Music Quality, .flac Vs. .mp3 On Pandora

[Rygiz]

Well, I was looking at the wiki and stuff, so I figure I'll ask just to be sure. I'm not an audiofile, not at all...But, from time to time I need some higher quality in songs.

I'm sure it's fairly safe to assume that the sound comming form the speakers won't be super amazing, which is alright. I'm wonderng about headphones though...I will mostly have head phones when listening to music as I'm sure most will, along with movies and games. Will the audio decoding and output be worth the space spent on .flac and other lossess type. Or, should I just save on the SD cards and make a repository on my computer with converted files.

This is of course assuming that I'm using good head phones, etc. Purely as if the Pandora is the bottle neck.


-Ryg

 

[clippa]

Can't answer your question but I always encode to 320kbps mp3, either I don't notice the quality dip or I've become used to it. I doubt using one of the lossless codecs is worth the file size when you have limited space.

 

[JayFoxRox]

Don't crack your head about that. They use a TI (burr-brown) dac and there was music in some videos before. I assume its pretty quality. The beagleboards audio quality is also pretty good and it sounds by far better than the PSP or the DS.
Even with a poor converter and soundchip you would profit from better quality headphones and files.
If I was you I would stick to ogg, but I m not an expert in that region neither

 

[BaDToaD]

If you use EAC (with Lame) to encode your stuff at 320 kbps you almost certainly won't notice any difference on the pandora vs flac etc.

You need some serious gear (i.e a dedicated headphone amp and very good headphones) to notice a difference between MP3s ripped at 320 kbps via EAC and the original source. You will however notice a difference if you encode with something crap like windows medai player.

 

[Rygiz]

Yeah, I know that there's not much of a difference. I'm wondering if the Pandora actually has the ability to make that difference, IF I was to purchase some high end headphones.

 

[BaDToaD]

Yeah, I know that there's not much of a difference. I'm wondering if the Pandora actually has the ability to make that difference, IF I was to purchase some high end headphones.

I'm a bit of a headphone nut and have 3 headphones rigs. Even on my dedicated home Rig which consists of a Graham Slee Solo headphone amp, An Arcam DV135 hi end DVD player and AKG K701 headphones there is little to choose between a well ripped MP3 and the original CD. A badly ripped MP3 will sound shit though. Hence I suggested EAC and Lame.

If you can spot the difference in ideal listening conditions on the Pandora even on tracks you know well I'd be very surprised.

 

[GuSec]

You could always have your music in V0 MP3, aka the highest quality VBR alternative the container supports. It's really good quality per space. But like you, I tend to have a certain affection for FLAC-format and will probably rip my music to that format. If the Pandora can make a difference, I don't know. But we know that the DAC will rock and the Pandora will efficiently replace every other music player I own at this moment.

 

[sindbad]

The main advantage of FLAC is that you can later decide to encode in a different format and you won't lose any quality.

It's not that useful and LAME mp3s and ogg vorbis (oga) sound about the same with average gear and ears.

 

[lulzfish]

I use FLAC to rip my CDs because I know it's lossless and I can always downsample without losing quality.
What you should probably do is make FLACs when you can, keep them on a desktop-like computer, then convert them to like a 320kbps ogg vorbis for portable devices like the Pandora.

The trick is to find a good conversion program. Audacity is all right, but it doesn't seem to work well for batch conversion. If you're using Linux, you can get an automatic FLAC -> Vorbis converter script which works pretty well, but I'm not sure how you would batch-convert audio in Windows.

 

[cobaltage]

My own personal comparisons have led me to put most of my compressed files in 256 kbps mp3 format while using FLAC just for archiving on a NAS (using Squeezeboxes for at home streaming). The problems with FLAC include the amount of storage space, increased encoding time, and relative difficulties with tagging. ogg, like wma and aac, gives you smaller file sizes than mp3 for similar sound quality but is similarly less compatible than mp3 broadly speaking.

In my experience, the two biggest variables affecting sound quality, after the quality of the original recording and the subsequent data compression, are the quality of the headphone jack and the headphones. The next biggest variable is environmental noise (modulated by the style of headphones).

Incidentally, I have used Cowon mp3 players for a few years, which support both ogg and FLAC. In the end, I decided to stick with mp3 format, particularly for battery life. I can notice a difference between FLAC and compressed formats (either mp3 or ogg), but I cannot reliably identify which is which on any given recording. Between 256 kbps and 320 kbps, the quality of the analog hardware path (i.e., headphone jack and headphones) becomes much more important than the degree of compression. This is all based on personal subjective measures.

Regarding battery life, because Cowon PMPs have hardware-based mp3 decoding while ogg and FLAC are decoded in software only, the battery life while decoding mp3s is much superior to the battery life while decoding any other format. I mention this in particular because I presume (maybe falsely) that this is not an issue with the Pandora because it lacks hardware-based mp3 decoding. Regardless, I would be curious to know if decoding FLAC versus ogg results in an appreciable change in power demand, if only because of the amount of data that is being accessed.

Practically speaking, you can set up EAC to rip a CD in BOTH FLAC and mp3/ogg formats to two different file locations at the "same time." Like the above poster suggests, if you rip all your CDs in FLAC, you can downsample / convert from FLAC to any compressed format at a later time.

I doubt anyone could consistently tell the difference between 320 kbps versus 256 kbps versus uncompressed files without using a really good set of headphones or monitor speakers in a quiet location.

 

[fischju2000]

The specs on the Burr Brown DAC are: 24-bit, 48khz, and a 150mW amp with 16 omhs and a 99dB SNR. This beats pretty much every other handheld, so if there is a device you will notice the difference on, it's the Pandora

 

[clippa]

My smartq t5 ii-le has the same audio chip as the ipod (Wolfson WM8987). Is that better than the pandora's DAC thingy?

 

[cobaltage]

QUOTE

The specs on the Burr Brown DAC are: 24-bit, 48khz, and a 150mW amp with 16 omhs and a 99dB SNR. This beats pretty much every other handheld, so if there is a device you will notice the difference on, it's the Pandora



The specs sound great. The DAC alone will be worth checking out.

To the OP:
If you are willing to make an investment in a good set of headphones, you owe it to yourself to test out different levels of compression using the music you like most on the actual equipment you intend to use, IMO. I plan to do the same once I have the Pandora.

I would suggest that, taking into account the cost of flash memory, FLAC is definitely not worth the order of magnitude difference in storage space.

As for the amount of compression, it really depends on a lot of factors. (How much music do you want to have with you? Are you going to be using the Pandora mostly while riding a commuter train? etc.) Even then, it is a trade off of storage space for sound quality, but not anywhere near to the same degree.

If you do a personal listening test, convert some CDs to FLAC 0 (or whatever... that is an additional layer), and then downsample files from the same set of FLAC files using different compression settings. (A blind test is more conclusive. There are a bunch of articles online about listening tests.)

 

[.Gogeta§§J4BR.]

keep a very nicely encoded vbr mp3 (use bonkenc, it's great and simple) and invest on a good earbud
better than cracking your head with keeping flacs on a SD, and them not actually getting the most out of it

 

[Mjlink]

I have some midprice Shures for travel.
Some Grados for the house is in the works.

 

[atomicthumbs]

The audio quality will be good enough that if you can notice the difference between lossless and lossy on a computer, you'll be able to notice it on the Pandora.

Me, I keep all of my music (except a select few classical pieces) in AoTuV 128kbps ogg vorbis files, and can't notice the difference between that and lossless.

 

[Spirit]

You should try painting your speakers with golden finish and use a garland of fixing pins as cable. I bet you'll hear a difference then!

 

[cbox]

Make sure to use monster cables, those suckers are worth every penny!

 

[dentrado]

Regarding battery life, because Cowon PMPs have hardware-based mp3 decoding while ogg and FLAC are decoded in software only, the battery life while decoding mp3s is much superior to the battery life while decoding any other format. I mention this in particular because I presume (maybe falsely) that this is not an issue with the Pandora because it lacks hardware-based mp3 decoding. Regardless, I would be curious to know if decoding FLAC versus ogg results in an appreciable change in power demand, if only because of the amount of data that is being accessed.

I may be wrong, but i thought that the claimed 100 hours battery time playing mp3s was possible because of hardware decoding, but maybe (hopefully) it was using the dsp.

 

[WizardStan]

I may be wrong, but i thought that the claimed 100 hours battery time playing mp3s was possible because of hardware decoding, but maybe (hopefully) it was using the dsp.

The 100 hours quoted was with the hope that a minimalistic MP3 player could be written in the DSP only, allowing the LCD, CPU, and GPU to be totally shut down. I think. That's how I remember the plan anyway.