discussing in the OP is at my parent's home, I'm hoping to acquire some vintage McIntosh/B&W/Bang & Olufson equipment here and there for my apartment next year. It might take a while but it's much better than compromising on a sub-par audio setup. But, I agree with the comments on MP3, it's alright for 0.5" notebook speakers, but not so much for anything else.

Z31, good tip on the headphones, I'll have to look into some of those for the aforementioned audio setup.

[accident]

iirc Nero will burn FLAC, as will Winamp.

As far as torrents go, I grab all of my music from torrents. However I'm also a member of several private sites that I'm sure some of you have heard of.

[Raxe]

I was ripping CD's into FLAC and WAV and purging my collection of anything under 192kbps, but after a while I decided it's really not worth the hassle. I can hear the difference on my Sennheisers, especially something like 128kbps compared to ~700kbps, but in the end it really doesn't make a huge enough difference to me to spend hours searching for a FLAC release and trying to get it to play on an iPod. I'd rather just go out and buy the CD if it's worth it.