MP3 VS FLAC. Can you tell the difference?
Along with vinyl records and CDs, our music library is increasingly replenished with MP3 and Flac music files. Many consider these two formats to be irreconcilable enemies, while others are sure that the difference between them is small. Is it so?
Pizza. Baked in a real wood oven, with a slight smell of haze, the unique flavor of two cheeses fused into one whole. This aromatic bread pancake is crisp on the edges. This incredibly fragrant filling simultaneously plays with various flavors and smells. This is a feast of flavor and satiety. Sometimes he wants pizza so badly that he takes ordinary bread from the store, slices it finely, puts finely chopped ham on top, and covers it with cheese. And put it in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Of course, you can eat even with this, but there will not be the delight that is present when eating pizza prepared by the master.
No, no, we are not baking a signature pizza or opening an Italian restaurant. With this visual example, we show the difference between compressed and uncompressed audio formats.
About formats.
A little history. The MP3 format (MPEG-1/2 / 2.5 Layer 3) appeared in 1994. Do you remember those days? There was no talk of gigabytes, hundreds of megabytes cost a lot of money and many still remembered the legendary phrase of Bill Gates: “640 KB of memory is enough for any computer”. And if the reliability of this phrase is still questioned, then as early as 94 no one doubted that music would be distributed over the Internet and files would be stored on a computer. Okay, keeping your entire music library on one hard drive and being able to take it with you wherever you go is a great idea. However, at that time the main carrier of “digital music” was the CD.
A standard CD contains 650 megabytes or 74 minutes of music at a bit rate of 1411.2 kbps. To preserve a dozen albums in their original quality in ’94, it took a very substantial quantity! Yes, and a personal computer cost a lot then, and the main task of the MP3 that appeared was the ability to transmit sound through channels with little bandwidth. At that time, transferring an entire CD over the Internet required tens of hours at best. Therefore, the developers were faced with the task of reducing the size of the audio file to the maximum, avoiding to a minimum the losses during the compression of the signal. However, the encoding technologies were not yet perfect, and the processors were not that fast, so it was decided to apply the psychoacoustic method, in which only part of the audio information is lost. For example, all “quiet” sounds above 17 kHz and all bass below 40 Hz. The developers have established various levels of compression for these files, taking the digital stream as the basis for measuring the quality: the more information is transmitted per second of time, the higher the sound quality, but also the larger the file size. The maximum bit rate in MP3 is considered to be 320 kbps, in which the sound is balanced and the quality is as close to the original as possible.
And this is the “closest” and tormented to good sound lovers so far. The fact is that listening to music on high-quality equipment allows you to fully feel the difference between the original recording and its MP3 version, even at 320 kbps.
In all honesty, we admit that you can listen to music even at 64 kbps. If you just want to hear your favorite tune, then no obstacle is terrible. You can even play the nearest musical instrument yourself, if you have the skill, or listen through the speaker phone. However, if you want to enjoy a work in which all the inherent nuances and emotions, its interpretation by the sound engineer and the way the performers play, will be preserved, then MP3 (as, indeed, any other format of lossy compression) will not be a pleasure, as well as the playback is excellent. CD recorded and edited on a mediocre device.
The developers of the Flac format thought about how to reproduce high-quality compressed audio in high-quality Hi-Fi. In fact, FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec – “free lossless audio codec”) appeared only 6 years after MP3. However, encoding technologies have come a long way during this time, making it possible to create codecs that compress the audio signal without loss. Of course, it wasn’t possible to make the file smaller than MP3, but users now have an order of magnitude more spacious storage, so a couple hundred megabytes per album is a mere trifle. It is not?
Both formats are quite widespread. Almost all operating systems can play them using standard or third-party players. МР3 is compatible with almost the entire line of sound reproduction devices, including those belonging to the High End class. With Flac (and its analogues), the situation is slightly different: some manufacturers still stubbornly ignore this compression method. Be that as it may, the simple music lover can always choose between these two formats. But, along with the choice, questions arise, but will you hear the difference between Flac and MP3? Let’s try to figure it out.
Mobile devices.
For music lovers who prefer to listen to music on mobile devices, there will be practically no difference. Modern smartphones, with rare exceptions, are not equipped with the highest quality audio path. Also, if you use normal in-ear headphones or a Bluetooth speaker. In both cases, the bandwidth of the audio path is not high, so all the recordings will be poor in micronance and dynamic recording. But! Manufacturers are gradually changing this situation. For example, the Korean company LG launched the launch of the V20 smartphone with a built-in Hi-Fi Quad DAC module, which has decoders to play all popular audio formats, including audiophiles and professionals. The smartphone comes with high-quality Bang & Olufsen headphones. On this device, the difference between MP3 and Flac sounds pretty good. In other cases, for a music lover, for those who want to listen to music from their phone, for now it is worth taking a closer look at a specialized external DAC and headphones. For example, FiiO’s line of portable headphone amps with built-in DACs are quite capable of capturing all the nuances of Flac recording when used in conjunction with good on-ear headphones. By the way, even “headphones” work, but not the cheap ones that are sold in all corners, but they are produced by major audio brands.
Alternative? If possible. This is not a multifunctional device, but a high-quality portable audio player. In such a device, as a rule, a high-quality digital-to-analog converter is installed and selected components are used in the audio section. And the entire structure is dedicated to one goal: high-quality sound reproduction. Therefore, other than strictly speaking a music player, there is nothing in the body to prevent you from distinguishing the Flac from the MP3.
Home Hi-Fi.
Everything here is much more prosaic. You can distinguish a high quality soundtrack from a poor quality one on any component of a modern audio system. Also, the more expensive the system, the more pronounced and unpleasant the sound artifacts inherent in lossy compressed compositions. And the brighter and more expressive the performance will be when playing files with lossless compression. If you can easily and immediately tell the difference between playing Flac and MP3, then your home system components are good. Another obstacle that prevents you from feeling it is the record player. The files can be played by directly connecting the hard drive with them to disc or multimedia players, as well as various receivers and amplifiers equipped with a built-in USB media player. As a general rule, in a low-quality device they save on everything therefore the base of the element is exposed to all kinds of interference from various operating units, and the digital-to-analog converter does not process the flow at the highest level, which allows many errors. All of this affects the final analog signal, which after all this can no longer be restored. Like covering your speakers with a towel or pillow. Who knows what the signal would be without it? So again we come to the conclusion that it will be impossible to distinguish between MP3 and Flac in such a system. Exit? Use only high-quality components in your home Hi-Fi systems, from the source and amplifier to acoustics and even cables. that after all this it is impossible to restore. Like covering your speakers with a towel or pillow. Who knows what the signal would be without it? So again we come to the conclusion that it will be impossible to distinguish between MP3 and Flac in such a system. Exit? Use only high-quality components in your home Hi-Fi systems, from the source and amplifier to acoustics and even cables. that after all this it is impossible to restore. Like covering your speakers with a towel or pillow. Who knows what the signal would be without it? So again we come to the conclusion that it will be impossible to distinguish between MP3 and Flac in such a system. Exit? Use only high-quality components in your home Hi-Fi systems, from the source and amplifier to acoustics and even cables.
The fact that almost all music is now stored at home as files that you can listen to on your home system or take it with you and listen to while traveling, on vacation, in class, or elsewhere is great. This is progress to take into account. However, we must not forget that we enjoy music in the first place. In addition to good pizza. And we do not recommend that you deny yourself these pleasures. They are an indicator of the quality of life and a source of our positive mood and positive emotions.
