Congratulations, the first non-boring answer. You are to be commended, and loved in a manly-not-faggy way.

Yep, I guess they want to appeal to the audiophiles in some way, not that there's any reasonable difference between ALAC and FLAC since they manage the same levels of compression (about 50%) and will obviously sound the same, being lossless an' all.

 

Whereas I guess people could argue between lossy codecs (MP3, AAC, OGG) because there is actually a difference.

Not necessarily. I wouldn't call myself an audiophile, but even I can tell the difference between a 256kbps and lossless file. It depends on the music, of course, and probably even if the lossy track was encoded with VBR (or some other tedious techy thing), but some 256 rips sound 'crushed' in places.

 

So I tend to rip from CD to computer with ALAC (because it's a Mac) and then use the 128 transcoding doobry when synching to iPod. Real audiophiles would probably baulk at that, but frankly if you're listening through earbuds on the train, anything else is just pointless.

If you can tell the difference between 256kbps and lossless then you are an audiophile.

I definitely can't. Most of my meagre mp3 collection is in 128k or even probably 64k in places. I don't care about music quality, so long as I can hear it. Same with videos.

And I think that's where most consumers are.

But really I was talking about the market. The majority of music is either pirated (and thus in the vast majority of cases mp3) or downloaded via itunes and thus... whatever format they use (AAC?).

FLAC doesn't even come into it at the consumer level.

I suppose to an extent it does depend on your audio equipment. What do you usually listen to music through?

 

I can tell the difference between lower bitrate MP3s and V0 but not sure I'd be able to tell the difference between V0 and FLAC.

 

Video on the other hand I'm more picky. I hate poor quality video, or more so, video that should be better but isn't. I don't mind a mobile phone video being low quality, since that's the format/style.

 

I think my biggest gripe is with ITV Player online. Their catchup service is a shocking quality whereas I think the quality on BBC iPlayer is really quite good, and they even offer HD streams in places.

(This also why I have many TBs of storage and you only require about 32MB (giggle) )

You can love me in any you want, Mr. B.

3-8

-5

Only if that list is sorted alphabetically ascending.

This. But is it me or is the BBC iPlayer volume level stupidly high compared to everything else? It's crazy loud to the extent that I have to turn the speakers down to about 25% their normal volume to make it not shake the house to it's foundations.

Couldn't agree more. It's way too loud. No matter what I'm watching/listening to with XBMC (Live TV, Videos or Music) I always have to turn the volume down when using iPlayer. Far too loud.

It's cos it goes to 11.

I know what you mean. I can easily tell the difference between 128k MP3s and the original, but once you get beyond 192k, the differences are so minute that it's not worth the hassle. Personally, I just use V0 MP3 for everything as to me, it's the best compromise between quality and file size, and I really cannot tell the difference there at all - even through my hifi. And it means that I get to run all my music through MP3Gain to level the volume in a way that both Winamp, iTunes and my iPod all support.

 

As for FLAC and whatnot, I don't see the point of it really. Not when you see just how much they destroy modern music during mastering anyway. Does clipping really sound better when it's lossless for instance?

But why don't they just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?

But really, it's silly loud.

Because then it wouldn't go to eleven.

Yeah, cos 11 is one louder init.

Exactly. 110% loud.

*cough*

(I think he knows, he quoted it)