FLAC is a dumb format. That's why the files are huge.

>FLAC is a dumb format.
Define "dumb format".
>That's why-
Wrong.
>... the files are huge.
They are relatively "huge", sure.

>>105772094 (OP)
Don't care, I want to give my peers high quality

>>105772114
Give your peers high quality with intelligence.

>>105772124
My seed comes with the high intelligence. Check this shit out.

8=====D~~~~~ (You)

>>105772134
A brainlet. Why am I not surprised? Oh, I know. Because he uses FLAC.

>>105772094 (OP)
i'm all for the "flac is bloat" posts
but... yeah the files aren't "huge because it's a dumb format", they are huge because there's a physical limit that has been reached when it comes to lossless audio compression
sure, there are lossless audio codecs with higher compression ratios, but it's like 5% more compression best case scenario for 200% higher encode/decode complexity, while flac is faster than any lossy codec and barely takes any additional computational power compared to raw pcm, it's a very balanced format that is just perfect for it's use case, pretty much no reason to use anything else.
this post is retarded bait anyways no idea why I just spent half a minute giving a serious answer op is a fag

>>105772149
>this post is retarded bait anyways no idea why I just spent half a minute giving a serious answer op is a fag
no, I appreciated this reply to OP.

FLAC is objectively a great codec that's basically a free lunch. Why would I not take space saving for no loss in quality for what amounts to basically no decode complexity?
>inb4 muh quality argument
Yeah, any side getting into the argument about lossy vs lossless for playback quality is thoroughly retarded.

>>105772094 (OP)
Flac files are the size they need to be to properly represent the content stored in them. They are within a few % of whats theoretically possible.

let me guess...

>>105772114
You can't even percept the "high quality"

>>105772370
no that's exactly all I need, thanks.

>>105772433
Then why did producers publish at that quality?

>>105772433
>implying it's about perceived audio quality itself

>>105772370
>>105772434
You know you need lossless in order to have a compressed opus transcode

>>105772458
well technically you could be ripping cds (so pcm>opus, no flac involved) but yeah i guess if you put it that way i do need flac to pirate shit so that it can be trannycoded to opus
they are buddies, they can coexist and fullfill each others use case

HDD space is so cheap these days, there is no excuse not to download/rip music loselessly and preserve the most data possible.

Nobody complained about 16bit 44.1khz uncompressed PCM audio when it was contained on CDs, it's what we had from the 80s through to the 2000s. That's what most flac files contain, it's just losslessly compressing it. If you complain about these filesizes in the 2020s you are unquestionably poor. 200-300MB on average to store a single album is not excessive to me. Also having lossless source material to make my own lossy encodes for portable devices is important to me. I can choose the codec I want at the bitrate I want and I'm not permanently locked into it.

But seriously if you are poor and brown but flac is the only option to download what you want make your own encode from it and delete the flacs.

>>105772433
That's not what matters. Lossy to lossy encoding is pretty much universally frowned upon. It's agreed that it gives shit results. So you want lossless files to start with if you're going to make your own encodes. That's why I want archival grade material. I don't care if I can't abx flac and something else, that was never the point of obtaining the flacs.

>>105772141
Speak English, Devansh.

Where do i get flac's of my favorite music?

>>105773539
Buy the CD and rip it.
Online, bandcamp is the only place I know that offers loseless without needing a subscription. After that try Deezer.

>>105773169
>But seriously if you are poor and brown but flac is the only option to download what you want make your own encode from it and delete the flacs.
this.

>t. poorfag

>CD audio only has 44.1K samples every second instead of an infinite bandwidth which the real thing has
Pathetic. Not high enough quality. What, next you'll tell me that 16 bits of representation giving 96dB of dynamic range is "good enough"?

>>105773539
private trackers, soulseek, telegram bots
>>105773791
shut up goy

>>105772094 (OP)
You literally don't need anything beyond 192 kbps VBR mp3.

What matters it VBR.

>>105773539
https://rentry.org/69zbxh4h

You can ignore the stuff about the private tracker game and just pay attention on the stuff about ripping

>>105774098
>192 kbps VBR mp3
Retard detected. If you're going to make a VBR mp3 you should use a Lame preset not set some bitrate ABR style.

My final stance:

Lossy audio is a personal choice, enabled by the entirely non-negotiable step of obtaining lossless source material to encode from. What bitrates, presets, codecs, what the fuck ever you choose is up to you. I won't accept you pushing your crap on me. I want control over every step of this process. You should too.

>>105773539
https://www.hdtracks.com/

>>105774207
someone is gathering AI albums in one place in lossless? damn

>>105772370
>>105772094 (OP)
i use both and nothing else

Posted it again award

>>105772094 (OP)
Fucking Lame Ass Codec

>>105772094 (OP)
>nooo stop listening to music as the artist intended listen to my shitty hyper compression algorithms instead...because...file size!!!
>>105773169
>Nobody complained about 16bit 44.1khz uncompressed PCM audio when it was contained on CDs
This

>>105773539
Go to https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/shop search for something and copy the link of the album page
Paste the link here and download https://doubledouble.top/

Best audiophile headphones that will not make me go to debt?

>>105772445
Because people keep pestering them about wanting the flac version, even when its identical to the mp3 version.

>>105772370
Apparently, yes.
Thanks for nothing FiiO.

>>105772094 (OP)
it's for mis-educated morons who think that hearing a 112kbps opus file is intolerable or something.

my brother in christ, you are listening to shit on your shitty car stereo or headphones while you are commuting to your shit job.

Asshole nigger.

Flac is to be used for professional uses, like a DJ playing live at a big venue, or something.

>>105774731
It's not identical. You might not be able to tell the difference but if they give you a mp3 version you are stuck with that version, unless you want to accept generational loss which is sacrilege. I don't want their shitty mp3s. They probably didn't encode them right, the stupid sons of bitches. Give me flac and I will make my own.

>>105774776
DJ's at venues just use mp3.
no ogg, no opus, just plain mp3.

It's the most compatible and it sounds fine.

>>105774787
oh yeah, 320kbps constant.
the most compatible format. and it sounds excellent also.

>>105774776
It's an archival format, not for listening to on your phone. No reason not to use it on a personal computer in 2025.

>>105774787
Maybe 10 years ago they did but wav files are more common these days.

>>105774784
No anon, I mean they literally can do things like take mp3s and turn those into flac and then sell it to you. The only reason flac is an option is because keep people asking for it. The amount of people who buy both the mp3 version and the flac version to compare is tiny and all of them hang out on obscure audiophile forums.

>>105774815
It's not very common. Usually when things are lossy mastered it's like one track on an album. Other times I don't think it's actually mp3->lossless but a mastering process where the higher frequencies are just cut off. Shitty things happening sometimes won't stop me from demanding the best possible source every time. Even if they turned mp3s into flacs that's better than mp3s into mp3s now isn't it? That flac they gave me at least is representative of their master now matter how shitty it is.

>>105774815
I should also note, most lossless content today comes from streaming services. The majority of shops on the internet receive content in the same way as them. It comes over FTP, SFTP, whatever in the form of wav files + metadata stored in xml files. The mp3 encodes on services are made by the services from these wav files, as are the flacs. The big exception is bandcamp where they still force the person providing them content to provide a lossless file as the master, but acknowledge nothing stops the person uploading from doing mp3->wav or flac and uploading it in their FAQ. On private trackers like RED and OPS when uploading you must check every single track on every thing you upload to see if any of the files are lossy. So you'll get a heads up before you even download it. if you find something that isn't marked you can report it and the person who uploaded it will be in trouble.

>>105774731
Why did/do producers publish at CD quality?

>>105772094 (OP)
>tell us you're a fucking worthless bimbo snowbunny without telling us the post

>>105775769
sneed harder pretentious audio-cuck

>>105775783
get fucked dumb blondie snowbunny

>>105772094 (OP)
Storage is cheap, not a real issue.

>>105772267
WAV

>>105774098 AAC is better.

>>105774498
>nooo buy a 14TB HDD to store your songs because of 'reasons'

>>105775704
CDs main advantage against the analog formats back in the day was that it was better than cassette tape, a smaller and more consistent product than vinyl and cheaper than reel to reel. Tape was still popular with portable users, vinyl was popular with People looking for older releases and reel to reel remained popular with pedophiles.

>>105772434
Until a new more efficient codec comes out. Then you delete your Opus library and transcode from your FLAC library. That's the point of it.

>>105775848
WAV is the exact same quality just uncompressed so you're wasting extra disk space

>>105776815
Now recompress the jpeg a few times and tell me if you still can't see the difference

>>105776815
>image A: "803KB"
>image B: "124KB"
>both images with extra shit: 370KB

Amazing example.

>>105776815
I was going to call this a bad troll but it's getting replies so

>>105776895
And why would I do that? Do you also recompress your mp3 over and over again?
>>105776917
Ever thought about that the original images were much bigger?

>>105776954
Of course not, I have a brain so I compress from a FLAC source.

>>105774731
>he has never used spek
>he's probably a retard whose opinion is invalid
We used to have institutions for mentally ill people like you.

>>105777248
You can quite literally go on forums where peopw sit around and compare releases in different format and they find example of shittily made flac releases. It being a flac doesn't give it some magical quality, if they used a shitty source the flac will identical but producers still release the flac version because retards just go "oh its flac so it must be better" even in cases when that's not true.

>>105777302
It's the same bullshit with 4k by the way, they just upscale a lower resolution video and call it 4K so people buy it. The population that sits around pixel counting and analyse spectral graphs is tiny. Those people absolutely love the thrill of the chase and to bols proclamations to an audience of like a dozen people who murmur in agreement that the latest release of "Miles Davis Makes Fancy Fart Noises For 40 minutes" is trash.

>>105777302
That's a lot of cope lol.

>>105772094 (OP)
Why is it almost impossible to get the actual mastered file from the studio? We have the bandwidth and storage capacity for this.
Just put the .wav with 24bit and 192kHz on the market and let the end user decide which codec he wants to use

Audible differences in quality were never the point of lossless audio compression, but all lossy codecs do have problem samples where the wrong frame size is allocated to some waveforms, leading to audible artifacts, along with unavoidable issues like pre-echo, warbling or metallic or underwater sound.
But these mostly matter when actually using lossy codecs for their intended purpose, that is, compressing to the lowest audibly transparent quality.
Ripping to 320kbps CBR and using lossy codecs for archival is retarded because disk space is cheap. You can fit 2000-3000 albums of FLAC in 1TB.
Lossy codecs are best used for storing and listening to music on portable devices.
Of course if the original release is only available in lossy format or you don't plan on reencoding your music, then you shouldn't bother with lossless.

>>105777469
Sample rate only matters during recording and production. Also most people don't make their own encodes and most people who buy flac do it because they're delusional.

>>105776686
>Until a new more efficient codec comes out.
No, because a more efficient codec will at best save me an additional 10-20% of storage space
hell, let's imagine that tomorrow a revolutionary new codec that's able to transparently encode music at 16 kbps comes out (literally won't happen in our lifetimes)
...if I still stick to opus instead of upgrading to this new codec, I'm still saving much more storage than if I had kept all the flacs, and actually the same is valid for people that started collecting mp3s 20 years ago
this argument never made any fucking sense
>use 9x as much storage today, so you can use 7x as much storage tomorrow instead of just using very little storage today and for the rest of your lifetime
the only way this argument might make sense is if opus support suddenly ceases to exist and you need to switch for compatibility reasons, but i listen my music with phone/pc and even niche extremely outdated shit like musepack has plenty of support, vorbis still just works everywhere natively despite having no use case since 2013 when opus released, I doubt opus is suddenly disappearing anytime soon.
and btw, yeah just like we reached a physical limit when it comes to lossless compression with flac, we're at the same point with lossy
>aac-lc with qaac has moved transparency from 192 kbps (mp3) to 96-128 kbps
>opus has moved transparency from 96-128 to... 96-128k still, like 10 years later
>xhe-aac can now be transparent at 80-96, another 10 years later, but support is still shit and it sucks at everything that isn't music encoding, probably another 10 years to reach the point were it will make any sense.
it's over.

>>105777469
>>>/mu/126897614

>>105777604
Wait... people BUY flac? top kek

>>105777469
Because people are dumb and make dumb decisions. This entire thread is proof that people are dumb because so many don't get the concept that audio is a lot of data and that lossless compression only goes so far in terms of file size.
People also confuse the idea of having a lossless source for lossy re-encoding and that digital data does not automagically become higher quality because you stick audio from a lossy source into a lossless file format. Or they plainly ignore that bad actors exist in production, ripping and distribution.
People are dumb.

>>105777469
I understand nothing about this so maybe this is retardation but...
considering that 44.1 khz 16 bit is already beyond human hearing, from my understanding of it, 24 bit 192 khz is only useful for music production
so why would an artist release the master that would increase the end user's ability to easily and freely make remixes and shit? like i'm pretty sure the average artist is a jew that doesn't really want that

>>105777656
44100Hz sample rate can produce frequencies up to 22050Hz (if you want to know why, look up Nyquist frequency). You are right, this is already beyond human hearing, that's why it was chosen for CD audio in the first place. However, CD audio is a consumer format, not a production format. You are also right in that assumption.
People who want 24bit 192kHz audio files are either music producers or delusional consumers. Given we're on /g/, I'd say its the latter.

I use both AAC and opus. Opus lacks the compatibility of AAC. Otherwise, I would just use opus.

>>105775857
I have around 5000 albums and it only takes up 2TB and that's including extra dsd versions I keep for novelty. It's not even cost effective to buy a hdd that small anymore. The space argument is a total non issue. I feel the same way about movies now too. Tinkertranny encode autism is a huge waste of time even if it is 'cool' from a technical perspective. Just get the best quality available and call it a day.

>>105775848
retarded nigger

>>105772094 (OP)
Using anything but flac is third worlder mentality. Storage is cheap.

>>105777686
>People who want 24bit 192kHz audio files are either music producers or delusional consumers.
16-bit is kinda limited though (=65536) and your virtual gain has to fit in too.

>>105780739
16-bit at 5 % virtual volume is only ~3277 different levels.

24-bit at 5 % virtual volume is still ~838861 different levels.

>>105778426
>>105780711
I hope you realize spending money on storage for songs is the retard's take

>>105781360
>turd worlder poor fag detected

>>105781360
And what's your take? Just go to youtube and listen for free? Every single paid streaming service will cost more in a year than you'll ever spend on storage for a music collection unless you're hoarding it like maniac who wants to have do shit like have every single gangsta rap album ever made or whatever the fuck.

>>105777371
As much as I dislike 4k upscaled blurays, at least sometimes they fix wrong colour grading or previously clipped light.

>>105772114
Do you kiss your peers?

>>105781360
>t. retard poorfag zoomie

>>105777612
>No, because a more efficient codec will at best save me an additional 10-20% of storage space
That's 10-20% more music you can store
>if I still stick to opus
Even nuking old Opus tracks and retranscoding to the newest version can net 10-15% gains.
>I'm still saving much more storage than if I had kept all the flacs
Not really, the point is saving space on your DAP. The fact that the files on your computer take up more space doesn't really matter in the days of 20TB HDDs